Civil Blood: A Treaty Story, May 2023 workshop production. Photo by Mat Simpson

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

It began with a vision of an Indigenous/settler Romeo and Juliet, star-cross’d lovers reaching across the colonial divide.

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And gradually a bigger, richer, more complex story — poised at an historically critical juncture in our collective history — has emerged. Seven years in the making, Civil Blood: A Treaty Story premieres next week in the Old Fort at Fort Edmonton Park.

The co-creation of Anishinaabe playwright Josh Languedoc and director Neil Kuefler, Civil Blood is epic in scale: the story, the history, the contemporary implications. And it has an epic production to match: a cast of 11, a double-play of two intertwined multi-generational narratives, an audience (max: 80) divided in half between the two — and, ah, the largest set of the season, an entire fort.

poster design: Tynan Boyd

If the seed of their project was Shakespearean it’s hardly surprising, since Kuefler is a founder of Thou Art Here Theatre, a company whose origins are in site-sympathetic Shakespeare. Even its title comes direct from Romeo and Juliet, and that fractious situation in Verona: “civil blood makes civil hands unclean.” At a Banff Centre summit “Truth and Reconciliation Through Theatre” Kuefler approached Languedoc, the playwright/storyteller who brought us Rocko and Nakota. And the latter was intrigued by the possibilities of “using theatre as a healing tool in reconciliation.”

And now, “a lot of back and forth” later, as Languedoc says, laughing, the double-helix play is set at the very moment in 1876 when Treaty 6 is about to be signed. It’s a particularly tense period in our history. The fur trade is collapsing; settlers are encroaching on First Nations territories and, deprived of traditional hunting grounds, the tribes face starvation; the government of Canada is trying to lay down the law.

The Old Fort, Fort Edmonton Park. Photo by Mat Simpson

As Languedoc explains, “the ‘Romeo and Juliet’ characters, Ekah and Julien, are a nehiyaw warrior and a French Catholic settler, a young budding philosophy scholar whose parents are the chief factors of Fort Edmonton Park.” We choose which track to follow, “and you do get the overall story either way, but you see it very intimately from one perspective…. You get to see characters through different eyes.” There are certain characters who appear in both tracks, which makes for high-speed exchanges.

In the very first scene a messenger is sent from each track to the other camp. And there is historical evidence for the dramatic proposition of a multi-year courtship, says Languedoc, “with a view to a possible merger….” War and famine take their toll. Ekah’s sister killed; Julien’s parents die. “And the courtship is off.”

As Civil Blood begins, the pair haven’t seen each other for a year. And with the arrival of Lily, the pampered, privileged daughter of governor of the Dominion of Canada, a triangle begins to take shape. “The governor is trying to quell tensions by creating a merger between settlers here and the government…. We see Lily’s discovery of what’s happening in these lands.”

“The whole point,” says Languedoc, who has a U of A master’s degree in theatre creation, “is that we get to know the history of the events that led up to the signing of Treaty 6…. And it’s a cautionary tale.”

The intention might have been peace between equals. But “pretty quickly it becomes evident that this is not going to go in an equal way,” as Languedoc points out. “And the tensions are too big to ignore.” After that historic signing, “you start to see the downfall, the manipulation, the agendas … as one side starts to take advantage of the other. And the play becomes a ‘what-if?’ story,” he says. “We know where it goes. But could any of these events have happened differently, to change the course of history?”

Languedoc and Kuefler talked about a possible land acknowledgment for the production we’ll see at the Fort. “And then we agreed, the whole play is the land acknowledgment. A giant statement about whose land this is.”

In its way, their creative partnership on Civil Blood as Languedoc says in his genial way, is a living demo of the possibilities that were lost post-Treaty. “We’ve had our own negotiations,” he laughs. “We’re both passionate artists: Neil has had ideas he’s fought for; I’ve had ideas I’ve fought for. We’ve intermingled them; we’ve found compromise, and some very cool ideas…. “We ARE the spirit of the Treaty.”

“We’re really close friends now. I see his family; he sees my family. I’ve adopted his cats!”

PREVIEW

Civil Blood: A Treaty Story

Theatre: Thou Art Here Theatre, co-presented by Common Ground Arts

Created by: Josh Languedoc and Neil Kuefler

Directed by: Neil Kuefler and Mark Vetsch

Starring: Emily Berard, Rebecca Bissonnette, Maria Buffalo, Ivy DeGagné, Doug Mertz, Christina Nguyen, Cody Porter, Elena Porter, Gabriel Richardson, Colby Stockdale, Dylan Thomas-Bouchier

Where: Old Fort, Fort Edmonton Park

Running: July 24 to Aug. 4

Tickets: tickets.fringetheatre.ca, on a pay-what-you-will scale