Volume 24 Issue 1 - September 2018

Beat by Beat | Music Theatre
I Call myself
Princess
Digs Deep
JENNIFER PARR
The September 2018/19 music theatre season starts off with the
exciting world premiere of a new piece by Jani Lauzon, which
will be presented in a three-way co-production by Paper Canoe
Projects, Cahoots Theatre Projects and Native Earth Performing Arts at
Native Earth’s Aki Studio. I Call myself Princess (the lowercase of the
“m” in “myself” is intentional) is a fascinating new “play with opera”
that uses an interdisciplinary approach to delve into the past, making
new discoveries about both the past and the present by relating it
to today.
A hundred years ago in 1918, an opera titled Shanewis (The Robin
Woman) with music by Charles Wakefield Cadman and libretto by
Nelle Richmond Eberhart made its debut at the Metropolitan Opera in
New York, as part of a three-part program about American life. It was
such a success that it returned the next season and continued to tour
and be revived around the United States for years afterwards.
This was the second opera by Cadman and Eberhart on an
“American Indian” theme, but their first to be accepted for production.
What seemed to make the difference with Shanewis was the contribution
to the story and libretto by Cadman’s musical touring partner
the Creek/Cherokee singer Tsianina Redfeather, who, although never
officially credited, provided ideas from her own life and experiences
– resulting in an opera that resonated with both producers and
audiences.
A hundred years later, playwright Jani
Lauzon’s I Call myself Princess is about
to bring this story back to life for us in a
modern context. The first seeds of inspiration
for the play came when the playwright
was working with the Turtle Gals
Performance Ensemble, the acclaimed
Native Women’s collective that she
co-founded with Michelle St. John and
Monique Mojica. While working on a
new project, Lauzon came across the
1972 book The Only Good Indian: The
Hollywood Gospel. It was full of critical
viewpoints on the inclusion, or lack
thereof, of Indigenous performers in
opera, jazz, silent film, the talkies and
vaudeville, starting at the turn of the
20th century.
“At first we were surprised by how
many Indigenous performers there were.
Then we were upset with ourselves that we were surprised,” Lauzon
tells me. “We had bought into the narrative that we weren’t there. But
we were there. We were producers, writers, performers.” The story of
Tsianina and the opera Shanewis in particular stood out as something
to be explored further. “What struck me about Tsianina Redfeather
was her working relationship with Charles Wakefield Cadman,” she
says, “and the complexities of how they were both navigating the
industry and expectations of the audience.”
Cadman was already well known at the time as a composer and
expert in “American Indian Music” and for composing his own pieces
in a style that became known as “Indianist.” He gave lecture tours
Jani Lauzon
around the United States and Europe, joined from 1908 by Redfeather,
who dressed for the concerts in beaded traditional costumes, her hair
in braids, and was credited as “Princess Tsianina.”
In I Call myself Princess, we meet Tsianina and Cadman as they and
their opera are discovered by William, a young Métis opera singer in
the course of his studies. As he learns more and deals with the difficulties
of finding his own identity as a young Indigenous performer
in the world of opera and today’s political climate, music and theatre
become intertwined. “I was conscious of the need to seamlessly integrate
the libretto and music that was Charles Wakefield Cadman’s
and Nelle Eberharts’ within the context of my story,” says Lauzon. “In
many ways the writing process was a constant reminder that the very
act of reconciliation is a delicate balance that takes work, thought and
negotiation.”
This intertwining of story, genre, time and theme is exciting and
ambitious. Joining Lauzon to undertake the challenge of bringing
it all to life is director and dramaturge Marjorie Chan, also artistic
director of Cahoots, a theatre company dedicated to working with
diverse artistic voices. Many things, Chan
says, drew her to the project: knowing
Jani Lauzon and her work with the
Turtle Gals, the chance to tell a story
that has thus far had little opportunity
to be heard, but also the combination of
theatre with opera. Chan herself is well
known as an opera librettist. “When we
started to work on this project,” she says,
“I often felt like my worlds were starting
to come together.”
When I asked Chan about the intermixture
of play and opera, she said that
to her it is like an opera within a play.
“In terms of the actual opera that was
performed on the Met stage in 1918, we
are, in the play, looking at its creation
from both the time when it was created
Marjorie Chan
and from our modern perspective in
2018,” she explains. “We are poking at
it from all different sides and different
times so that pieces of the opera are consistently being performed
throughout the entire evening.”
One of the challenges of getting this right is casting, particularly
with the very specific demands for each character. Acclaimed for her
warm strong mezzo-soprano voice and experience in contemporary
opera, Marion Newman, of Kwagiulth and Stó:lo First Nations as well
as English, Irish and Scottish heritage, was an obvious choice for
Tsianina, Chan says. Newman has been an integral part of the project
since the workshop in 2014. Opposite her, as the composer Charles
Wakefield Cadman, is versatile performer and director Richard
Greenblatt, known, perhaps most famously, for his two-man show
COURTESY OF JANI LAUZON COURTESY OF MARJORIE CHAN
20 | September 2018 thewholenote.com