Morning Workshops
From Page to Stage with Tara Morris
Sept. 13, 9:30 - 10:45 | @ MacIntyre Studio
This workshop invites participants into a creative and culturally grounded process of adapting traditional Coast Salish legends or creative and narrative-based stories with deep cultural relevance into theatrical scripts. Working closely with elders from local First Nations communities, and language learners who engage in transcribing stories from English into the Indigenous language, honoring the voices and knowledge of those who carry the language forward.
The workshop incorporates songs, performance techniques, and theatre skills, supporting language learners, especially those involved in language reawakening with tools to bring stories to life on stage while deepening language learning and cultural fluency.
Dancing the Ktunaxa Language with Samantha Sutherland
Sept. 13, 9:30 - 10:45 | @ Chief Dan George
Exercise your mind and body while learning a new language through dance. Guided by Samantha, you will learn words and phrases of the Ktunaxa language by moving our bodies and using our voice. Ktunaxa is an isolate language with its origins in Ktunaxa ʔamak’is (the Ktunaxa peoples homelands) or what is now referred to as the Kootenay region of British Columbia.
Amanda Wager
Laura Cranmer
Writing Yourself into the World with Laura Cranmer and Amanda Wager
Sept. 13, 9:30 - 10:45 | @ Roger Bishop Theatre
In this interactive workshop, Laura Cranmer and Amanda Wager invite participants to explore what it means to “write yourself into the world” through embodied, arts-based, and language-centered practices. Laura will share insights from her lived experiences as a Kwak’wala latent speaker navigating the challenges and joys of language reawakening, while Amanda will speak from her experience teaching in bilingual schools through the arts, where drama, storytelling, and readers’ theatre opened spaces for students to build fluency, confidence, and inclusivity.
Participants will engage in movement-based warm-ups, freewriting exercises inspired by Natalie Goldberg, and paired storytelling techniques adapted from Johnny Saldaña’s autoethnographic monologues. With the support of a Language Expert Emily Aitken, we will reflect together on the ups and downs of community-led language and literacy work—from the obstacles of language shyness and fractured speech communities to the breakthroughs of collective creativity and resilience.
The session offers participants the opportunity not only to witness these stories but also to actively create and share their own—writing themselves into the world through body, word, and voice.
Workshop Minoosh Doo Kapeeshiw with Charlene Van Buekenhout
Sept. 13, 11:00 - 12:00 | @ Chief Dan George
Minoosh Doo-Kapeeshiw” was created by Charlene and first premiered at the Winnipeg Fringe Festival digitally in 2022 and live in 2023 since then it has played outside on the grass, in community halls, and in its renovated interactive language workshop form, on the banks of Assiniboine River, and in the snow! Other Michif language theatre projects include “Doo-Pashkishok Lii Padrii” which has been performed and transformed both as a family theatre piece and a racy burlesque all in the name of language revitalization, as well as various Michif Clown explorations and performances throughout Treaty 1.
Charlene played Josephine-Marie (lead role/ narrator) in Manitoba Opera’s Li Keur: Riel’s Heart of The North and was honoured to work with French Michif language keepers through that process. Charlene was the Script Carrier for Tara Beagan’s Rise, Red River in 2024 produced by TCM, PTE, and Article 11 and carried forth language preservation through translations and edits of this new work in Anishinaabemowin, French, and English surtitles.
Three morning workshops will run simultaneously on Saturday, Sept. 13 @ three different venues within the Phoenix building: Chief Dan George Theatre, Roger Bishop Theatre, and Barbara McIntyre Studio.
