Welcome to My Renaissance is an artist-in-residency featuring Calgary playwright Eugene Stickland and friends.
Join Eugene and Stardale director Helen McPhaden for a curated screening of the award-winning video The Road. The Stardale program caters to adolescent indigenous girls in the Calgary area. Eugene has worked with the girls of the program for 11 years, helping them bring their ideas and poetry to the stage. Not to be deterred by the pandemic, we transformed a stage play into a video, shot and edited and presented it to the general public as well as special interest groups starting in 2020. The Road was written in response to the findings of the Commission on Missing and Murdered Aboriginal Women, written and performed by the girls of Stardale 2020.
This session will be of interest to anyone curious about indigenous culture in Calgary, and learning about the girls’ experience of living here. Helen and Eugene have worked with the girls for over a decade producing different shows and will share their insights on working in a culturally appropriate manner with First Nations girls.
About Eugene Stickland
Born and educated in Regina, after completing an MFA in Theatre at Toronto’s York University, Eugene arrived in Calgary in 1994 and began a ten year residency at Alberta Theatre Projects. During this time he wrote and saw produced ten plays — 6 for ATP, 3 for Lunchbox Theatre and 1 for Theatre Network in Edmonton. In total, he has written 19 plays that have been produced in Calgary, Edmonton or Toronto and then throughout the world, from London to Istanbul. Following the residency at ATP, Eugene wrote a feature weekly column for the Calgary Herald for 6 years, a total of approximately 250,000 published words. In 2015 Eugene published his only novel (to date), The Piano Teacher, recipient of the W.O. Mitchell Award. Plans are being made to make a movie of the Piano Teacher, with Eugene writing the screenplay. Eugene currently has several projects underway which he is excited to share over the course of his cSPACE Eau Claire residency. He lives in the Beltline area of Calgary with his wife Belina.
