Posted on 02/11/2020 3:43:41 PM PST by rickmichaels
Playwright Yolanda Bonnell is a two-spirit, Ojibwe/South Asian performer who has written a new play entitled Bug, which is now playing at the Theatre Passe Muraille in Toronto. The aim of her play is to take a stand against colonialism. Bonnell has requested that the media only allow Indigenous, black or other people of colour to review her play.
“I do a lot of work in terms of decolonizing theatre… and for me this was one of those steps — taking away the colonial lens,” said Bonnell in an interview with Tom Power for CBC’s Q radio.
“There is an aspect to cultural work—or in our case, artistic ceremony— which does not align with current colonial reviewing practices,” Bonnell said in her official statement. “In order to encourage a deeper discussion of the work, we are inviting critiques or thoughts from IBPOC folks only. There is a specific lens that white settlers view cultural work through and at this time, we’re just not interested in bolstering that view, but rather the thoughts and views of fellow marginalized voices, and in particular Indigenous women.”
“You could hear perhaps a white critic, more likely someone on the internet, but a white critic say something like, ‘You know, I may be white but I don’t see things through that lens, what would you say?’” the CBC host asked Bonnell during the interview.
Bonnell laughed at the question and responded, “You can’t help but see things through that lens. We all have lenses that we see the world through and it directly correlates to our life experience. Unless you’re an Indigenous woman you don’t know what it’s like to be an Indigenous woman. Unless your a two-spirit individual or a trans, or non-binary you don’t know what that experience is like. So if somebody is writing a story about that, the lens that you’re viewing it through, its directly going to affect how you view that story, or how you write about it. There are going to be aspects that you don’t understand.”
However, Bonnell doesn’t feel the same is true from the other way around.
“We, as people of colour, understand whiteness to its core because we’ve grown up with it, especially people who’ve grown up here in Canada. My friend, a wonderful Indigenous playwright from the west coast Kim Senklip Harvey says she has her ‘ Ph.D. in whiteness’ and I feel very much similar.”
Bonnell’s play Bug will be performed at the Theatre Passe Muraille in Toronto from now through Feb. 22.
Another ghettopotamus.
“take a stand against colonialism”
Sweetheart, you’re about 75 years behind the times.
Your play sucks.
She can’t stand up.
She’s a Jabba the Jerk.
If whites in Canada didn’t go see the play, she’d have no audience.
Looks like she ate her way out of colonialism.
“Yolanda Bonnell is a two-spirit..”
She certainly looks like she eats enough for two.
Your about two centuries too late on that play.
She didn’t get all those calories digging for grubs in the ground and eating tree beetles.
All those calories came from the evil white man farms running evil white man farm machinery powered by evil white man fossil fuels and brought to her evil white man supermarket where the white man invented refrigeration keeps the food cold until she pays for it at the white man built POS system that’s connected to the evil white man banking system.
Good luck “decolonizing” and going back to eating grubs and beetles.
Actually, she would be better off with grubs and beetles for a few years. Otherwise it looks like she’ll be dead of heart failure and diabetes by 40.
Gee, modern theatre is a product of the West going back to the ancient greeks. Perhaps this indigenous person of color playwright should quit wrong plays because she is practicing cultural appropriation.
Segregation is back.
Proof that assimilation and doversity do not work and are not beneficial.
We need to send them all back home if they believe this crap.
And the hordes of blacks asians and browns will flock to her thing and she’ll retire to the bank ... hahahahaha
I didn’t know they stacked manure that high!
I’ll do even better than that, Yolanda.
I won’t even SEE your play.
A real class “A” asshole.
My fav:
Awakened2020 @TheAwakened2020
This is indistinguishable from a Babylon Bee article.
To be fair, I have no doubt that she's been treated miserably by ignorants, thought it's worth noting that would mean the ignorants are likely CANADIAN and not Yanks.
Nonetheless, contrast the restrictive approach this woman is taking vs Milo (yea...I know...he's got issues...he does...but work with me...) who actively embraced those who opposed him. He wound up taking the world by storm (before his self-immolation).
If people are having a go at you, it often means you're doing something right.
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