"No, the Centre Should Be Invisible": Radical Revisioning of Chekhov in Floyd Favel Starr's House of Sonya

Abstract

What I find intriguing when examining Aboriginal theatre is the complex relationship between the traditional and the contemporary in this modelling of Aboriginal identity on stage. At one end of the spectrum, "traditional" Aboriginal performance, involving ritual, orality, local histories, and cultural/spiritual information, has been understood by scholars and critics as either replicating or renewing traditions of performance specific to indigenous regions and cultures.' At the other end, "contemporary" Aboriginal performance, utilizing Western theatrical techniques and exploring more overtly political themes, has been viewed in relation to global examples of performance-as-resistance by other "threatened groups". Both local/traditional and international/ contemporary definitions of performance can serve to illuminate how Aboriginal theatre resists the dominant by pointing to local or international contexts for interpretative frames. Yet, these two frames — the local/traditional and the international/contemporary — are difficult to disentangle, and bifurcate clearly hybrid modes of Aboriginal performance. For myself, as a non-Aboriginal spectator, it remains a difficult task to frame such hybrid theatre so that both the local and international contexts are taken into account. This difficulty is made plain when one examines the 1997 play House of Sonya, an adaptation of Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya by Saskatchewan Cree playwright Floyd Favel Starr.