Vancouver Black Theatre Archive

VANCOUVER BLACK THEATRE ARCHIVE

The Project

The history of Black community and culture in this place colonially known as Vancouver tends to be a seldom-told story; and while more people are now aware of the existence of Hogan’s Alley and the rich arts & cultural scene it encompassed, the specific history of Black theatre in Vancouver has continued to be overlooked.

In the very early stages of development at the time of the residency, this archive project intends to shed light on the artists, artifacts, and performances of the Black community in Vancouver throughout its history. Ideas to be explored include tools to support both in-person and virtual exhibitions, with methods of online engagement and community outreach.

Artists

A black and white photo of a young woman dancing, her arms outstretched and her head thrown back, an expression of joy on her face.

In 1971, Celeste Insell immigrated to Canada from the United States and attended the Ryerson Acting program (1972 -1973); and later transferred to the Drama Studies program at York University (1974 -1976). In 1979, she moved to Vancouver, BC. She was cast in the Arts Club Production of “You Can’t Take it With You” as Rheba (the maid) in 1980. Later that year, she portrayed “Lady in Blue” in the very successful Black Arts Theatre production of “For Colored Girls…” which ran for six months in Vancouver and then toured Western Canada. In that production, she fulfilled her dream to perform the very demanding twenty-minute monologue “A Nite with Beau Willie”. In 1982, she was cast in her first TV principal role as Nurse Graham in “A Piano for Mrs. Cimino” where she got to work with Bette Davis. Shortly afterwards, she founded a multi-cultural theatre company with four friends and called it “Crossroads Theatre”. In the 1990’s she performed and produced various events in the Black community and for other arts groups. In 2001, after a long hiatus from film and TV acting, she began auditioning again for roles in that medium. Ms Insell’s writing credits include articles published in “Kinesis” (1992-1993), “The International Review of African American Art” (1993), “The Canadian Theatre Review” (1995) and a poem “The Reunion” published in the magazine “Diaspora Magazine”(1994). She is currently writing two plays for another company she founded called Twenty8Dreams Performing Arts.

Lili Robinson, a genderfluid femme person in their mid-twenties, looks directly into the camera. They have light brown skin and short curly brown hair that is shaved on the sides, and they are wearing a red dress. In the background a gravel rooftop and apartment building across the road behind are blurred but visible.

Lili Robinson (she/they) is a playwright, poet, actor and community organizer based on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations. Lili is passionate about centring voices at the intersections of queerness, Black diaspora, socio-economic diversity and femme identity in their work. Lili has worked as both a writer and actor with longstanding local companies including Theatre Replacement and Rumble Theatre, and pre-pandemic took part in Rumble’s 2020 Director’s Lab. In 2020 they were also a part of the Emerging Playwright’s Unit at the Arts Club. Lili’s debut play, Mx, was the winner of the 2019 Fringe New Play Prize and the 2019 Cultchivating the Fringe Award. Following Mx’s Fringe success, the show was revamped for a digital presentation as part of the Cultch’s 2021 digital season this past February. Currently Lili is working on two new plays, Infest and Maroon, and was recently announced as the incoming Resident Curator at rEvolver Festival. As a facilitator and community organizer Lili is focused on EDI work and projects that uplift the local Black community. She is beyond excited to work with PTC once again, this time as part of the DDI alongside collaborator Celeste Insell.

The Residency

Before the DDI

Le Vancouver Black Theatre Archive approached the residency with the purpose of creating an archive about the work of Black Vancouver theatre artists and eventually more broadly, about the history of Black theatre in Canada. Throughout Vancouver’s history, the Black theatre community has existed in parallel to and been largely ignored by the mainstream theatrical scene. It is the hope of the team that the archive could also serve as an educational tool in highschools and universities to teach students about a rich but often buried theatrical history.

Based on the experience of the members of their team, the group wished to create an archive of Black theatre projects, starting with work from the 1980’s and 1990’s. While there were some thoughts around eventual physical exhibitions of material, the current goal was to create both a website and a podcast that highlighted some of these lesser known moments of history and art. It was the hope of the team to be able to connect archive materials with the current Vancouver Black theatre community as well as to create a place that shows that Black artists exist in Vancouver, that they have been making art for a long time and deserve funding and attention; a tangible proof that they exist and cannot be erased.

Even though the archive will focus on only Vancouver initially, the scope of the project was quite large and will require a large amount of information gathering as well as interviews with Black artists about their experiences. It is their hope that eventually they’d be able to have a submission section on the archive, where other Black artists would be able to add their own shows and historical documents – in essence a way of crowdsourcing some of the material gathering.

The digital nature of the archive opens up many doors in terms of accessibility and the team was interested in the parallels between creating a piece of digital theatre and creating an archive; such as means of distribution, overarching dramaturgy and the tradeoff of an in-person audience versus the reach of the project. It is the hope of the team that the website will feel like a journey that a viewer could start at any time and that would inspire a sense of discovery.

Some of the roadblocks that were flagged going into the project were the technical aspects of creating a website as well as the cost associated with its creation.

During the residency

The participants made countless discoveries from archives, and began to see how theatre and communities were deeply linked. There was an obvious lack of video material from earlier time periods: leading the group to further examine how to prioritize certain historical moments and figures within the act of archiving. How could they decide what needed to be saved and what should be promoted? Given the history of displacement of both Black folk and of the Black artistic scene in Vancouver, where is home for Black artists?

Further research questions included: what is the purpose of an archive? The group felt certain that they didn’t want it to be like a museum; but they also wanted to fairly represent the developments and the labour of several generations who had worked to produce Black theatre in Canada. The group in the development of the work was to discover how to create an archive that draws in interest, fairly represents the work-and also offers an accurate history of the innovation involved in the history of Black theatre in Vancouver.

While the archive will focus mainly on theatre for the initial round of creation, the idea of categorizing performance into specific forms is very Eurocentric and it was the hope of the group that they would eventually be able to expand and speak to how Black theatre is often what would be deemed interdisciplinary in nature.

Through their material gathering some ethical questions came to the forefront such as who needed to give permission to use this material, if not everyone is available? The group mentioned that it was a relatively small community, permission can be given verbally from some people but not from everyone. And with a developing project with an emerging form, how could individuals or groups be certain about what they were giving their permission for? The team found that this would need to be examined even further with the addition of a submission form.

As they probed into the web design portion of their project, it became clear that they wanted to have an interactive timeline which would serve as the backbone of the archive. Visitors would be able to jump into any point of this timeline and would be surrounded by different photos, videos, interviews and pieces of documentation, they would be able to continue forwards through the archive or move backwards at their discretion.

Considering the interactive elements of the website and the goals around the overall archive, it became clear that a prototype would need to be created to flesh out certain concepts and once the shape of the archive was roughed in the group would look at contacting a web developer to create the final product. Since the scope of the project is so large there will be further investigations to see what should be created by the team versus what should be outsourced. As cost and labour were both roadblocks that were identified very early on, there was work done to brainstorm around what partners such as educational institutions or theatre companies might be able to give support as well as what that support might look like.

On a more technical side, the group investigated some of the steps needed to both build a website and create a podcast and began to break each of those tasks down into more manageable steps. They found through their research into multi-hosted podcasted that the relationship between the hosts was of great importance to creating a clear and open space where heady topics can be discussed without alienating or confusing the audience as well as creating room for banter. They discovered that they likely don’t want to stick to a single style of podcasting and would like to further explore different narrative and interview styles.