on love

on love is a poem
a song
an incantation

The play was set in St-Armand, Québec near Nigger Rock – an enormous dark-coloured boulder that presently sits on private property, though the history of the region indicates that the black slaves and free black tradesmen who lived here in the 17^th and 18^th centuries used Nigger Rock as the headstone for all of their dead. Many have worked hard to have Nigger Rock recognized as an official cemetery, but that effort has been met with much resistance. I suspect for many it is difficult to acknowledge that slavery existed in this land we now call Canada, that centuries ago black people lived and died in what we now call Québec and that, given the name of the rock, black people were likely called niggers at that time.

on love was a story about black people in Canada, performed by a cast that is mostly non-black. In theatre, this is often called colour-blind casting, but I find the term problematic. I suspect that most of you reading this will see the colour of each actor’s skin, just as most of us see the colour of each other’s skin in our everyday lives. But what to do with that information? To what extent does it impact our interactions with one another? These are the kinds of questions I’m interested in as an artist, scholar and educator whose primary areas of research are race, gender and performance. on love was an example of how art, scholarship and teaching can meet to tell an under-told story about black people in Canada, and about Celeste, a woman who loves a man and a woman and finds herself frustrated by social pressures that insist she choose one person to love.

on love was a story about hope, despair and love in a place where past and present collide. - Naila Keleta-Mae (director)