Tuesday off

Yesterday we were given a bonus day off. The show had been held for a "bought house". No one bought it. No show.

I decided to go to the Museum of Anthropology. This museum was created to house the Totem Poles "rescued" from the beaches of Ninstints. The entire plot of our play.

Quick overview: The real life Anthropologist Wilson Duff (Lewis Wilson played by John Mann in our show) and his friend Bill Reid (Max Thomson played by Cam MacDuffee) go to Ninstints to remove select totem poles so that they can be preserved in a museum to be studied etc. The argument was and still is to this day, that they shouldn't have taken them. That the cycle is not supposed to be broken, a tree grows, it is chopped down, carved, it decays and nourishes new trees that will be chopped down and carved. The argument on the other side is that the families were killed by small pox and the village abandoned for 60 at the time of the expedition. The cycle was broken.

The experience was so much for these two guys - and all of the people on this expedition - that it affected them for the rest of their lives. The Anthropologist ended up committing suicide and Bill Reid found inspiration to learn to carve, to re-discover his own past. He is one of the most famous First Nations artists (turn over a $20 bill and you can see his work!)

In the "backyard" of the museum they recreated a piece of Ninstints - Bill Reid carving 2/3 scale replicas of the totems they rescued - and turning it into a long house and a small house as it was/might have been in the village.It was beautiful. The real village was built with all buildings facing the ocean. So was this one. It was quite the sight.Inside the museum you can see the poles that they chopped down. It was pretty powerful. To see the actual poles that I watch fall every night onstage. Usually I just do theatre, but to see that this is actually someones history, heritage, turmoil. It was pretty cool.

There is always a lot of research that goes into doing a play. Even if it is a work of fiction you still have to learn about the time and place that you are working in. This one was intense as Bruce Riddell, our playwright, has been working on this for 20 years. He worked with Duff, with Bill Reid and many other elders and chiefs in the creation of this story. The bits and pieces that we have learned about this expedition is incredible. We have even seen pieces of footage from the actual expedition. Of them chopping down the poles, cutting them into pieces, putting them in crates and floating them down the water in a train-all tied together behind a boat. To see those actual pieces...
Also in this picture: The painted board on the wall was the original entry way into the building that stored the poles when they first returned. The canoe was carved by Bill Reid in the traditional way - we talk about canoes a lot in the play. And the two boxes in front are bentwood boxes. They are a thin sheet of cedar that is steamed and then bent into a box. That is how our story starts - with a bentwood box and a mask.
The four pieces seen here are all one pole. The left is the base, the right is the top - the watchman, just like Tom Jackson is in our play.

There was tons of other things to see. Most of them I had no patients to take a long time to read about. There was so much other stuff to look at. Like other work by Bill Reid. He started out as a metal smith. He worked mostly in Gold and Silver. Here are some things I thought were cool.
The museum was originally a building to protect Vancouver during the war. One of the key architectural features is the gun turrets. They weren't sure what to do with it when they were
"remodeling". So they commissioned Bill Reid to create a piece out of a huge, solid piece of yellow cedar. He created a carving of the creation story. I think it is interesting that in the gun turret there is a carving of creation. (The Raven is a huge player in the story telling of the Haida. The Raven was walking along the beach after the great flood and he noticed something shiny. It was a clam shell. Within the clam shell there were little creatures, some curious, some unsure, some not interested in what was going on outside of the shell. The Raven convinced them to explore the new world. And thus the first people stepped onto the beach.)

I am glad I went. I enjoyed the sunset on the water before the houses of Ninstints before I left.

After my trip I met up with Matt for dinner. He took me out for sushi. He is so grown up and cultured.

After Sushi I got to see his apartment. He had part of my Christmas Present waiting there for me. It was the new Monopoly City game (that I was sad no one got me for Christmas). We opened up some beer and played for three and a half hours. It was great fun. Matt whooped my ass. Final net worth: Matt $75 Million, Stacey $35 Million.