WHITEFACE

INDIGENOUS ACTORS PLAYING WHITE ACTORS PLAYING INDIGENOUS ACTORS

"AN INTENTIONAL MISREPRESENTATION OF THE COLONIAL "WHITE" POPULATION IN NORTH AMERICA."

SYNOPSIS

Using explosive movement and satirical humour, two indigenous performers tread the timeline of appropriation of Indigenous bodies, from cowboys to Coachella, exploring concepts of identity and colonization. Through movement, mask, and the subversion of the performance of Red Face, a history of social masks comes alive in this timely and impactful performance devised by Todd Houseman and Lady Vanessa Cardona.

Everett Sokol is an indigenous film director from Edmonton, Alberta. After training as an actor, Everett made the transition to production to become a producer, writer and director. Everett is a graduate of the MacEwan University Theatre Arts program and the Red Deer College Motion Picture Arts degree program. Previous credits include, "Wilds of Canada", “The Dancer”(Rosie Award Nominee), “Falter”(Rosie Award Nominee), and “Whiteface”. Everett is also the recipient of the national William F. White Inc. Vilmos Zsigmond Scholarship, which he was awarded at the Bell Lightbox Theatre at TIFF. Recognizing the under representation of indigneous people in the film community, Everett aims to better balance the demographic of indigenous creatives in the industry.

Todd Houseman is an improviser, Nehiyo actor, Indigenous activist, author, and educator, currently based in Montreal. He is currently pursuing actor's training at the National Theatre School of Canada. In his hometown of Edmonton, Alberta Todd was a senior improviser with Rapid Fire Theatre 2009-2017. He is the co-author and co-star of the acclaimed play "Whiteface" (Mile Zero Dance & Nuit Blanche), which Edmonton Journal called "by turns funny, heartfelt, hallucinatory, and simmering with rage". Todd was co-producer on "Whiteface" the short film and a co producer/writer of "Folk Lordz" the web series. Todd’s TV credits include APTN’s "Delmer and Marta" and “Caution May Contain Nuts”. Recent theatre credits: "Indra's Web" (NTS/Monument-National), "Or the Whale" (Studio Theatre), and "Metis Mutt" (Fringe Theatre Adventures). His comic "Ayannisach" won the 2015 School Library Journal Book of the Year award, as a part of Moonshot: The Indigenous Comic Collection.

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STATEMENT FROM THE WRITERS

STATEMENT FROM THE WRITERS

Adapting the play from stage to screen came with it's fare share of challenges and rewards. By changing the medium to film we were able to enhance certain parts of the text or showcase a specific movement. This lead to the development of a different story than the stage play but stemming from the same thought and idea that the show represents as a whole. 

Whiteface was created to tackle cultural appropriation, and more specifically the representation of indigenous bodies in film and how those images have shaped our reality today, as indigenous and non-indigenous consumers of stories. Since colonization there has always been a very strong misrepresentation of indigeneity from a non-indigenous perspective. This appropriation has ranged from making us into savage and horrid monsters to fairytale-esc naked people boarding on that of elves. When young indigenous and non-indigenous people see these narratives and portrayals of our people, they assume this to be true because at a time this was the ONLY representation of nativeness that young people were exposed to. With the wake of the reserve patrols and residential schools coming out of the 50s, indigenous people were not at the helm of their narrative in North America and so the truth of these stories was far from seen. 

One of the main instigators of the mis-representation was "westerns." The western often featured Italian's painted red or severely bronzed with feathered bands around their heads designed to keep their wigs on. These stories have been told this way up until today, (Taylor Lautner - Twilight, Johnny Depp - the lone ranger) and the effects of this often leads to a non-indigenous entitlement to our stories and by extension our ways of life. There is a legacy of theft of indigenous bodies and lands in north america. The continued theft of our stories through westerns and other stories do not serve our attempts as indigneous people to reclaim our narrative in our country. By not listening to our stories they we must tell them, which is from our perspective and by indigenous people, our narrative stays locked in the ownership of the crown so to speak, or at least still without our control or consent, something we have been asking for since the beginning of colonization. 

Whiteface is the other side of that coin. An intentional misrepresentation of the colonial "white" population in north america. This is one of very very few and often intentional misrepresentations of whiteness in our media and so any comparison to the experiences of those who suffer from redface is a gross misunderstanding. We wanted to offer or share the feeling of being misrepresented or appropriated to a larger audience and explain through this work, what happens when your story is highjacked and how that affects a people. We tried to draw lines between the fetishization, criminalization, and classism that have come from people misunderstanding our ways and feeling entitled to our bodies. 

By transferring this play to film we are able to reach a broader audience and continue to resist the misrepresentation of our people. This was also a way to infiltrate the very same industry that was behind the most iconic appropriation of our bodies, film. I hope to pursue film more with stories of this kind as I find them both important and entertaining and look forward to the continued evolution of what indigenous film is becoming. 

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-Todd Houseman

PRODUCTION STILLS