By: Niveja Assalaarachchi, News Writer
Content warning: Mention of residential schools
The Kaha:wi Dance Theatre (KDT) will, for the first time, bring their show The Mush Hole to Vancouver. The Toronto-based studio will be performing at Vancouver Cultch’s Historic Theatre from November 14 to 16.
The show is centred on the experiences of those who survived Canada’s first residential school, the Mohawk Institute, also known as “Mush Hole,” which operated from 1828 to 1970. The performance incorporates multiple lived experiences of what happened at the site, spanning across generations.
The Peak interviewed Santee Smith, the artistic director of the Kaha:wi Dance Theatre and the Chancellor of McMaster University, to learn more about the group itself and the background behind The Mush Hole.
The show will be a vignette that incorporates body storytelling into the theatrical performance. Smith said the set would include settings like the boiler room, cafeteria, and solitary confinement rooms, where much of the brutality of the institution was on full display.
Smith explained the name came from the fact that students at the Mohawk Institute worked on a school farm, where they were not allowed to eat any of the produce, and were restricted to only eating the mushy gruel served to them.
This level of detail was something Smith focused on when developing the script for the theatre production. “My family attended so it’s a personal story,” she said, “I did a lot of cultural research at the Woodland Cultural Center, which is a museum organization that oversees the Mohawk Institute, and they had a lot of work with survivors.” She went on to say that the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission helped reveal facts on what happened at the Mohawk Institute, and thus played a key cultural part in this production. The militarized nature of the education institution and symbols in the school was also on full display in the show, “So, throughout the piece, there’s very specific imagery [and] gestures—it was, at one point, a very militarized program.”
Founded in 2005 by Smith, the Kaha:wi Theatre Company has focused on giving a platform for Indigenous voices and ideas. Smith told me the company emerged from her prior work as an independent dance artist and has now produced over 14 major works for various media sources.
This is the first time the show has come to Vancouver, with most other theatrical performances mostly taking place in the east of the country.
“This is important for us, because we wanted to reach audiences across the country, and knowing that the similar history of Indian residential schools and the long-term impacts are still relevant,”
— Santee Smith, artistic director of the Kaha:wi Dance Theatre
Smith also saw her show as an important learning platform for all Canadians on the horrors of the residential school system, “I think it’s really important, it would be a great way to access, to understand that history . . . often people are coming to Canada because it’s safe and it has all these opportunities, which it does. But people don’t understand the extent of [its] colonial history and the impacts that are still happening.”
See The Mush Hole at the Cultch Historic Theatre from November 14 to 16.
