ON STAGE: Little Red Warrior & His Lawyer
Where: The Belfry Theatre, 1291 Gladstone Ave.
When: Feb. 10 through Feb. 27 (livestream Feb. 15-20)
Tickets: Available from or 250-385-6815 (Pay What You Want model)
There have been easier paths to opening night for Kevin Loring, whose Little Red Warrior & His Lawyer premières tonight at the Belfry. But few journeys will have been more satisfying, given the current climate.
Little Red Warrior & His Lawyer comes to fruition tonight following an unexpected delay. Last week, the opening of his “trickster land claim fable” was pushed back after lead actor Sam Bob, who plays Little Red Warrior, aggravated an old injury. The show was scheduled to run Feb. 3 through Feb. 27 at the Fernwood theatre. It has not been extended, which means a shortened run for all involved.
Loring also lost a week back home in Ottawa, where he’s the artistic director of Indigenous theatre at the National Arts Centre of sa国际传媒. He has worked remotely during his time in Victoria, and spends most mornings taking meetings over Zoom. The Governor General’s Award winner will return home Friday, after attending opening night. “I’ll be glad to be home,” he said. “This has been an extended stay, but it has worked out.”
The injury, from which Bob has fully recovered, wasn’t the biggest hurdle, of course. Any live event staged during the past two years has done battle with the pandemic and its myriad effects. Little Red Warrior & His Lawyer was no different in that regard; it will be presented both in-person and online, with capacity limits set at 50 per cent and socially distanced seating and COVID protocols in place.
While it has been a headache creating art in these times, Loring is looking forward to Little Red Warrior & His Lawyer’s run over the next two weeks. He hopes his biting satire will fill a void for audience members whose pliability has been put to the test.
“What people are really craving is community, and being at an event where there are other people watching something live. Isolation is really damaging to us. We’re social creatures, and the pandemic has attacked this at the very foundation of who we are. Live theatre is an active community. You’re coming together and sharing a moment. As human beings, we really crave that.”
Bob is joined in the cast by Luisa Jojic, who plays the wife of a lawyer (Shekhar Paleja) representing Little Red Warrior (who will be played by actor Gordon Patrick White during matinee performances, to mitigate Bob’s recent injury) in an upcoming court case. In the play, Little Red Warrior is charged with assaulting an engineer whose land development firm has invaded the traditional territory of Little Red Warrior First Nation.
These and other topics are not uncharted territory for Loring, from both an acting and writing perspective. Loring, who is a member of the Nlaka’pamux Nation from Lytton, sa国际传媒, has touched on similar issues several times throughout his career, including a previous production at the Belfry.
Where the Blood Mixes, which won Loring the 2009 Governor General’s Award for drama as a playwright, was produced by the company in 2010. The play premièred when he was the National Arts Centre’s playwright-in-residence, and Loring said he remembers fondly the experience of working with the Belfry to bring his words to the stage. “I have felt so supported there as an artist,” he said.
“I can’t say enough positive things about them.”
Now that he has ascended to a key position with the NAC, Loring is paying forward that collaborative experience, both on a provincial level (with his Vancouver company, Savage Society, which is co-producing the upcoming run at the Belfry) and a national one. Upcoming at the NAC Indigenous Theatre, with Loring’s guidance, is a bilingual celebration of Inuit artists, art, and film, and a new production from Toronto’s Kaha:wi Dance Theatre.
The arts, in every form, is worth preserving, Loring said — which is why the truck convoy protests underway in Ottawa have caused him such stress in recent days. “Luckily, I don’t live downtown,” he said. “But that’s a pretty awful situation.”
The arts community could do without another stoppage, but the protests — which are taking place at Parliament Hill — have resulted in further disruptions at the National Arts Centre, which is located nearby. “Ottawa was looking to re-open, and relax some of the COVID-19 restrictions.
“But now, because of this occupation, the centre has had to remain closed.”
Loring said The Last Epistle of Tightrope Time, an NAC remount of Walter Borden’s groundbreaking solo show from 1986 — which explored homosexuality from a Black perspective — was postponed, robbing the 79-year-old, in the worst case scenario, of what could be one of his final performances.
“A lot of my friends and colleagues who live in the downtown core are terrorized and miserable. They can’t sleep.” Not exactly what the weather-beaten arts community needs at the moment, he added. “We live in very interesting times,” Loring said with a laugh. “Everything is a challenge nowadays, especially theatre.”
