Onishka Productions is a Montreal-based interdisciplinary arts organisation that creates bridges between indigenous peoples worldwide while honoring their diversity, richness and resilience.
Founded by Emilie Monnet, Onishka Productions creates and presents performance-based productions and collaborations. ONISHKA means ‘wake up!’ in Anishnabemowin. In this spirit, we believe that indigenous cosmologies provide pathways towards sustainable communities. Through artistic expression, we can challenge and transform the world we live in.
Anchored in Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyang/Montreal, the interdisciplinary artistic company Onishka – whose name means “wake up” in Anishnabemowin – weaves interconnections between Aboriginal peoples in Quebec, throughout Canada and around the world. The creators of each of the company’s projects work together to develop a way of relating to the world that draws on the full range of philosophies, practices and knowledge from the artist’s diverse heritage.
Onishka’s creative processes are often collaborative. Frequently calling upon knowledge keepers, Onishka’s intergenerational processes are characterized by presence, listening and care for what surrounds us. Artistic practices are not compartmentalized but intermingle with each other.
In Onishka’s creative processes, the relationships that emerge in the world tend to be horizontal. The ways of doing and knowing are non-linear and are based on an ongoing interaction between the artists involved, their communities and their territories and involve a corporeal and multi-sensory practice.
Onishka’s creations amplify the voices of Aboriginal people by generating a sense of intimacy and interdependence. The audience is not a spectator but a witness; they are offered a shared experience based on mutual reciprocity. Onishka’s creations invoke the experiential presence of the territory, often making use of sound documentation and integrating excerpts from audio recordings of interviews. In the resulting performances, the nuances and relationships that develop between parties are audible, for example, in the sound of sipping tea.
Several of Onishka’s projects have emerged from dreams which bridge the world of the invisible and the visible. The dream world is a very fertile creative ground for Émilie Monnet and keeping a dream journal is an integral part of her artistic practice. In Algonquin languages, such as Anishnabemowin, there is a mode of conjugation of verbs corresponding to dreams. This is as important as the present, the past and the future, in other words “waking life.”
At the intersection of theatre, performance and sound, Émilie Monnet’s work is most often presented in the form of interdisciplinary theatre or performative installations. Her artistic approach favors collaborative and multilingual creative processes, and explores themes of memory, history and transformation.
A committed interdisciplinary artist, she founded Onishka Productions in 2011 in order to forge links between artists from different Aboriginal communities, regardless of their discipline. Since 2016, she has presented Indigenous Contemporary Scene / Scène contemporaine autochtone, a nomadic platform for the dissemination of Aboriginal performing arts. Five editions have been created to date. She is currently completing a three-year residency at the Centre du Théâtre d’Aujourd’hui where she will present her next creation Marguerite, after Okinum (2018) and Kiciweok: Lexique de treize mots autochtones qui donnent un sens (2019). As the Associate artist at the Théâtre de la Ville in Longueuil, she will also be the next artist in residence at the Espace Go theatre. Émilie is of Anishnaabe-Algonquin and French descent and currently lives between the Outaouais and Tiohtià:ke / Mooniyaang / Montreal.
