bird messengers – Onishka

Bridging Tradition With Technology

Bird Messengers is a captivating interdisciplinary performance by Émilie Monnet and Moe Clark, where theatre, visual projections and music transport audiences from the symbolic realm of ancestry to a contemporary, living mythology. Created during a residency at the MAI, this extraordinary performance is inspired by Aboriginal storytelling and ancestral teachings. At once a journey of discovery and transformation, Bird Messengers draws from personal encounters with the Blackfoot people of Alberta, Quebec’s Anishinabeg, and Brazil’s Tembe people as well as from interviews with Aboriginal artists and elders. Myths, dreams and prophecies intersect as a magical tale unfolds in this modern journey through time and space.

Bridging Tradition With Technology
Métis spoken word artist Moe Clark and Anishinabe actress Émilie Monnet, founders of Bird Messengers, a collective of two Aboriginal female artists, deliver a dynamic performance beyond convention. Under the keen eye of their mentor, actress and director Marie Brassard, Moe and Émilie have gathered a specialized team of collaborators. Multimedia visuals by Eric Grice (Moment Factory, Cirque du Soleil) dialogue with electro-acoustic sound manipulations from Brazilian musician Chico Correa to create a hybrid environment as the platform for storytelling. Collaged images from Ojibwe painter Glenna Matoush give authentic voice to space.

A Universal Poetic Ode
Moe Clark fuses her unique understanding of performance narrative with traditions of circle singing and spoken word to create poetic songs that resonate with the voices of the ancestors and connect with authentic purpose. Émilie Monnet aligns her theatrical experiences with a deep connection to Aboriginal cultures to imagine stories and embody narratives that speak of the importance of ancestral teachings and bridge beyond tradition.

Directed, written and performed by: Moe Clark & Emilie Monnet  Animation & visual projections: Eric Grice  Peinture : Glenna Matoush  Lighting designer: Alexandre Péloquin   Music: Chico Correa  Sound design: Moe Clark  External eye: Marie Brassard  Costumes: Kim Picard  Technical director: Amélie Bourbonnais

LOJIQ AWARD  2011
Shortly after the world premier Bird Messengers was awarded the Art/Culture Project of the Year by LOJIQ (May 2011).
Additional performances included the Talking Stick Festival (Vancouver, 2012, English show) and Vue Sur La Rélève (April, 2012, French show).

« Bird Messengers is certainly an experience to be savoured. It holds out many possible avenues for future Aboriginal theatrical and spoken word shows to explore. Indeed, it has contributed much to the performance arts in general. »

« Conceived as a vehicle to fuse their own experience as urban Aboriginal artists with the mythologies, prophecies, legends and traditional stories of their heritage, Bird Messengers evolved over a two year period of intense collaborative effort. »

« Bird Messengers as a name come from a mutual interest and love for birds. And the notion of migration. The fact that my ancestry, Métis, comes from Western Canada and Emilie’s from Eastern Canada. We wanted a way to bridge the voices from the west and the east. »

Bridging Tradition With Technology

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