INNER ELDER: AGES WELL

The pay-off is great.

A solo show — and memoir — written and performed by Michelle Thrush, who’s Cree, Inner Elder is about the artist’s journey towards self-realization as an Indigenous woman. Raised mostly by her dad, Thrush felt an absence where she wanted her female mentors to be, so she set out to find them.

And to imagine them. Among other things, Inner Elder is a celebration of the healing power of art. As Thrush says in her performance, “It takes a great imagination to survive growing up with alcoholics”, “It takes a great imagination to survive growing up around white people.” But don’t for a minute get the wrong impression; Inner Elder isn’t about complaint or victimization. It’s clear-eyed about residential schools, for instance, and the impact they had on her family and community, but Inner Elder is about survival within that, resilience.

Structurally, Inner Elder is trimly built. Thrush, the character, collects shards of identity as she works on fashioning them into a coherent whole. As a little girl, she encounters a passed-out Indigenous woman sprawled under a tree in broad daylight. Thrush can smell the alcohol. At the time, she tells us, she didn’t know what to do with the woman’s suffering but, she says, “I take a part of her and put it deep inside me.”

When Thrush’s kohkum (granny) says, “My girl, always be proud of being Cree”, she takes that, too, and stores it.

The set, a sculpture of rocks and rope designed by Sandi Somers, and lit by Somers to evoke immersion in the forest, is exceptionally handsome. When Thrush is telling us about her teen years, during which she found solace in conversation with the trees in a favourite clearing, she holds the ropes then releases them, setting off a quivering that mimics leaves trembling in the wind.

To this point, Inner Elder is rewardingly well-tailored, albeit a little explanatory and didactic.

Then Inner Elder takes off.

Telling a story about her kohkum’s bannock, Thrush is working flour in a bowl when she starts to run the flour through her hair, triggering her transition into her granny. Her physical transformation is extraordinary. Suddenly, we’re in a deeply theatrical and intuitive world. And, as it turns out, Thrush’s kohkum is a pure, hilarious clown. (Karen Hines, a clown herself, directed Inner Elder.) That’s all I’m going to tell you except that this passage is so so good. Thrush had the audience rolling. And she moved us.

As Thrush says in the show, “It takes a great imagination to be able to change the ending.”

INNER ELDER by Michelle Thrush. Directed by Karen Hines. Presented by the Firehall Arts Centre. At the Firehall Arts Centre until May 31. (Tickets and information)

PHOTO CREDIT: Photo of Michelle Thrush by Ben Laird