Sawllkwa / Water

Synopsis of Sawllkwa Community Spectacle

The audience arrived through the wooded drive to the Kingfisher Interpretive Centre, flanked with Water Flags. They were welcomed with three pre-show performances -  an accordionist storyteller, a giant seahorse duo, and a “freak show”. From there the audience was ushered by water people down the hill to the giant gazebo, where they peered through mist to a musical/movement piece embodying the story, from Splatsin oral history, of the emanation of land from the water.

Then the audience was divided into six groups, each led (by an interesting host on stilts) along paths in the woods where they visited each of six short performances: 

• a song/dance of Coyote and Grizzly competing wish for day and night,

• a storytelling about near-drowning experiences, 

• a puppet show of a Celtic story of a Selkie - a child half human and half seal, accompanied by harp

• a handpuppet show in which clever Peetasah tricked the Chief into diving into the river, 

• a Beaver demonstrating how upstream/downstream activity affects the travels of two fish, 

• a miniature puppet play about how Sek’lep (Coyote) brought the Salmon to the Interior. 

The audience reconnected and were surprised by a dance/rhythm piece using water as a percussion instrument, interrupted by a dance of giant water creatures (stiltwalkers). Then they were led through the woods past a dance of underwater puppet creatures and a sea-serpent. Then they filed one at a time through an opening onto the beach, where each person was given a ceramic vessel to carry with them down to the water.

Down they walked along the spiral pebble paths to the river, where dancers in the water poured water from the river into the vessels. Finally, the water was carried back carefully through the woods as night fell, and poured into a giant reflection pool in the centre of the gazebo during the musical finale.

Artistic Process

Sawllkwa Community Spectacle:

All aspects of the performance were generated through community involvement. There was a call out for performers, and Director Varrick Grimes invited people to contribute stories about water, whether from imagination, memory, or tradition. Varrick has an overflowing imagination and all of the suggestions became performative, with style being matched with story. Cultural historian Rosalind Williams brought to the table traditional Splatsin/Secwepemc stories that she deemed necessary to be part of it. 

The materials and “stuff” created in the workshops both informed and folded into the performance. There were many more opportunities to make stuff: The Water Fabrics were sewn into robes for the cast, which both individual and together became a stunning visual. The ceramic vessels became part of a ceremony. Puppets made at “In the Shade” were part of Sawllkwa, and some of the children who’d learned to walk on stilts became giant water creatures.

For three weeks we occupied a community hall, where both rehearsals and intense making took place. Every day was eventful in itself. As more people joined in, more robes were needed; fabric was tie-dyed, and hung outdoors where it could be seen flapping in the wind. Certain characters needed masks, so some people helped make them and fit them on the performers. Puppets that were made both in the hall and in groups in peoples’ homes. 

Varrick and the core artists sought to make the shape and structure of the performance itself follow ways in which water flows and pools, joins and separates. In the grounds of the interpretive centre we found opportunities to move the audience from place to place, sometimes all at once, then trickling out into smaller groups, becoming a narrow river when going through the woods, peering through mist as they watched a re-enactment of the past.

On one special day leading up to the event, several of us gathered on the beach by the bend in the river at the Kingfisher Interpretive Centre, and arranged rocks and pebbles into spiral paths for the audience to follow down to the water. 

Each song came from an interesting place. One was created collaboratively during Murray’s workshops. “Kawuono Wan gi Pi” (“Today Water is here”), came from Akonjo, where it had been made by two girls for “Pi en Ngima”. The full cast sang a song about weather in Secwepemctsin. A song was composed of words for water in many different languages, that Cathy had been collecting from people over several months. Musical compositions came from exploring the sounds that water makes. Rosalind wanted the songs to be a conversation “with” (rather than describing or praising) water; we learned the act of singing as a conversation with the world around us. 

Sawllkwa (and other Runaway Moon performances) had elements of ritual. We did not describe it as such, but when each audience member carried a small amount of water through the woods and poured it into a common vessel, something very special and unspoken took place. Through this and other ceremonies we bring local people together to recognize our essential connection to the earth and its elements.