Talking Sh*t With Tara Cheyenne
Arts:Performing Arts
Instagram: @TaraCheyenneTCP / FB: https://www.facebook.com/taracheyenneperformance
Podcast produced, edited and music by Marc Stewart Music
Quelemia is an Indigenous actor, writer, director, dramaturge and consultant from the Musqueam Nation. She graduated from Studio 58’s Theatre program and the Langara Film Arts screenwriting program.
She represented the Musqueam Nation during the opening ceremonies of the 2010 Olympics and since then has continued to do Land Acknowledgements on the unceded territory of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh people. She facilitates workshops and does various consultations for the arts and corporate sector.
It’s been an honour for Quelemia to be the Protocol Keeper for the Transform Festival at the CULTCH for 3 years running. In 2019 she co-hosted the opening bashes with Lisa Fa’alafi from Hot Brown Honey.
Quelemia works across Canada for various theatre companies including: The Arts Club, Bard on the Beach, Globe Theatre, WCT and The Stratford Festival. Some of her Film and T.V credits include: Invasions, Tribal, Clouds of Autumn, Blackstone, Cable Beach and Da Vinci’s City Hall and Da Vinci’s Inquest which she won a Leo Award for Best Female Guest Appearance.
Though she works in various forms, much of Quelemia’s writing centres Indigenous perspective, specifically her Musqueam knowledge and culture. Over the past 20 years, she has been learning about sχʷəy̓em̓ (Musqueam history), the original placenames of what we currently call Greater Vancouver, land-based stories and teachings.
Writing credits include: A podplay for Neworld Theatre and Raven Spirit Dance called ‘Ashes on the Water’, ‘Salmon Girl’/Raven Spirit Dance, Co-writer ‘The Pipeline Project’ /Itsazoo and Savage Society, Indigenous consultant and Indigenous content writer for ‘Lysistrata’/Bard on the Beach, ‘Skyborn: A Land Reclamation Odyssey’/Savage Society, currently she is completing ‘Women of Papiyek’/Full Circle/Animikiig Native Earth.
She was an Associate with Playwrights Theatre Centre from 2014-2016 and she completed the Stratford writing retreat in 2017. She is currently working on a commission from Neworld Theatre and creating a Podcast play series for the Arts Club Theatre.
Tara is celebrated nationally and internationally for her unique and dynamic hybrid of dance, comedy and theatre. The string of celebrated full-length solo shows to her credit includes bANGER, Goggles, Porno Death Cult, and I can’t remember the word for I can’t remember, and she partners regularly on multidisciplinary collaborations, commissions and boundary-bending ensemble creations. When she isn’t creating innovative movement for theatre, Tara performs around the world- highlights include DanceBase/Edinburgh, South Bank Centre/London, On the Boards/Seattle USA, and High Performance Rodeo/Calgary. Recent works include The Body Project (premiering 2020/21 season) The River with dance artist Miriam Colvin and artist and activist Molly Wickham (premiering 2021 in Wet'suwet'en Territory), empty.swimming.pool with Italian dance/performance artist Silvia Gribaudi, (Castiglioncello, Bassano, Victoria, B.C. and Vancouver, B.C.), how to be (Vancouver, B.C.) , and I can’t remember the word for I can’t remember (currently touring). Tara lives on the unceded and traditional territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), səlil̓wətaɁɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) and Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish Nation)/East Vancouver with her partner composer Marc Stewart.
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