A single woman stands centre stage. She tells us that her name is Sharon, then she begins to tell us her fascinating and unusual story. For the next 80 minutes, we are immersed in her recollections. She is the only character to appear on the stage . . . emoting and gesturing and moving for the entire duration of the show. And yet she is never alone.
This is Takwahiminana, the newest world premiere from Matthew MacKenzie and Punctuate! Theatre. In the show, which is directed by Mike Payette, Sharon’s lone voice echoes across generations and geographies, while the character is enfolded in a chorus of dancers, who give shape and expressive movement to her memories and their complexities. It’s a striking effect: at once intimate and expansive — and layered with intercultural reverberations.
Presented at Soulpepper’s Tank House Theatre, Takwahiminana (named after the Cree and Michif word for chokecherry) is a monologue memoir delivered by Sharon, a Métis woman who was born in India, then moved to Alberta as a teenager, and has found herself caught between two homelands. The story takes place one evening when adult Sharon attends an extravagant dinner party hosted by her longtime lover. It’s an unofficial celebration of their 20-year affair, but beneath the curated dishes and superficial banter, deep tensions simmer. Sharon finds that her Indigenous knowledge is alternately admired, commodified, and distorted – and as the evening unravels, she must turn to her Kohkom (Grandmother) Betty’s teachings, in order to confront her erasure and reclaim a sense of self.
The play is a dense meditation on love, family, and the complexity of identity. And the award-winning Michaela Washburn brings deeply layered intelligence and understated force to the role of Sharon. Her performance is both grounded and expressive, steering the audience skillfully through emotional shifts, family politics, and internalization of cultural tensions. This is an extremely demanding role in a work that demands the audience’s sustained and focused attention—particularly in the first half, where details about characters and relationships fall out of Sharon’s continuous narration like a pile of initially confusing puzzle pieces emptied from a box. Washburn’s strong performance and the show’s thematic richness reward the substantial attention required to assemble this puzzle.
The incorporation of dance into the show is an inspired addition. The dance ensemble of Prithvi Castelino, Vanessa Mangar, Kajaanan Navaratnam, Swetha Pararajasingam, and Naveeni Rasiah forms a dynamic, visually arresting, non-verbal counterpoint to Sharon’s words, and enhance the emotional textures of her anecdotes. Choreographer Anoshinie Muhundarajah’s Bharatanatyam-infused movement vocabulary is not only a gorgeous counterpoint to Sharon’s recollections: it is a connective thread linking the Indian and Indigenous cultures that form the show’s context. The dancers glide in and out of the stage, passing at times behind a luminous fringe curtain: both aesthetic and functional, it literally allows the past to shimmer into the present. And the dancers’ presence is flat-out stunning. Their movements and formations, made dreamlike by floaty costumes co-designed by Jolene Houle and Bharathy Vivekananthan, are a gauzy mirror to Sharon’s work to make meaning from her ephemeral memories.
The show’s wider visual vocabulary is provided by set designer Dawn Marie Marchand, whose aesthetic resists appropriation and instead seeks shared ground. Drawing from both Cree and Métis floral symbolism — plus a paisley motif with origins in India — Marchand brings together cultural threads in a considered, united and beautiful fashion. The set reflects ceremony, memory, and movement. That fringe curtain hanging from a scalloped rod evokes dancing grass or shimmering rain, and also forms an arresting backdrop for Amelia Scott’s video and Andre du Toit’s lighting designs. The floor with the paisley-and-floral motif recalls rangoli, another subtle and aesthetic blend of the east and west. Overall, the design echoes the play’s emotional terrain: one that is shaped by migration, tradition, and a personal connection to the land; and which combines past with present, and recognizes that personal identity derives from multiple aspects.
Playwright MacKenzie is clearly writing from a place of both layered inheritance and deep love. Drawing on stories from his late grandparents about their lives in both India and Alberta, he notes that his mother, who grew up in Bangalore, has always seen the land of her Cree and Métis grandmothers through an Indian lens. In the Creators’ Notes in the house program, he writes that with Takwahiminana, he is exploring the messy reality of identity formation – and the false binaries that society often imposes. While the play is not his mother’s literal story, it is very much shaped by her lens and some of the stories shared by his grandparents. So audiences should view this not as biography, but rather as a creative and curated perspective that is informed by multi-layered, intergenerational experience.
The unique and memorable Takwahiminana runs through May 11, 2025 at Soulpepper’s Tank House Theatre in Toronto. Tickets are available at soulpepper.ca.
© Arpita Ghosal, Sesaya Arts Magazine, 2025
