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Marie H Clements

MARIE H CLEMENTS

  (1962 - )
Nationality:    Canadian
email:    n/a     Website:    Click here

Literary Agent:    Kensington Literary Representation  represented by Michael Petrasek

Marie Clements is an award-winning Metis performer, playwright and director whose work has been presented on stages across Canada, the United States and Europe. She is the founder of urban ink productions, a Vancouver-based First Nations production company that creates, develops and produces Aboriginal and multi-cultural works of Theatre, dance, music, film and video. Clements was invited to the prestigious Festival de Theatre des Ameriques in 2001 for Urban Tattoo and in 2002 for Burning Vision. In 2002, she worked in the writing department of the television series Da Vinci's Inquest. A fellowship award from the BC Film Commission enabled her to develop the film adaptation of her stage play, the Unnatural and Accidental Women. She is also a regular contributor on CBC Radio. Clements writes, or, perhaps more accurately, composes, with an urbane, incisive and sophisticated intellect; her refined artistry is deeply rooted in the particulars of her place, time and history. the world premiere of Copper Thunderbird is the first time Canada's National Arts Centre has produced the work of a First Nations playwright on its main stage.

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below is a list of Marie H Clements's plays - click on a Play Title for more information

         Age Of Iron         Burning Vision         Copper Thunderbird         Edward Curtis Project, The         Now Look What You Made Me Do         Tombs of the Vanishing Indians         Unnatural And Accidental Women , The         Urban Tattoo

Age Of Iron

Synopsis:
First production written by Marie Clements. This innovative work was a clear indication that she would push the envelope of contemporary theatre

Notes:
-

1st Produced:
-    

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
in DraMetis: Three Metis Plays, Playwrights Co-op, Toronto, 2002   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Play/Drama

Parts:
Male:  4            Female:  7            Other:  1 other

Further Reference:
-

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Burning Vision

Burning Vision
Unmasks both the great lies of the imperialist power-elite and the seemingly small rationalizations and accommodations people of all cultures construct to make their personal circumstances yield the greatest benefit to themselves for the least amount of effort or change on their part.

Notes:
-

1st Produced:
Firehall Arts Centre, Vancouver, Bc.     2002

Organisations:
Rumble Theatre

1st Published:
Talon Books, Vancouver, BC, 2003   978-0889224728

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Drama One act

Parts:
Male:  6            Female:  4            Other:  doubling

Further Reference:
-

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Copper Thunderbird

Copper Thunderbird
Copper Thunderbird is a play on canvases based on the life of Norval Morrisseau. Inside the power-lines which Morrisseau boldly defined in his art were the colours he experienced between his Ojibwa cosmology, his life on the street, and his spiritual and philosophical transformations to become the Father of Contemporary Native Art and a Grand Shaman. Appearing simultaneously in this multi-layered drama as a small boy, a young warrior and an old man, Morrisseau confronts his many selves over the Faustian destiny he encountered during his vision questa momentary terror that led to a life wracked by both triumph and ordeal, drawing his vibrant colours, both luminous and dark, from the life-force within him. Norval Morrisseau is notorious for the life he has led, the company he has kept, the wives, lovers, parasitic drinking buddies and abusive family members he has had and passed through as if they were merely insubstantial phantoms. the paintings he has sold to buy another bottle of alcohol, to get through another brutal day, hang in galleries around the world, a phenomenon Morrisseau himself simply took for granted. Framed variously with the identities of Indian, Artist and Shaman, Copper Thunderbird interrogates both the stereotypes and the politically correct judgments that have manufactured Morrisseau's public personae, creating a power-figure that transcends culture and morality, earth and water, fire and air.

Notes:
-

1st Produced:
-    

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
Talonbooks; 1 edition (September 15, 2007)   978-0889225688

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Drama One act

Parts:
Male:  -            Female:  -            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Edward Curtis Project, The

Edward Curtis Project, The
Edward Curtis' project was to photograph the disappearing tribes of Native Americans

Notes:
-

1st Produced:
Canada's National Arts Centre     2007

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
Talon Books   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
One act

Parts:
Male:  2            Female:  2            Other:  doubling

Further Reference:
-

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Now Look What You Made Me Do

Synopsis:
Poetically suggests the responses of women to their sexuality within the context of domestic violence

Notes:
-

1st Produced:
Maenad Theatre, Calgary, Alberta.     1996

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
in Prerogatives: Contemporary Plays by Women, Blizzard Publishing, 1998   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Drama One act

Parts:
Male:  2            Female:  4            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Tombs of the Vanishing Indians

Tombs of the Vanishing Indians
Three Young Native American sisters and their mother board a bus bound for Los Angeles, leaving home as part of a 1950s government mandate to relocate reserve Indians to urban centres. This assimilationist policy was one focus of Metis playwright Marie Clements's research when she was commissioned to create a new play for the tenth anniversary of the Native Voices series at the Autry National Center, Los Angeles. Clements dramatizes the emotional, psychological and social repercussions of this, and subsequent, bureaucratic incursions into the girls' lives. their arrival in California takes a tragic turn when their mother is suddenly killed and the girls are arbitrarily placed in different foster homes, never to see each other again. We follow Janey, Miranda and Jessie as they lead very disparate adult lives: Janey, a troubled vagrant; Miranda, a burgeoning actress fighting typecasting in Hollywood; Jessie, an idealist physician who's married to a medical colleague. As it was bureaucratic policy that had dismantled their secure family unit and sent each girl into the unknown, so too did a government paper ultimately bring them together, if only symbolically. Clements casts the sisters' narrative against the backdrop of another historical injustice: the forced sterilization of thousands of Native women in the 1970s, a practice that was only abolished in 1981.

Notes:
Clements's play is a compelling, and poetic, investigation of the coldly bureaucratic machinations that have, throughout history, attempted to facilitate the disappearance of Native people. Though Tombs of the Vanishing Indian focuses on specific policies and locations, it speaks eloquently to broader themes of Aboriginal displacement. there are, indeed, echoes of Canadian policy aimed at the dissolution of First Nations families and culture: the potlatch ban, residential schools and the ban on Native language, whose profoundly damaging ramifications are our shared legacy.

1st Produced:
Buddies In Bad Times Theatre, Toronto     09 Mar 2011

Organisations:
Native earth Performing Arts and red diva projects

1st Published:
Talonbooks (2012) >>>    978-0889226869

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
One act

Parts:
Male:  3            Female:  4            Other:  doubling

Further Reference:
-

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Unnatural And Accidental Women , The

Unnatural And Accidental Women , The
Over the course of two decades in Vancouver's east end, as many as ten women, most of them native, died of high blood-alcohol levels after being seen in the company of a local barber. Despite the similarities, all were ruled as "unnatural and accidental" deaths.

Notes:
-

1st Produced:
Firehall Arts Centre, Vancouver.     2000

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
Canadian Theatre Review, Winter 2000. 53-88, 2000   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Play/Drama

Parts:
Male:  2            Female:  11            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Urban Tattoo

Synopsis:
-

Notes:
-

1st Produced:
-    

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
UCLa Press,    -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
-

Parts:
Male:  -            Female:  -            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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