Theatre show aims for reconciliation through story of residential school survival

Students from Rosebud School of the Arts have been perfecting their performance for weeks.

Audiences are being drawn to the small Alberta hamlet for a production that promises more than simple entertainment.

'New Blood' tells a story of survival, following a child forced into residential school.

The play is being performed at the Rosebud Opera House and scenes draw largely from personal experiences.

Some of the Blackfoot cast members are playing their own parents or grandparents.

Eulalia Running Rabbit's daughter is in the play.

Running Rabbit says she was bussed to and from a residential school every day.

She remembers a friend who would wait for her to get off the bus before they ran upstairs to look out through the windows of the school.

"One day I asked her, what is it you look out to? Because there's nothing," recalls Running Rabbit.

"And she said, 'No, I come here every morning because I'm wishing that my parents are coming for me.'"

Windows feature as central props in the performance, an ode to Running Rabbit's childhood friend who she says, by comparison, made her feel lucky.

"That kind of hit hard to know that she never gets to go home for the year," continues Running Rabbit.

"I thought I was very fortunate coming from my home and knowing that I'll be going back home to my parents."

Running Rabbit first started working with director Deanne Bertsch on 'New Blood' about eight years ago.

Bertsch says the concept for the play was inspired by a family trip to the pictographs at Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park.

That's where she says she learned about the erasure of Blackfoot culture and history.

"I just was really saddened and horrified, and moved to go and do something back at the school I teach at, which is Strathmore High," Bertsch explains.

"So my dance class at the time, combined with Eulalia Running Rabbit, who's in the show with her Blackfoot class, we collaborated and came up with New Blood."

The student performers hope that the production can give audiences a new perspective on the residential school experience.

Nikko Hunt has a lead role in the performance.

"I'm half Blackfoot and half white, so I have kind of both worlds and kind of sometimes it feels like they don't really match at all," said Hunt.

"But with 'New Blood' I've been able to see, like the Blackfoot world and the non-Indigenous world kind of collide."

Kenzie Baker is a dancer in the production.

She says it's important to recognize that residential schools are part of a very recent past.

"I learned about residential schools through school, and I've been to museums and seen stuff like that. But this is the first time I've kind of been able to speak with people who've been impacted on a personal level," said Baker.

Bertsch admits she was initially intimidated by the task of telling a story about residential schools.

But she felt supported in her endeavor by the community, including Running Rabbit.

"She talked about healing and that was my most important goal, is that the show could somehow help heal all of us and bring us towards some kind of reconciliation."

While this particular run of the performance is for one weekend only, running March 18-20, 'New Blood' is a traveling production.

Anyone who wants to bring the show to their own community can contact the production team to schedule a performance.