Marie Clements

Marie Clements (born January 10, 1962)[1] is a Canadian Métis playwright, performer, director, producer and screenwriter. Marie was founding artistic director of urban ink productions, and is currently co-artistic director of red diva projects, and director of her new film company Working Pajama Lab Entertainment.[2] Clements lives on Galiano Island, British Columbia. As a writer Marie has worked in a variety of mediums including theatre, performance, film, multi-media, radio, and television.[3][4][5]

Marie Clements
Born
Marie Humber Clements

(1962-01-10) January 10, 1962
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
OccupationActor, writer, director

Early life

Clements was born in Vancouver, British Columbia. Early in her life she studied dance, speech, singing, piano, and music, but she dreamed of being a foreign correspondent. She studied journalism at Mount Royal College in Calgary, Alberta.[6]

Career

During the 1980s Clements worked as a radio news reporter[7] and is still a freelance contributor to CBC radio.[8] She has also worked in the writing department of the television series Da Vinci's Inquest [8] which featured a plot line similar to The Unnatural and Accidental Women which is based on the murders of several Native women in Vancouver's Skid Row district.

She has been a playwright in residence at the National Theatre School of Canada, the Banff Centre for the Arts, the Firehall Arts Centre, and the National Arts Centre. She has been writer-in-residence at several prominent Canadian universities, including Simon Fraser University[9] and University of British Columbia[10]

Theatre Research in Canada (TRIC) dedicated a special issue of the journal to the celebration of Clements's contribution to Canadian theatre.[11]

In 2010, Marie Clements founded Working Pajama Lab, which specializes in the development, creation and strategic weaving of story across film, t.v., digital media and live performance.[10] She also founded Red Diva Project the same year when she was commissioned to create the Aboriginal Pavilion's closing performance at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

Marie Clements's plays often consider several overlapping themes, such as the themes of racism, sexism, and violence explored in The Unnatural and Accidental Women. Her theatrical style is a blending of Aboriginal storytelling, ritual and western theatrical conventions.[5] As a playwright, director, and dramaturg, she "explores important issues of women, aboriginals, and the realities of the urban core in innovative, highly theatrical stagings"[1]

It was while touring the Canadian north that Clements wrote her first play, Age of Iron (1993). She says it was "sheer cold boredom and a serious desire to understand and integrate the elemental connections between Greek mythology and Native thought" that inspired her to write the play.[12]

Clements's plays often "reframe...authorized Western histories" to encourage spectators acknowledgement of alternative histories and critically engage with the process of historiography.[13] Both Burning vision (staged by Tom Bentley-Fisher for The Barcelona International Grec Festival) and The Unnatural and Accidental Women engage with elements of Canadian history that are pushed to the periphery and press issues of "counter-hegemonic remembrance practices"[14]

Her importance as a Canadian playwright is reflected in the number of award nominations, the multiple translations of her works, and the number of scholarly articles dedicated to her plays.[15]

Awards
  • 2004 Awarded the Canada - Japan Literary Award – Burning Vision
  • 2004 Nomination for the George Ryga Literary Award - Burning Vision
  • 2004 Nomination for the Governor General's Literary Award for Drama - Burning Vision (finalist)
  • 2002 Nomination for Siminovitch Prize in Theatre – Outstanding contribution to Canadian Theatre
  • 2001 Nomination Jessie Richardson Theatre Award – Outstanding Original Play- Burning Vision
  • 1998 Jessie Richardson Theatre Award – The P.T.C. Award – Outstanding Original Play In Development – The Unnatural and Accidental Women
  • 1998 Sundance Screenwriting Competition – Finalist – Now look what you made me do
  • 1997 Praxis Screenwriting Competition – Shortlisted – Now look what you made me do
  • 1996 Minneapolis Playwright's Center – Fellowship Award – Now look what you made me do
  • 1994 Nomination Jessie Richardson Awards – Outstanding Ensemble Creation – Wet Dreams
  • 1994 Nomination Jessie Richardson Awards – Outstanding Ensemble Performance – Wet Dreams
  • 1994 Nomination Jessie Richardson Awards – Sydney Risk Award – Age of Iron
  • 1993 Nomination Jessie Richardson Awards – Outstanding Original Play – Age of Iron[4]

[16]

Writings and appearances

Plays
  • Age of Iron (1993)
  • Now Look What You Made Me Do (1997)
  • The Girl Who Swam Forever (1997)
  • The Unnatural and Accidental Women (2000)
  • Burning Vision (2002)
  • Copper Thunderbird (2007)
  • Tombs of the Vanishing Indian (2012)[17][18]

Film

Radio
  • Tombs of the Vanishing Indian (in development)
  • hours of water- radio drama - CBC Radio Drama 2005.
  • Women in Fish Series - A four-part documentary, CBC Outfront 2005.
  • The Meter is Running - Sounds Like Canada, CBC Radio 2003
  • Vancouver Rose - ongoing CBC Radio Commentary 2002

Multi-Media
  • Missing (2017)
  • The Edward Curtis Project (2013)
  • The Red Diva Project (2008)
  • Hours of Water (2004)
  • The Women in Fish Interactive Installation
  • Urban Tattoo (1999)

References
  1. Gilbert, Reid (2007). "Marie Clements". id. "Marie Clements." Baylor Journal of Theatre and Performance. 4 (1): 147–151. See p. 147.
  2. "red diva projects". red diva projects. Retrieved 15 November 2018.
  3. "Marie Clements Media - Vancouver, BC". Marie Clements Media - Vancouver, BC. Retrieved 15 November 2018.
  4. http://www.bravofact.com/2012/12/18/marie-clements/
  5. Gilbert, Reid (2010). "Introduction: Marie Clements/Presentation: Marie Clements". Theatre Research in Canada. 31 (2).
  6. Gilbert, Reid (2007). "Marie Clements". id. "Marie Clements." Baylor Journal of Theatre and Performance. 4 (1): 147–151. See pp. 147-8.
  7. "Artist Stories | The Canada Council for the Arts". Canadacouncil.ca. Archived from the original on 2013-06-01. Retrieved 2013-08-25.
  8. Archived June 19, 2008, at the Wayback Machine
  9. "Writer in Residence - Department of English - Simon Fraser University". www.sfu.ca. Retrieved 15 November 2018.
  10. Columbia, The University of British. "Writer in Residence :: Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies". fccs.ok.ubc.ca. Retrieved 15 November 2018.
  11. Gilbert, Reid (1 June 2010). "Introduction: Marie Clements". Theatre Research in Canada / Recherches théâtrales au Canada. 31 (2). Retrieved 15 November 2018 – via journals.lib.unb.ca.
  12. Gilbert, Reid (2007). "Marie Clements". id. "Marie Clements." Baylor Journal of Theatre and Performance. 4 (1): 147–151. See p. 148.
  13. Hargreaves, Allison (2011). "'A precise instrument for seeing': remembrance in Burning Vision and the activist classroom". Canadian Theatre Review. 147 (147): 49–54. See p. 50.
  14. Hargreaves, Allison (2011). "'A precise instrument for seeing': remembrance in Burning Vision and the activist classroom". Canadian Theatre Review. 147 (147): 49–54. See p. 51.
  15. "Interview with Marie Clements". hemispheric institute Digital Video Library. Retrieved 9 April 2015.
  16. "Marie Clements » Authors » Talonbooks". talonbooks.com. Retrieved 15 November 2018.
  17. http://media.wix.com/ugd/a3cd5c_17f764c43a32b54677222295201cdafb.pdf
  18. "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-03-04. Retrieved 2015-02-22.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  19. "Marie Clements". IMDb. Retrieved 15 November 2018.
  20. "The Road Forward: an innovative documentary explores Indigenous activism through songs". CBC Radio. Retrieved 2017-04-28.
  21. "Dene/Métis filmmaker inspired by 1930s Indigenous activists". CBC Radio. Retrieved 2017-04-28.

Further reading
  • Farfan, Penny. "Historical Landscapes in Contemporary Plays by Canadian Women." Contemporary Women Playwrights: Into the 21st Century. Eds. Farfan, Penny, and Ferris, Lesley. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.
  • Floriane Moro: Vanishing Indians, Missing Women, and Indigenous Presence in the Work of Marie Clements. Thesis Magistra artium, John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies, FU Berlin, Chair: Birte Wege, Berlin 2017
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