Darrell Dennis is writing and starring in a one-man, multi-character semi-autobiographical play while doing a full-time undergraduate degree at the University of Toronto. He’s running between worlds again, and he looks tired.
Dennis spoke to the Varsity between a matinee performance of his new show, Tales of an Urban Indian, which dramatizes his life as an angry, drugged-out young man on the rez and on Vancouver’s east side.
So how did he end up, older, wiser, and prouder, at the University of Toronto?
“Like most things in my life, I thought, ‘What the hell!'” he laughs. After participating in the Transitional Year Program, he won a national scholarship and decided to stay for a degree in Literature and Aboriginal Studies.
“I never saw myself going to university,” Dennis says. “I dropped out of school for a reason! [But] after winning, I thought, I guess I’m here for the long haul! And it’s been great.”
Although his theatre work to date has been largely autobiographical, his experience at U of T informs it “a hell of a lot. The things I grew up with as my truth are being taught in an academic classroom, [and it] gives a mainstream validity to them in a lot of ways… I can say, ‘Yeah, I know some things’, despite the past that I have and the life that I’ve led, and I shouldn’t feel like I don’t ‘belong’.”
U of T “is certainly not the most liberal school in the country,” he says ruefully. “But there’s a lot of empowering stuff happening on campus, [like the TYP], for those who are not necessarily mainstream. I think over the years, I’ve come to find a lot of pride and strength in my Native traditions. Going to school now, I approach it as a Native man, with a lot of information about who I am and where I come from, instead of being shaped by that or trying to find my identity from an outside source,” he explains.
“If I [had gone] to university when most people do, I don’t think that I would have been able to stick it out. [Now] I think I’m ready to open myself up to new things, and realize that there’s a whole new world out there.”
His new play should open viewers up to a whole world of Native culture ignored by the mainstream. “I find a lot of the stuff that is being written for Native actors falls into one of two stereotypes: [it’s] either the victimized Native who falls into drugs and alcohol and [is] just deadly serious and pining away; or it’s the other stereotype which is the noble savage and the mystic,” Dennis says.
“There are very few roles that actually show Native people as human beings, finding love and feeling actual emotions that real people feel, so I wanted to do something that showed that, that reflects the humour in our communities [and that] you hardly ever, ever see in mainstream theatre,” he notes. Humour is such a survival mechanism in our communities, and some of the funniest people I’ve ever met have been back on the reserve.
“Those who are really fighting and are angry don’t really know who they are, a lot of the time,” he says.
Dennis, who is also leading student playwriting workshops and participating in Factory Theatre’s efforts to develop a ‘manifesto’ for Canadian theatre, says that writing is “cathartic,” and a great way to move between worlds in a different manner.
In the meantime, he’s trying to maintain that balance between the distinct worlds of school and theatre-with several more performances of his well-received show coming up before the end of term, many of his fellow students could certainly take a lesson from this talented multitasker.
Tales of an Urban Indian runs to Nov. 30 at Artword Alternative (75 Portland) at 8 p.m., pay-what-you-can Sunday matinee at 2:30 p.m. Call (416) 366-7723 for tickets.
