Presented By: Sid Williams Theatre Society
An Axis Theatre Production
By Tai Amy Grauman
A Métis love-story that transcends time to safeguard history.
From acclaimed Vancouver-based youth theatre company Axis Theatre comes Where Have All The Buffalo Gone?, a love story through the ages. Two star people and a Buffalo, fall to earth and continue to reconnect throughout history. The play covers seven different periods of Métis history. We bear witness to the emergence of the Métis nations across the plains, the robust colonization that arises from the fur trade, the disappearance of the buffalo and the political uprising of the Métis Association of Alberta. The story begins during creation amongst the stars and ends in the present day.
Where Have All The Buffalo Gone? specifically shares scenarios from the Callihoo family’s stories, incorporating fiddle music, jigging and a life-like buffalo puppet. Inspired by historical events of the Métis people of Canada, this original play for young audiences explores the loves, the losses and the fight of Treaty 6’s Métis people – and their love and kinship to the buffalo.
CONTENT ADVISORY
The characters in Where Have All The Buffalo Gone? depict scenes that would have happened in Métis history. And there are several marriage proposals! These historical actions include:
1830: Marie is skinning a rabbit with a knife. She also shoots a buffalo with a rifle. The buffalo dies and is cut up by Marie.
1885: Louis has a musket in silhouette, we hear gunshots (a depiction of the battle of Batoche).
1925: Marie and Louis run away from residential school and ascend to the stars (they die).
The musket and the knife are stage props and are representative of the time in history, the situation, are used to tell the story.
