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April 2024. Photo Spread by Vince Federoff. Pictures of the Awaken Festival Opening Ceremony plus rehearsal images from the first performance showcase of 2024, The Art of War, written and directed by Yvette Nolan and featuring performances by Johanna Arnott, Joshua Beaudry, Skye Brandon, and Colin Wolf. Subscription required to view…

March 2024. Awaken Festival turns five years old. A festival curated for Indigenous and northern artists, it takes place in April in Whitehorse. Presented by Gwaandak Theatre it features performances, workshops and industry nights. To tell us more, the Executive and Artistic Director of Gwaandak Theatre Colin Wolf joined Brenda Barnes in studio…

June 2022. Across Canada, a consortium of theatre companies have joined forces to create something aimed at giving a much-needed boost to LGBTQ theatre makers: the National Queer and Trans Playwriting Unit…

June 2022. Powerful playwrighting and storytelling ignited the space ‘Round Back at the Guild Hall on opening weekend of the Indigenous Summer Play Readings…

May 2022. Ten Canadian theatre companies have come together to create the country's first queer and transgender playwriting unit, and Colin Wolf is hoping the project has a significant Northern and Indigenous voice…

May 2022. A community arts festival born from the pandemic, Gwaandak Theatre’s third annual Awaken Festival ran from March 23 to April 6, its first iteration with in-person events…

January 2022. Playwrights Canada Press is pleased to announce the formation of an editorial committee. The committee will recommend plays for publication, surveying the theatre landscape through their work as artists and creators…

May 2021. Bears are emerging from their dens and a 12-day theatre festival in the Yukon is hoping to similarly awaken some artistic talent across the North by providing free and online accessible workshops and shows this month…

October 2020. Gwaandak Theatre’s fall production, There is Violence and There is Righteous Violence and There is Death or The Born-Again Crow, is a family affair. The play is written and directed by Caleigh Crow. Her brother, Colin Wolf, is artistic director and producer, and one of the actors…

June 2020. With the arrival of spring, Gwaandak Theatre introduced the Awaken Festival for the first time ever! The Awaken Festival took place this year online from May 1-10, and set out to share the work of artists, expand on creativity, tell stories…

May 2020. Burlesque and drag lovers, clear your schedule Saturday night. A collaboration between Gwaandak Theatre and Queer Yukon is bringing a cabaret show to the small screens, featuring 12 performers…

March 2020. In January 2019, the United Nations (UN) declared 2019 to be the International Year of Indigenous Languages. This was meant to increase awareness and spur actions to promote and protect Indigenous languages around the world…

November 2019. As Gwaandak Theatre enters its third decade, it’s inviting Yukoners to welcome incoming artistic director Colin Wolf on Friday evening. Wolf and the Gwaandak Theatre team will announce upcoming programming…

June 2019. The Gwich'in language — like too many Indigenous languages in Canada — is seriously endangered. Fewer than 400 people speak Gwich'in, which puts the language dangerously close to extinction…

May 2018. In an instant, everything changes. Electricity fizzles out, networks crumble and the collected knowledge of humanity – stored in digital archives like Wikipedia – vanishes. The world is left in the middle of a cold, dark winter…

April 2018. The inaugural Yukon Playwrights Conference takes place April 14 at the Old Fire Hall. On a dream and a successful grant, Monique Renaud will visit Whitehorse for the first time to co-host the first Yukon Playwright’s Conference this Saturday…

June 2017. Falen Johnson doesn’t hold back when it comes to Gwaandak Theatre. “I love Gwaandak,” the Six Nations writer says straight out. “It’s a place where you know you’re immediately welcomed as an Indigenous playwright.”…

May 2017. The first days in the creation of the play Map of the Land, Map of the Stars took place in the summer of 2015 along the banks of the Yukon River. A group of artists gathered with stories, images, objects, and songs – items that they were drawn to and that were rooted in the Yukon…

June 2016. Audience members with program “maps” in hand will be guided through the Kwanlin Dün Cultural Centre for a unique performance adventure from Gwaandak Theatre, showcasing the spectacular riverfront and Yukon stories about who we are and where we come from…

March 2016. Gwaandak Theatre is known for producing high quality, thought provoking and original productions. A large portion of its mandate is to help cultivate Aboriginal and Northern artists gain professional experience and exposure on stages close and far from home…

November 2015. On Nov. 19 Yukoners can grab a drink and a snack at the Yukon Transportation Museum and hunker down for a favourite Yukon pastime: telling stories of backwoods adventures. The event, called Tales of the Trails, will feature Yukon storytellers…

November 2015. For the last 15 seasons, the Gwaandak Theatre Company has been taking to the stage to tell northern stories. Gwaandak means storyteller in Gwitch'in. “We’re a Yukon theatre company that showcases indigenous and northern voices…”

March 2015. Four actors stand on stage. They move towards each other, and apart. They engage, and disengage. They spout mouthfuls of flowery verse, rich in imagery but poor in explanation. Nothing seems to make a whole lot of sense, yet…

July 2014. When Patti Flather left Vancouver for the Yukon, she had no thoughts of becoming a playwright, let alone co-founder and artistic director of a busy theatre company…

May 2014. Hearing Ojibwe spoken, loving aboriginal dance culture and knowing what a friendship centre is - these are some advantages Keith Barker counts as benefits to growing up in a small Northern Ontario town…

January 2014. Gwaandak Theatre has an exciting line-up of performances and workshops in the coming weeks, and it's all about cultural collision…

October 2012. On May 10, 1898, two prospectors, Christian Fox and William Meehan, were shot on the McClintock River, a tributary of Marsh Lake. Meehan was killed outright and Fox was seriously wounded. The events that followed, through cultural and linguistic misunderstanding, led to a flawed administration of justice…

September 2012. The discovery of long-buried human remains in Dawson City two years ago shone a public spotlight on a little-known chapter in Yukon history…

August 2012. For much of his adult life, Leonard Linklater has been telling stories about the Yukon. But in the late 1990s, while at the Institute of Indigenous Government in British Columbia he found an article in a legal journal about a story he'd never heard…

June 2012. On June 11, 2008, Prime Minister Stephen Harper rose in the House of Commons to issue a formal apology for Canada’s century-long Indian residential school policy. That same Wednesday evening, a new play called Where the Blood Mixes burst upon the Canadian theatre scene…

May 2011. How can one person transform herself into many people? How can one location turn into several without changing a thing? Go and see Café Daughter and you’ll find out…

May 2011. P.J. Prudat is passable. So is Yvette Nolan. And so is Lillian Eva (Quan) Dyck. All three of these aboriginal women grew up being able to "pass" as something other than First Nations…

April 2011. Kenneth T. Williams had never heard of his distant cousin, Lillian Dyck, until 1999, when he was asked to suggest names of suitable Saskatchewan candidates for the National Aboriginal Achievement Foundation’s Lifetime Achievement award…

July 2010. Can one Holy Grail of a Bingo Game in Toronto be the answer to the dreams of seven women living on a reserve? Tomson Highway’s play, The Rez Sisters, asks that question as it sends seven women on a journey to seek out the Bingo Game to beat all Bingo Games…

July 2010. If you’re looking for a taste of aboriginal humour, try Bannock Republic. A pared-down performance of the latest work by Cree playwright Kenneth T. Williams will be held tonight at the Old Fire Hall…

July 2010. Gwaandak Theatre is putting on a reading series this summer featuring three plays written by First Nations playwrights, borrowing the skills of some local First Nation actors — some who are brand new to the theatre stage…

May 2010. Using the power of culture to unite, The Arrivals Project combines the creativity of intuition and the hard facts of genealogy research to create a series of workshops designed to explore ancestry and spark creative processes.

November 2009. Consider it one of the more difficult plays Vancouverite Chris McGregor has ever directed. The Soul Menders, which opens Thursday at the Guild, presented McGregor with challenges he’s never had to face in his more than 20 years of working in theatre…

November 2009. After presenting Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, one of the most well-known plays of the post-modern era, the Guild Theatre follows with the world premiere of Yukon writer Patti Flather’s play, The Soul Menders…

June 2009. Patti Flather can't find the iPod's pause button. It might be second nature for the teenagers, whose audio plays she's presenting at Baked Cafe on Tuesday evening…

June 2009. Imagine trudging up the terribly endless flight of stairs at the end of Black Street only to be greeted by a small but brilliantly coloured green sign telling you to dial a toll free number and enter in a code…

April 2009. It was like walking onto the set of High School Musical … there are people milling about, laughing and joking around, spinning playfully in wheelchairs and then, boom, cohesion breaks out into a delightful musical number on a plywood stage…

December 2008. The vibrant theatre community in Whitehorse is making room for some new, budding talent. After years of bringing innovative and imaginative works to local stages, Gwaandak Theatre presents youth with the chance to tell their own stories through the Uth Ink project…

March 2006. It’s a story about a mother and daughter’s journey. They leave their community and try to escape who they are, but before they can continue on with their lives, they must make amends with what happened…