wâhkôhtowin project in partnership with Gwaandak Theatre & YukonU

Climate Play

November 9th, 2024 | One-Day Verbatim Theatre Training

April 2025 (Dates TBA) | One-Week Development Workshop

Gwaandak Theatre partnered with the wâhkôhtowin project (led by Yvette Nolan and Joel Bernbaum) and Yukon University to offer a one-day verbatim theatre training workshop as part of the wâhkôhtowin project's Climate Play. This one day training took place on November 9th, 2024 at Ayamdigut (Yukon University).

What is the Climate Play project? A national verbatim theatre project that aims to work with communities across the country to create a series of hyper local plays about climate change that will then be used to create one larger, Canada-wide play.

About Verbatim Theatre: Similar to a live documentary, "verbatim theatre" is a term used to describe theatre scripts created from live interview transcripts. Creating verbatim theatre involves conducting and recording interviews before using the transcribed text to create a play.

About the one-day training workshop: This free verbatim theatre training workshop is the first phase of creating a new Climate Play in Whitehorse that will be further developed as part of Gwaandak Theatre's Awaken Festival in April of 2025*. This training day will offer participants practical tools to make verbatim theatre, including exercises to learn about interviewing, editing, values and ethics. (Participants of this workshop should bring a bag lunch.)

Who can participate? Writers, theatre artists, musicians, visual artists, post-secondary students, journalists, activists, people concerned about the climate breakdown - all are invited to apply! No previous experience with verbatim theatre or theatre creation is required. Spaces are limited and priority will be given to Indigenous applicants.

*Some participants of the November 9th workshop will be invited to continue with the project, collecting interviews on their own time in January, February and March, and then gathering for a week-long development workshop tentatively scheduled for April 13th-19th, 2025 as part of Gwaandak Theatre's Awaken Festival (exact dates and location TBA).

A very special thank you to Doris Michael, Gä̀gala-ƛ̓iƛ̓ətko Nadia Joe, Ivan Coyote, and Lindsay Moore of Yukon University for their amazing support of this training!

Meet the Creative Team

Joel Bernbaum - Workshop Facilitator

Yvette Nolan - Workshop Facilitator

  • Joel Bernbaum is a theatre artist and journalist. He is a graduate of the Canadian College of Performing Arts and Carleton University, where he completed his Master’s Thesis on Verbatim Theatre’s Relationship to Journalism and the University of Saskatchewan, where he studied how verbatim theatre can be used as a community development process. Joel’s produced plays include Operation Big Rock, My Rabbi (with Kayvon Khoshkam), Home Is a Beautiful Word, Reasonable Doubt (with Yvette Nolan and Lancelot Knight) and Being Here: The Refugee Project (with Michael Shamata). From 2013–2023, he served as Artistic Director of Sum Theatre.

  • Yvette Nolan (Algonquin) is a playwright, director and dramaturg who makes theatre across Turtle Island. Her works include the play The Unplugging, the dance-opera Bearing, the libretto Shawnadithit, and the verbatim play Reasonable Doubt (with Joel Bernbaum and Lancelot Knight). From 2003–2011, she served as Artistic Director of Native Earth Performing Arts.