A play about loss, resilience, and the power of Native stories opens Nov. 7 at Eugene’s Very Little Theater.
“BlueJay’s Canoe” centers around BlueJay, a DJ at a fictional tribal radio station in the Willamette Valley.
“And good afternoon, and a good day it is indeed!” bellowed Kirby Brown as the lead during a recent rehearsal. Brown is an English professor and the director of Native American and Indigenous Studies at the University of Oregon, and is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation. He described his character as “funny, sarcastic, boisterous, and bombastic.”
Throughout both acts of the show, BlueJay alternately informs and entertains his listeners through the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 wildfires.
But BlueJay also struggles with his own issues.
“One of BlueJay’s tragic flaws is that he just doesn’t ask for help,” Brown told KLCC. “When the stuff starts hitting the fan, that’s when we got to hold each other tight.”
Brown said that BlueJay contends with survivor’s guilt, over the loss of a younger sister that happens decades before the play opens. “And in many cases, he holds himself responsible for her death.”
BlueJay’s friends and relatives try to solve the mystery as to why he keeps an unfinished canoe in storage, something that comes to light through the help of Heron, a spirit person who weaves traditional Native stories and history throughout the play.
Marta Lu Clifford and Theresa May co-wrote “BlueJay’s Canoe," a process that’s been years in the making. Clifford - a tribal elder of Chinook, Cree and Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde heritage - said working with May is “amazing,” and the two began crafting the show while doing tea at Hendricks Park during the pandemic.
“We had a blue jay up in a tree,” recalled Clifford, “and he hopped down on the table and started eating my apple fritter. I said, ‘Look! BlueJay wants to be in the play. And that’s when we created a blue jay for ‘BlueJay’s Canoe.’”
May is a professor emerita at the UO and has worked with Clifford on a previous production, “Salmon is Everything,” which examined the conflict between Indigenous people and Oregon locals over the management of waterways and protection of salmon. May said it’s a profound understanding for her as a non-Native and ally that Indigenous stories aren’t artifacts from a distant era, which she also hopes audiences for “Blue Jay’s Canoe” come to realize.
“They’re actually present-time, working pieces of knowledge,” she said. “They carry warning, ways of coping. And so what we’ve tried to do in ‘Blue Jay’s Canoe’ is show the traditional stories are at work in the contemporary lives of the characters in the play.”
The play also depicts three families managing the tumultuous pandemic and 2020 wildfires - deemed the worst on record for Oregon - while also dealing with personal challenges that test their resilience. Inevitably, the past and present become entwined, helping bring old secrets to the forefront and helping BlueJay resolve his long-held sorrow.
“There’s some really powerful scenes about living in the present,” said Brown. “About not having grief be a place that you stay but a place that you have to move out of at some point. Or move through. And you do that as a community.”
Clifford hopes the audience leaves with a simple lesson.
“I want them to leave with the importance of stories, the importance of family, and how they are all connected.”
“BlueJay’s Canoe” is a two-year collaborative production between VLT and illioo Native Theater, with co-sponsors McKenzie River Trust and EWEB. The play was developed with an Oregon Community Foundation’s Creative Heights Grant. The production runs through Nov. 23 at the Very Little Theatre at 2350 Hilyard St. in Eugene.
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