Description
Algonquin playwright, director, and dramaturg Yvette Nolan works across Turtle Island. Her works include the plays Annie Mae’s Movement, The Unplugging, The Diviners (with Vern Thiessen), Reasonable Doubt (with Joel Bernbaum and Lancelot Knight), the dance-opera Bearing, the libretto Shawnadithit, and the short film A Common Experience (with Shane Belcourt). From 2003 to 2011 she served as Artistic Director of Native Earth Performing Arts. Her book Medicine Shows, about Indigenous performance in Canada, was published by Playwrights Canada Press in 2015, and Performing Indigeneity (co-edited with Ric Knowles) in 2016.
Nick wears a soldier’s uniform but wields only a paintbrush. As an embedded Canadian artist during the Second World War, he is tasked with an impossible mission: to capture the chaos and carnage of battle on canvas. With soldiers, refugees, and showgirls as muses, Nick embarks on a surreal odyssey of self-discovery to understand the purpose and power of his art. What he witnesses—and what he paints—will change him forever and help shape the vision of a young nation.
In The Art of War Yvette Nolan offers a poignant meditation on the role of artists in times of war and peace. Finding humour and insight in the challenges of expressing the inexpressible, it is an exaltation of those who steadfastly seek truth amidst great turmoil.