Nothing is Sacred?

As part of Cancers of the Imagination—Colleen Murphy's investigation into the creation of characters in her work—Kim Senklip Harvey (Syilx and Tsilhqot'in, and winner of the Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama in 2020 for her play Kamloopa), will join Colleen to debate how far playwrights can go in creating characters for their plays. How far is too far? Are characters who speak the unspeakable, break taboos or trample on that which other people consider sacred acceptable on stage in 2023?

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Kim Senklip Harvey is a proud Syilx and Tsilhqot’in award winning creator known for her ability to write and direct bold iconoclastic productions that inspire and delight. Kim was the first Indigenous woman to win the Governor General’s Award for Drama with her play Kamloopa, to which she directed the three-city world premiere. She is the director of two feature length documentary films — Break Horizons: A Concert Documentary and Making the Mystics — and she is currently developing a CBC miniseries. She was also a 2022 recipient of a Netflix and Indigenous Screen Office Directing Fellowship, and one of her pilots is currently in development with Sphere Media. Kim has her Masters in Creative Writing and is currently getting her PhD in Law from the University of Victoria. Kim’s passion for storytelling lives within its transformational nature and works in service to her Indigenous Nations.

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“Characters are, perhaps, those parts of shadow or independent vitality within the psyche which the poet cannot integrate to his own person. They are cancers of the imagination insisting on their right to live outside the organism from which they are engendered (how long could a man endure with an Oedipus or a Lear locked inside him?) But whatever their relationship to the source of invention, dramatic personages assume their own integral being.”
--George Steiner, The Death of Tragedy

CANCERS OF THE IMAGINATION is the title given to Colleen Murphy's residency at Green College. From mid-January through mid-April, 2023, she will curate and host a series of three public events presenting guest writers who will read from their work and take part in discussions about how and why they create the characters and stories that they create.

For more information on Colleen Murphy, and on her residency, visit our Invited Residencies page.