Image
Image Caption
By Jeremy Harpe of CFWE-FM
Windspeaker.com Contributor
Michelle Thrush is revealing her life on stage in a one-woman show entitled Inner Elder.
Thrush spoke with Jeremy Harpe of CFWE-FM about the vulnerability she exposes to theatre goers, putting her life before them, including growing up in Calgary with parents who were chronic alcoholics.
“And, believe it or not it’s a comedy,” she joked.
Inner Elder takes audiences on a journey of transformation through laughter, despite the challenges Thrush faced growing up. She said those challenges were strategically placed in her life by the grandmothers who have been by her side through it all.
The making of the show was a difficult one, said Thrush, but she credits director Karen Hines for pushing her to get through it, often making Thrush explore things she didn’t want to look at.
“It’s been quite a journey, but really essential.”
She said we all have our own inner Elders. She acknowledges the team of wonderful ancestors that she knows are by her side helping her interpret the world as her spiritual guides.
Thrush is best known for her work in Blackstone, for which she won a Gemini for Best Performance by an Actress in a Continuing Leading Dramatic Role in 2011, but she began her acting career in film while going to high school. She got her first theatre job when she moved to Vancouver at age 19. She was cast in a small part in the play “The Ecstasy of Rita Joe.”
She said it’s been only the last 20 years that Indigenous people have been able to tell their truth through their own stories, though she credits such luminaries as Tantoo Cardinal and Graham Greene for kicking down the doors for Indigenous people in the industry.
“I couldn’t imagine doing anything else for a living. It’s just something that I’ve been in love with since I was a kid.”
Inner Elder runs until Jan. 27 as part of Calgary’s International Festival of the Arts. For more information go to https://www.hprodeo.ca/2018/inner-elder