Brandon University professors’ new play wins national award

Dale Lakevold and Darrell Racine’s original play “IAP” received the best full-length play award in the Theatre BC Canadian National Playwriting Competition. (Image Source: Brandon University)

A play about former residential school students grappling with the government’s abuse compensation process has earned a pair of Brandon University professors a national award.

Darrell Racine and Dale Lakevold’s original play “IAP” received the best full-length play award in the Theatre BC Canadian National Playwriting Competition.

“We were quite happy,” Racine told CTV News Winnipeg in a phone interview.

“We thought that because of COVID that there might be a lot more scripts. A lot of people were at home writing, and so we didn't think that our chances were actually that good.”

Racine, an assistant professor in the native studies department, and Lakevold, an associate professor in the English, drama and creative writing department, are long-time collaborators, having met while working at Brandon University.

Much of their former work centres on the stories of Indigenous and Métis people. The duo’s previous play, “Stretching Hide,” also won the same award in 2005. That play tells the story of a young Métis lawyer who introduces his young fiancée to the chaotic life of his community during one July long weekend.

Meanwhile, “IAP” follows two members of an Indigenous family from Winnipeg as they navigate the Independent Assessment Process for former residential school students. The process was set up by the federal government, and used to hear personal claims of abuse at residential schools.

These claims culminated in the largest class-action suit in Canadian history. About 38,000 former students went through the process.

Racine said they were inspired to write about IAP after hearing from some claimants that it was more of an administrative process and not one of reconciliation. Many claimants were retraumatized in reliving these painful experiences, he said.

“A lot of Aboriginal people thought that it was also for healing and to come to terms with what had happened to them, and that's not what it was at all,” he said.

“It was more of a medical model. For some of the more severe abuse that First Nations people experienced, they had to relive it in order to be compensated.”

In February 2021, Racine and Lakevold held a virtual reading of the play directed by Tracy Nepinak. A very special audience was invited.

“We invited former residential school students who had gone through the IAP. We had some adjudicators and lawyers and mental health workers,” Lakevold recalled.

“The point of all that was to make sure that we've done it right,” Racine explained.

Next up, the duo hopes to bring “IAP” to the stage. They are also working on a number of follow-up projects.

“We're working on our fifth play right now about the Sixties Scoop, so we're going through a similar process,” Lakevold said.

“We did complete a fourth play called “Franklin's Fate.” We're looking at early British colonialism in Canada. We're just kind of on this bit of a roll here.”