Programming Indigenous Theatre With Care

Build relationships before defining the event

To program an Indigenous theatre event, begin with artists and Indigenous-led organizations whose work fits the venue, audience, and resources. Develop the event through clear invitations, rights, budgets, and agreed decisions. Do not build a generic “Indigenous night,” recruit one artist to represent everyone, or treat consultation as approval of a concept that participants had no power to change.

Define the artistic purpose

Write a specific rationale: present a new play, host a touring production, support a staged reading, explore multilingual performance, or create a conversation among works with an articulated formal connection.

Check whether your organization has the capacity to support the work properly. That includes fees, travel, accommodation, visas where relevant, freight, rehearsal, technical labour, accessibility, childcare or family needs where agreed, marketing, insurance, rights, hospitality, and time for relationship-building.

Do not announce the event until the budget can cover artists, agreed expertise, access, and core production costs.

Invite people for their actual practice

Research official artist, agent, company, and presenter pages. Make a clear invitation describing the event, role, dates, venue, audience, proposed fee, expenses, rights, recording, approvals, and decision timeline. Ask how the artist or company describes its work and what conditions it requires.

Do not infer Nation, community, language, or protocol from a name or production subject. The University of British Columbia's Indigenous Peoples language guide recommends using the names people use for themselves and maintaining distinctions among First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples.

Put authority in the agreement

Define who chooses artists, approves copy, controls cultural and artistic material, confirms language, reviews images, and decides on recordings or future reuse. The Canada Council for the Arts lists cultural self-determination of Indigenous peoples among its funding principles and says it acknowledges cultural sovereignty. The Canada Council for the Arts' 2017 policy says customary and contemporary cultural and artistic practices must remain under the control of Indigenous peoples and communities.

Those principles should appear operationally in contracts, schedules, credits, and approval points. A land acknowledgement does not replace clear rights, artist authority, or documented approval points.

Budget every form of expertise

Pay artists and engage language workers, translators, cultural advisers, access artists, designers, technicians, facilitators, and reviewers for defined work. Do not assume that an Indigenous artist will also provide protocol, community outreach, translation, education materials, marketing approval, and emotional care within one performance fee.

Follow applicable funding, tax, union, employment, licensing, and contracting requirements. Check official rules for the jurisdiction and organizations rather than copying figures or clauses from an old event.

Plan access and care with the artists

Discuss venue access, seating, transport, backstage conditions, captions or surtitles, interpretation, audio description, content information, quiet space, support routes, latecomers, and audience participation. Publish only what will actually be available.

Plan language access, translation rights, surtitles, interpretation, facilitation, consent, recording, and quotation rules with the responsible artists and rights-holders before contracts and publicity are finalized.

For material about residential schools, publish current support contacts beside the content note. Canada.ca lists the 24-hour National Indian Residential School Crisis Line at 1-866-925-4419 for former students and families, and Hope for Wellness at 1-855-242-3310 or online chat for all Indigenous people across Canada. Call emergency services for immediate danger, and verify every contact before use.

Market the work accurately

Use approved biographies, images, titles, Nation or community names, language spellings, and credit order. Describe the production's genre and artistic promise rather than selling access to “ancient wisdom,” authenticity, or trauma. Set deadlines that give artists meaningful review time.

Do not imply a company endorses the venue beyond the contracted event. Keep sponsor placement and photography within the agreed terms.

Close the event responsibly

Pay promptly, return or dispose of materials as agreed, share authorized documentation, report accurately to funders, and ask what should remain private. Conduct a debrief that includes artists and the people who carried access, language, and technical work.

Responsible programming depends on clear contracts, workable calendars, accurate credits, verified access, and genuinely shared decisions.

For related methods, see Indigenous Theatre in Canada: A Reader's Guide, How to Attend Indigenous Theatre Respectfully, and Adapting Indigenous Stories: Permission Comes First.

Sources

• Canada Council for the Arts, “Funding Principles” (accessed 1 September 2026) — the Council's stated cultural-self-determination principle and acknowledgement of cultural sovereignty.
• Canada Council for the Arts, “Supporting Indigenous art in the spirit of cultural self-determination and opposing appropriation” (2017) — control, responsibility, reciprocity, and respect.
• University of British Columbia, Indigenous Peoples: Language Guidelines, version 3.1 (2024) — distinctions and terminology.

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