Mariel Belanger

Before the MFA and PHD, Mariel was first trained in sqilxw storytelling and performance culture as a child by her grandmother, Mary Abel, as a teen actor with director Lynn Phelan at Senklip Native Theatre, and as language student with Dr Jeanette Armstrong. Observing other Indigenous performance practice, such as Geraldine Manossa’s Roots of Cree Drama and non-Indigenous Stanislavski method by Matthew Harrison at the Actors Foundry, key themes or principles of performance I pull from this training that is relevant to Second Life worlding as a digital performance practice include recognizing common gestures like how avatars move in dance and how the sky, land and underwater are all livable spaces in which captikwl grew from through the lives of those that came before us all the way to ameba memory. According to our stories we have been here ‘since time immemorial’, to me that is an indication of how long matter retains memory through movement throughout evolution.