“I’m on a mission to look for my history… I want a relationship with my ancestors… I took my grandmother’s middle name because I like the way it sounded: Almeida, the Glorious. I will pull from my ancestors to create my new self.” The AMY Project’s young creators present this original creation exploring personal power, relationships with our ancestors and descendants, and how our given and chosen names shape us.

Presented in partnership with The AMY Project

An exploration of personal strength, ancestry and the power of given and chosen names.

This workshop for artists explores the language, theories and practices of anti-oppression in depth. Institutional, community based and organizational strategies for building equity and unlearning oppression are central to the content and objectives of the workshop. Creative, technical and collaborative models for building equity and liberation will be explored. Group activities, case studies and discussion are critical tools to apply the learnings of this workshop.

Presented in Partnership with Generator, and b current performing arts

An in-depth exploration of anti-oppression language, theories, and practices for artists.

Shaista Latif is a lot of different people. She's created them all to serve you. War, Sex, Money and Art has shaped her places in the world. As a response, Shaista makes an archive of music, text, video and stories to see if she can create one identity that will serve all.

Welcome to Shaista's Archive. You can see. You can also touch.

A science fiction parable about robot workers who travel from place to place, looking for a better future. Marking the tenth anniversary of the concept album Are We Not Horses, Jacob Zimmer and Small Wooden Shoe team up with Toronto band Rock Plaza Central to make a brand new summer musical.

A science fiction musical about robot workers looking for a better future.

This 3-hour workshop will introduce creative approaches for using binaural microphone and sound processing technologies. These techniques have been employed in the making of the immersive audio theatre piece Reassembled, Slightly Askew, as well as in a number of other interdisciplinary artistic collaborations developed by sound artist and improviser Paul Stapleton. Participants will gain hands-on experience of binaural foley techniques, audio editing and signal processing, as well as engage in group improvisations for live binaural audio playback.

A 3-hour audio workshop with sound artist and improviser Paul Stapleton.

Accompanied by live jazz musicians, a trio of exceptional female dancers becomes the physical embodiment of music. Using elements of jazz,vernacular, and contemporary dance, the performers inhabit the improvisation, rhythm, and individuality that drives the music. August, Augusta is the inaugural winner of The Winchester Prize, a new partnership between SummerWorks and The School of Toronto Dance Theatre.

A trio of dancers and a live jazz band create a physical embodiment of music.

Experience the music of folk-jazz ensemble Zuze as it is plunged into a cinematic underwater world. Combining live music with synchronized swimming and live feed projections, this site-specific performance uses a community pool as a place to explore ideas of pursuit, alienation, and the vocabulary of underwater movement.

Live music meets synchronized swimming at the Trinity Bellwoods pool.

A fun, sexy, and honest exploration of three men's experiences as queer disabled men. Andrew Gurza, Frank Hull and Ken Harrower have come together to speak to experiences that rarely, if ever, are seen on stage. Immediate and intimate, provocative and personal, Boys In Chairs brings a queer perspective to conversations around sex and disability.

Production support provided for the residency and workshop by Cahoots Theatre Projects

A fun, sexy, and honest exploration of queerness and disability.

Failure’s like a sting. The honey bee can only sting once, and then she dies. Catacomb takes a dark, spiritual dive into the battle between human nature and mother nature. Set in a working greenhouse, it is the story of an addict and born again naturalist seeking redemption through the purest creature of all: the honey bee.

An existential dive into the failures of an addict and her honeybees.

CdnStudio is an online ‘room’ that uses internet technology to bring collaborators from across Canada together. This digital tool takes separate video streams and blends them together in real time, allowing users to see and hear each other in the same digital ‘space’. This technology effectively removes one of the core requirements of theatre: that audience and performer must be present physically with each other. What does this mean for performance? At SummerWorks several artists will spend a morning experimenting with creating work across distance using CdnStudio and presenting it at regular intervals in the afternoon.

An online 'room' that uses internet technology to bring collaborators from across Canada together.

Aamjiwnaang, an indigenous community of 800 residents, is smothered by the Canadian petrochemical industry. Two sisters, Vanessa and Lindsay Gray, have dedicated themselves to fighting environmental racism and protecting their community's land and water. In The Chemical Valley Project, theatre-makers Kevin and Julia document and explore Canada’s ongoing relationship with energy infrastructure, its colonial past and present, and indigenous solidarity and reconciliation.

Vanessa and Lindsay fight for their community; Julia and Kevin try to document it.

Say goodbye to another year of the festival. Come for the drinks and celebration, and stay for the announcement of the the SummerWorks Awards.

Say goodbye to another year of the festival at our closing party and awards ceremony.

Come to a community meal where you gain the experience of communicating non-verbally, tracing back to the roots where words are not spoken and community togetherness forms organically. This community meal will feature nourishing, healthy meals that will just fill you right up. You will learn more about non-spoken communication and unity by taking care of others through nourishment and food.

A chance for our community to come together and share a delicious home-cooked meal.

Barak adé Soleil, Artistic Director of Tangled Art + Disability and disability arts scholar Eliza Chandler will co-facilitate a core dialogue and presentation on the ways in which cultural production and accessibility co-exist. What is disability aesthetics? And, how does our understanding of aesthetics expand when we consider how people access and relate to our work?

Presented in partnership with Generator, and Tangled Arts + Disability

Exploring the intersection of arts, culture, and disability.

Relaxed Performance (RP) as a cultural practice helps to make theatre spaces more comfortable and welcoming to audience members with autism spectrum disorders, sensory and communication disorders or learning disabilities. This workshop will explore how cultural producers, artists and arts organizations can more widely and independently integrate RP principles within their work and creative process. This workshop will be led by Access Activators, a Relaxed Performance pilot consulting project.

Presented in partnership with Generator, Tangled Arts + Disability, and the British Council

Everything you need to know about creating a relaxed, accessible environment for your art.

Welcome, Sensation-Seekers, to the origins of Alphabot, a robot boy with a human heart. Join our hero and a mashup of Toronto music scene notables as they attempt to save humanity from its tyrannical robot oppressors. In an eight-episode story that unfolds over the course of the festival, our hero battles the insidious seduction of the machine, tries to differentiate between human babies and pets, and explores the desolate wasteland of 2017.

A serial cabaret of theatre, music, art, whimsy and a robot apocalypse.

Ontario is out of water and a pair of bandits search for their last hope - a water diviner by the name of Penn. Stories say she can crack the world like a coconut and make water bubble to the surface with nothing but her hands. But the bandits aren't the only ones hunting her down. And what if there's nothing left for Penn to divine? An all woman cast in Natalie Frijia's post-apocalyptic wild west asks how we would survive in world without water. Would we turn to community... or to revenge?

An apocalyptic, all women western about a future Ontario without water.

In a contemporary dance-romp through a faux-spiritual aquatic neverland, the characters from Gossip Girl attempt to find themselves through dream ballet, crystal cocktails, mystery, and romantic scandal.

Dolphin protect us. Dolphin guide us. We don’t need to be saved. We need to be found.

A luxury soul search through dance in a faux-spiritual aquatic neverland.

Two men altered the course of civil rights and music, yet their stories were pushed into the shadows. Being extraordinary meant little if you were black and queer. One was a creative force behind the Duke Ellington Orchestra, the other devised one of the greatest demonstrations for freedom alongside Martin Luther King Jr. The Queer Songbook Orchestra intersect music with storytelling, illuminating the lives of Billy Strayhorn and Bayard Rustin.

Uncovering the obscured influence of two queer, black men in the 20th Century

With field recordings, audio effects, and a well timed air horn, Explosions for the 21st Century uses sound design to explore contemporary culture. The result is part lecture, part stand up, and part existential crisis. Written and performed by Chris Ross-Ewart the show is an erratic, real time, exploration of the why we make sound and how we listen.

A real time experiment using sound design to explore contemporary culture.

Oscar and Kate just moved to a new town. Everything is perfect. Until the roof starts to leak. A flood is coming, and Oscar hates water. The First Time I Saw the Sea is an interrogation into what we remember, and how we can remember something that never happened. Plunging into the mess of memory, an international ensemble from France, Norway, and Canada present a new work about imagination and evolution.

An attempt to separate reality from fantasy and memory from imagination.

Evoking our colonial and non-colonial histories that exist in the light of night as in the darkness of the day, GHOST DAYS awakens a collaboration with artists, audience, and spirit. Internationally celebrated performance artist Terrance Houle will work in residence over night at the Theatre Centre throughout the festival, culminating in a final performance that combines video, performance, photography, and music to conjure spirits and ghosts as audience and collaborators.

Presented in partnership with FADO Performance Art Centre

An experimental art adventure to conjure spirits and ghosts as audience and collaborators.

Going&Coming is an interactive text-based piece that accompanies attending live performance works. A companion piece to Audience Handbook (2014), this work attempts to bring attention to the moments just before and just after a performance to extend how we understand our role as audience members.

Expanding the moments just before and just after a performance.

Combining dance, experimental performance art, and self-help, How to Relax asks what it means to undergo a personal transformation in the company of others. Using an obscure self-help book from the 80's as an entry point into participation, seemingly simple instructions - or "psychotechniques" - become tools to generate a performance related to the authentic transformations that the author promises to deliver.

A collaborative project at the intersection of dance, performance art, and self-help.

The music of Dvořák mixes with the auras of the Virgin Mary and Beyoncé to invent a kind of Barbie doll under the influence - both divine and disposable. Part of Stabat Mater series of choreographic commissions, Icône Pop marks the meeting between choreographer and performer Mélanie Demers and composer and singer Mykalle Bielinski.

A playful clash of iconographies, featuring the auras of Beyoncé and the Virgin Mary.

The creators of The Stranger present a new interactive experience, divided into two episodes. Starting from your own home, you will receive a mysterious night time phone call. A voice invites you and a group of strangers to speak about your dreams and share your life story. The following night, you will enter the invisible city and be transported through a collective dream.

An immersive journey experienced over the course of 24 hours.

A performance that takes place in two places at once, Landline is a curious exposure to the feeling of being alone, together. You will become both the audience and the performer as you converse in real time via text message with a fellow participant in Hamilton and go on an audio-guided, experiential walking tour. As the experience unfolds, you are prompted to share stories, memories, and secrets as the urban landscape transforms into a backdrop for the relationship forming between two strangers.

Presented in partnership with the Hamilton Fringe Festival

A performance for two strangers in two different cities connected by text message.

An expressive, physical journey using memory and personal truth to explore the expectations of trying to fit the masculine ideal. Mixing explosive athleticism with compassion and sensitivity, Less looks at how gender inhabits our movements, interactions, and relationships.

An emotional and physical reflection on gender expectation through movement.

Six years ago, Gillian was hit by an SUV. She was on the sidewalk. Now, Gillian is a professional theatre artist. Let’s Try This Standing is about shitting on nurses, having sex with atrophied muscles, and being massaged by a therapist as he eats a bagel. It doesn’t offer easy answers, but it does let us be in a room together and be honest about how okay we are.

The story of Gillian, who fought off an SUV and a brick wall at the same time.

A concert/play hybrid about love, loss, manipulation, and politics. Musical collaborators Pam Patel and Jason White take you on a journey through the isolation of online dating, the distraction of internet surfing, and, eventually, the devastating fate of child soldiers. Featuring re-interpretations of text and music by Frederic Rzewski, Sam Melville, Friedrich Nietzsche, Bob Dylan, and more.

A concert/play hybrid about love, loss, manipulation, and politics.

Gentle immersion into the world of lullabies aboard a rocking chair, Lulling Time is a participatory sound installation nourished by encounters with citizens and their memories. It welcomes visitors in a suspended time and space away from the surrounding city buzz. Feet on the grass and head in the clouds, they wander through echoes of childhood listening to bedtime songs from all around the world.

A gentle immersion into the world of lullabies aboard a rocking chair.

In the tradition of Haitian storytelling, Mother Sea / Manman la Mer takes us on a journey that joins magic, love, and redemption. It is the story of a woman who can see the future in her dreams but is cut off from her abilities by her mother's fear. After healing from a mysterious sickness, her dreams disappear along with her sense of self. 25 years later, only her grandmother can restore her faith and her ancestral lineage.

A woman’s journey to reconnect with her heritage and recover her magic.

Ally and Josh spend every summer with their father as he goes from small town to small town working for a construction company in America. But this summer is different. This summer they grow up. This is the summer that everything changes.The Nails is a play about family. It is a play about faith. And it captures a world of freedom and extremism in all directions; love and cruelty exist within the same space here. Sometimes they feel like the same thing.

A new play about family, faith, love, freedom and extremism in all directions.

Garth Brooks is sad. His divorce is final, his album is not. With the help of his famous friends, Garth tries to make himself disappear. But nobody is prepared for who replaces him. Based on the infamous 1999 album "The Life of Chris Gaines", performance artist David Bernstein and writer-performer Jake Vanderham conjure a surreal hoedown featuring a live bluegrass band. Surf's up!

A queer exorcism of Garth Brooks' lost 90's alter-ego, Chris Gaines.

Every day two hundred species of plant, animal and insect disappear from the planet forever. Jordan Tannahill invites audiences to listen to the first two hundred notes of Chopin's Nocturne to mark each extinction and consider how, like a note in a score, each loss is both discrete and part of a grander system. And like the abbreviated recording itself, this unprecedented dying-off is far from finished. Part of The Arctic Cycle's Climate Change Theatre Action 2017.

An elegy for mass extinction. Part of The Arctic Cycle's Climate Change Theatre Action 2017.

An honest narrative exposes the complex feelings first generation Canadians experience toward their working class parents: frustration, pity, shame and love. Lucy, a twelve year old, studies as her mother, Maria, cleans the toilets of an office building. A labour dispute reveals the personal embarrassment, sacrifice and ultimately the power Maria and her colleagues share as they discover a melody of hope and change.

Presented in Partnership with the Sears Drama Festival

Cleaning ladies reclaim power and discover a melody of hope and change.

Part lecture, part meditation, and part threat, The Only Good Indian takes a shockingly raw look at where our similarities begin and where they end. Each night a different performer straps themselves into an extreme situation - forcing the audience to ask - what would you die for?

I know you'll stand in solidarity with me, but how close will you stand?

This is a rare opportunity to see new work at it’s earliest stage of creation. Five artists have been selected to share short excerpts of their next big idea with industry professionals and the general public. This is a seeding ground for new ideas and new creative relationships - a place for you to discover your new favourite artists.

Studio visits with local artists at the early stages of new work.

SummerWorks kicks off the Festival with a party at our Festival Hub. Join us for a night of music, dancing, pop-up performances and all around revelry.

SummerWorks kicks off the Festival with a party at our Festival Hub.

You are invited to enter an immersive environment of video, sound, design, and movement - a maze full of twists and turns, with surprise performances and interactive movement vignettes hiding just around the corner. Travelling in groups of six, you will have 25 minutes to wander through a world inspired by the four elements and our environmental footprint on the earth.

An immersive maze with movement, video, and design inspired by the four elements.

Toronto’s beloved bombshell, drag queen Pearle Harbour, returns in Chautauqua. Come gather under the milky folds of her beautiful tent, and be sheltered from the inharmony of our post-Truth world. Created by Dora-nominated writer/performer Justin Miller, Chautauqua is an immersive extravaganza: part cabaret, part tragicomedy, and part tent revival. The world may be falling apart, but Pearle will show you that there’s more that unites us than divides us.

Drag queen Pearle Harbour leads an old-time tent revival for a post-Truth world.

Mark Correia is a world record-holding magician, comedian, and all-around entertainer. He exists only to impress you. Completely devoted to performing the perfect show for every audience, his dedication knows no bounds. Mentalism. Straitjacket escapes. Russian roulette. He will go to dangerous lengths to entertain. But how far is too far? Be prepared: he will do things you don’t understand. Here’s the catch: he won’t either.

A one person comedy magic show that is desperate to win your approval.

Two performers play muse for each other and their choreographer, meeting and missing through the reflection of creative impulses. Together they negotiate nostalgia, narrative, and connection through choreography. Originally performed in 2009 at the former Theatre Centre, PORTRAIT marks a period in Toronto wherein dancetheatre was in question and crisis. Its revival offers an opportunity to celebrate these artists' personal investment into an impossible form.

An intimate dance of movement, music, inspiration, and the impulse to create.

Inspired by the pleasures found in a Montreal trans bar, Manhattan vogue balls, Berlin fetish parties and Portland strip clubs, the virtuosic dancer-choreographer Gerard Reyes forges intimate connections with the audience by breaking the rules and conventions of these spaces. It's a celebration of freedom, glamour, seduction and the unifying power of pleasure - set to the songs of Janet Jackson

An interactive dance performance set to the songs of Janet Jackson.

An actor is offered a chance at stardom if he is willing to play up a stereotype he does not identify with. Published in the Summer 2009 issue of Canadian Theatre Review, Professionally Ethnic is a comedic political satire about the awkward way multiculturalism is implemented in Canadian theatre.

An actor is offered stardom if he is willing to play a stereotype.

On the front steps of The Theatre Centre - and former entrance to the Carnegie Library - artist Golboo Almani invites you to engage in a street level public experience. Choose from a small library of books and the artist will read to you out loud as you travel around the neighbourhood.

A participatory performance work engages audiences in a street level public experience.

The land acknowledgement perfunctorily performed by rote will not serve the fraught, complex project of reconciliation; indeed, it may, at the end of the day, render such an endeavor an exercise in futility. How do artists go beyond the learning of names, or geography, or historical fact to begin decolonizing their practice? How do we re-imagine our relationship with this land upon which we create? Cole Alvis (Métis) and Jill Carter (Anishinaabe-Ashkenazi) lead a workshop for artists on how we can more actively engage in (re)conciliation.

Presented in partnership with Generator

Learning how to move beyond land acknowledgement towards a more critical and inclusive practice

Reality and fantasy blur for a woman playing a spoon in Beauty and the Beast. A man reconsiders a contract signed in blood. And the world wide web disappears into thin air. Reality Theatre is a fast moving collection of short, interwoven plays that explore our anxieties about change, the acceleration of technology, and maintaining human relationships in a world quickly becoming less human.

Bloody contracts, YouTube & a talking spoon. Do u know where your soul is?

An autobiographical, audio-based artwork about Shannon’s experience of falling critically ill with a rare brain infection and her journey of rehabilitation with an acquired brain injury. experience the show through headphones in a hospital bed, where you will enter a three-dimensional soundscape and viscerally experience Shannon’s medical journey and re-integration into the world with a hidden disability.

Part of DxT, a collaboration between Dublin Fringe and SummerWorks supported by Ireland Park Foundation.

An immersive audio experience about brain trauma, rehabilitation, and hope.

Using a blend of physical theatre, shadow puppetry, and projections, Rootless traces the path of a young woman cut off from the land she loves. As an outsider in her new home and facing loss, she travels through a world of dreams, djin, talking animals, a mermaid in the desert, and the moon to find solace.

Exploring relationships of place and memories through shadows.

Inside a dark, vibrating, isolated world, three individuals desperately search through a dense labyrinth. They are alone, but their instinct for survival reveals a recognizable human vulnerability in the darkness. You are the witnesses. Performed by Jane Alison McKinney, Naishi Wang, and Kathia Wittenborn; Ruin Road explores the tension between our natural and mediated environments and the pull of individuals to the whole.

A contemporary dance work inspired by dystopia, isolation, and survival instincts.

Amy has a hard time feeling present. Liam, her loving boyfriend, will do whatever he can to wake her up - whether Amy’s ready for it or not. Tenderness turns into teasing turns into BDSM, and Amy’s boundaries around safety and danger become blurred. At what point does Liam’s concern become coercion? Can Amy trust Liam’s good intentions, or is presence a place she needs to find on her own?

Winner of the 2016 Wildfire National Playwriting Competition.

Between two lovers, tenderness turns into teasing, turns into BDSM.

Blindfolded and sitting in a moving chair, one audience member at a time is guided through this immersive performance. The Smile Off Your Face invites you into a sensory experience, moving through a room of imaginative wonder. Surrounded by eight performers, embark on a one-of-a-kind journey that's all about you.

A 25-minute journey of the imagination for one audience member and eight performers.

Beginning with the story of her family’s escape from Cambodia, playwright and performer Chantria Tram chronicles her struggle to balance the traditional values of her Khmer parents with her own emerging beliefs. Someone Between is a humorous, emotional, and vulnerable contemplation of cultural adaptation, migration, and the place between who we are, who we were, and who we are becoming.

A daughter battles to balance family traditions and her own individuality.

Theresa is haunted by the traditional Coast Salish story of the Salmon Spirit, and the death of her mother who drowned in the Pacific Ocean. Now that she’s pregnant, her disconnected family must prepare for a new generation. Playwright Cheyenne Scott offers an Indigenous, multimedia family drama about the struggle to reconnect to family, culture, community, and land.

An Indigenous family drama woven through traditional Coast Salish stories.

Our nightly party on the SummerWorks Back Patio plays host to an eclectic mix of local artists, musicians, and DJs. The perfect way to end your day at SunmmerWorks.

Party on our back patio with new special guests every night.

Everyone is annihilating each other. Or dying of a plague. The patriarchy thinks it can set things straight by building a monument made of gold. Inspired by a scene from Romeo & Juliet that no one seems to remember, these violent delights asks: Why do we think a memorial can represent history and loss? How can a specific monument enfold larger issues of cultural memory and capital? And what, if anything, is sacred?

The final scene of Romeo and Juliet. A temporary memorial. The promise of a monument.

A solo, a duet. With a blanket, with hair. Through comfort, protection, hostility and weight, the work touches on being enough. Trying to get out of bed, take it in, keep it out, change, or make change. The possibility to hold sorrows of the world, and one’s own, while not forgetting the day to day. There is a lot to do. And a lot to don’t.

A duet with a blanket, with the weight of all there is to do, and to don’t.

Quand Hadès enlève Perséphone et l'emmène vivre en enfer, elle est forcée à faire face aux réalités sombres de son nouveau monde. Un mari répugnant, un palais vide, des pensées qu'elle repousse depuis des années. Quand ses sentiments et ses désirs les plus cruels se personnifient devant elle, elle commence graduellement à leur accorder plus de pouvoir. À travers son nouveau rôle comme reine de l'enfer, Perséphone doit faire un choix entre sa liberté et sa morale, et faire face à ses propres démons.

Presented in Partnership with the Sears Drama Festival

Quand Hadès enlève Perséphone et l'emmène vivre en enfer, elle est forcée à faire face aux réalités sombres de son nouveau monde.

In the summer of 2015, Erin Brubacher and Christine Brubaker walked the 700km migration route of their Mennonite ancestors, from Pennsylvania to Ontario. This summer they’re heading back to Pennsylvania for a family reunion and will create a new performance during the seven-hour car ride home, a distance that took them 32 days on foot. Welcome the Brubach/kers back to Toronto the moment they arrive at a one-time-only potluck performance. Tickets to this show are PWYC, or free if you bring a potluck dish to share.

A 7 hour road-trip, a 700km walk, a family reunion, and a potluck performance.

A collective or professional and non-professional artists look at politics from a female perspective to bridge Iran’s political history with life in Canada, today. Plunging the audience into darkness, the ensemble recounts stories of personal and social upheaval, punctuated by powerful images revealed in fleeting flashes of light.

A depiction of women's resistance through dictatorship and patriarchy.

Units 4356 and 4357 wake up in the institution which they call their home. They complete their daily routine and conversation like every day before. But today everything changes. Today 4357 has experienced a dream.

Presented in Partnership with the Sears Drama Festival

Today everything changes. Today Unit 4357 will experience a dream.

Co-Directed by Governor General Award winning playwright Judith Thompson and world-renowned singer / 'vocalographer' Fides Krucker, The Waves offers a unique sonic experience with a score that stretches the boundaries of vocal expression on stage. Written and performed by Laura Quigley, the play is based on three generations of birth stories and explores birth, motherhood, and the dark undercurrent of one woman's struggle with post-partum depression.

A unique vocal soundscape underscores a story of postpartum depression.

A new, intimate, probing solo dance-theatre work that seeks to explore a plethora of ideas around the female black body.

A new dance work exploring a plethora of ideas around the female black body.

Linda Griffiths was an iconic Canadian playwright and actress. Priscila Uppal is a poet. When Linda was fighting breast cancer, Priscila was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive cancer called synovial sarcoma. During Priscila’s surgery, Linda passed away. But during Priscila’s chemotherapy, Linda unexpectedly returned and the two friends engaged in magical, insightful, and bitingly funny conversations about their experiences—and their understanding of the present and the beyond.

Two women with big imaginations facing the unknown.

This is the story of Eva, a Cree teenage girl, and her journey through the maze of a White Man’s high school. In a hilarious new work from emerging First Nations artist Darla Contois, Eva goes on a quest for identity and spirituality through the hallways of teen angst, racism, and an evil prom queen. Both poetic and humorous, White Man’s Indian is a moving story of memory, courage, alienation, and belonging.

A Cree teenage girl's journey through the maze of a White Man's high school.