August 1, 2024
Started in 2018, the Indigenous Artist Spotlight series is intended to foster greater awareness and understanding of the strength and diversity of Indigenous art available in Ontario and beyond. Find all of our past
Spotlight interviews here. This month, we spoke with Justin Neal.
Justin Neal juggled day jobs in marketing and editorial production in San Francisco and New York with amateur theatre at night before relocating to his family’s traditional Squamish territory to earn a Joint MFA in Creative Writing and Theatre from the University of British Columbia in 2015. The founder of Holy Crow Arts, the fledgling theatre company premiered his play So Damn Proud in 2021 and will premiere Keepers of the Salish Sea in November 2024. Neal’s screenplays have received development funding from Telefilm, the Indigenous Screen Office, and Creative BC. He is an alumnus of the Toronto-based Canadian Film Centre’s Norman Jewison Film Program Writers’ Lab (2022).
Please take a moment to introduce yourself to our audience for those who may not know you.
I grew up on Bainbridge Island, Washington just west of Seattle. A member of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish Nation), I am descended from the Nahanee and Lacket Joe families in what is now known as Vancouver, BC, a place I have called home for the past decade. In my youth I visited occasionally with my granny, Dorothy Almojuela (nèe Nahanee, who was raised on the Eslha7an reserve in North Vancouver), and my mom, Colleen. Having spent the late 1990s into the 2010s juggling day jobs in marketing and editorial production in San Francisco & New York with amateur theatre at night, I was fortunate to make it out alive as many of those years found me steeped in booze and hard partying. Thankfully I found recovery. I then took a leap of faith to focus full-time on dramatic writing leaving the Big Apple to pursue a Joint MFA in Creative Writing and Theatre at UBC.
I aim to write offbeat stories that weave comedy with high-stakes drama, creating tales that aspire to uplift and transform. With a slate of projects for the stage and screen I have placed in dozens of screenwriting competitions, programs, and residencies across North America, and had the opportunity to spend half of 2022 in Toronto as an alumnus of the Canadian Film Centre’s Norman Jewison Film Program Writers’ Lab.
I am infinitely grateful for this new direction in the second half of my life, knowing full well that only a handful of lucky people get to pursue the absolute gift of storytelling every single day.
In 2021, Holy Crow presented its first production So Damn Proud, a show written and directed by you. Could you tell us about this work? What was the experience like of producing, writing and directing this play?
So Damn Proud had an unusual journey to make it to the stage. Especially since I vowed to never produce my own work again…
A friend and I founded a now long defunct theatre in the Oakland, California called The Oakland Playhouse (circa 2000). Our theatre was ambitious and financially challenged. I produced a couple of plays, and it is mind blowing to think how much energy we all expended to put these plays on. We only paid the theatre venue and some print advertising (ah, the old days of news weekly print ads). In retrospect I am eternally grateful for all the people who worked for free!
Suffice to say though, I burnt myself out, and so, I promised myself I would never do that again.
So, fast forward 15 years later to 2015 and I have this new play… So Damn Proud is about reconciling that inner turmoil many mixed race people feel caught between worlds. For me, I never felt comfortable in my youth within dominant culture (and the white supremacy embedded within much of it, especially in the 1980s), and also, growing up white-presenting and off-reserve, I was uneasy with my Indigenous identity.
The play follows a brother and sister who find themselves on opposite ends of that spectrum who come to terms with who they are and where they come from after dealing with, and ultimately, healing over a terrible tragedy that strikes the family.
The play was selected for Native Voices at the Autry’s festival of new plays in 2015 where I got to workshop a draft in a staged reading with incredible actors. And then I presented another workshop on my own dime in 2016 in the lobby of the Seattle Repertory Theatre — featuring another wonderful cast including the Golden Globe winning, Oscar-nominated, Lily Gladstone who, not surprisingly, did a phenomenal job reading for lead character, Joanne.
Following that, interested theatres on both sides of the border had nice things to say about the play but no one signed on to produce it. By 2019, with nothing happening, I went back on my promise to myself. It was time to produce again, BUT this time it was different. I was successfully awarded grants from Canada Council, BC Arts Council, First Peoples’ Cultural Council, a Vancouver cultural grant, and also one from Squamish Nation to produce it. No one was going to work for free!
Ah, but then covid… Despite that, we got a green light from the City of Vancouver during that late-stage covid haze to use the Annex in September 2021. And short on time, and not enough money left, I was unable to hire a director, so I elected to do it myself or the show wouldn’t go on.
A side note, only one reviewer made it because critics were still not reviewing shows, and ironically the one critic’s mostly positive review was tempered by his dislike of my direction. Touché!
The two-week run was phenomenal. People came out in relative droves masked with vaccine proof in-hand during a pandemic. The actors, the creative team, our Squamish cultural experts, well, everyone, was absolutely the best. I would love to remount the work some day (and do some revising with another director). The archive with info on the cast and team is on our website: https://holycrowarts.com/so-damn-proud
You are the founder of Holy Crow Arts Society. Could you tell us about what inspired you to create Holy Crow? What are you most proud of when it comes to that work?
We are still a new fledgling little theatre bird. I began Holy Crow in early 2020 out of the desire to produce So Damn Proud. The theatre began as a place to produce my plays. But evidenced by our quietness over ’22 and ’23, as I focused on screenwriting, in order for Holy Crow to function it needs more than me as artistic generator.
The plan now is to grow Holy Crow into a theatre and performing arts centre grounded on Coast Salish lands. While we love the other theatres and people who run those companies in Vancouver, there is an opportunity to honour our ancestors from these lands by presenting works that connect with that relationship, engaging with the lived experiences that resonates here since time immemorial. I am moved by the collaborations with fellow Coast Salish descendants we work with in presenting the work to the public.
Keepers of the Salish Sea, our next production premiering in November 2024, is a perfect work to evolve Holy Crow, and if it all comes off as well as I think it might (cross fingers) it would surely be my proudest achievement.
Your upcoming work Keepers of the Salish Sea is set to premiere this upcoming winter. Could you tell us a little bit about this project and what audience members can expect?
We had our first sharing of the draft of Keepers of the Salish Sea on May 3, 2024 with a wonderful cast including Tasha Faye Evans, Cole Vandale, Odessa Shuquaya, Aaron M. Wells, Meegwun Fairbrother, Mitchell Saddleback, Sarah Deptuck, directed by Reneltta Arluk. The main goal of presenting this work was to share it with my cousins in the Squamish Ocean Canoe Family as well as some trusted folks in the community. I sought to begin the work in a good way and have them hear the work first, in order to follow protocol, presenting some cultural knowledge and songs in the work in a closed setting. We then identified what permissions and further teachings are needed in order to share certain cultural knowledge to the broader public in November, and also, to collaborate with them once we go into rehearsals in the fall. I was so pleased they were so generous with there support and encouragement of the play.
In a nutshell, the play honours a phenomenal cultural practice thousands of years old, nearly erased by colonization — navigating the Salish Sea in canoes dug out from massive cedar trees. The play is also a loosely based autobiographical story about facing drug addiction and finding the path to recovery. And one man’s journey to find himself, as it infuses Coast Salish knowledge with the pressing environmental and social issues of our day.
That sounds quite heavy but the play is funny. It is always such a joy to hear good actors read scripts out loud. For the May 3rd reading they instinctively got the sense of tempo and humor. As of this moment, I’m thrilled to have with some awesome collaborators I’ve previously worked with on board, and to be lead by the inimitable director, Reneltta Arluk. I’m extremely excited for the rehearsals to begin and to get to share this latest work with the world in November.
Is there anything else that you would like to share? Do you have any upcoming work that we should look out for?
There are a couple projects in the hands of decision makers, and I am currently involved in a documentary series about another Coast Salish cultural practice that I am loving working on (I’m not at liberty to share). And beginning in September I will be a Resident Fellow at one of the local universities here — again not sure if I can say yet — where I will be sharing perspectives and processes for the world premiere of Keepers of the Salish Sea and starting work on another story close to my family. (Wow, that was all quite vague, sorry.) Hopefully some day soon one of these projects makes its way out to Ontario!
To stay up to date on what Holy Crow is up to visit holycrowarts.com and on Instagram and Facebook @holycrowarts. Chen kw’enman-túmi, my sincere thanks.
PHOTO CREDIT FOR SOCIAL
Justin Neal @justinbneal, Founder and Artistic Director @holycrowarts
Photo by Olivia Vanderwal
T-shirt design by Rudy Romero @rudy07romero
Keep up with Justin Neal
Official Website: https://holycrowarts.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HolyCrowArts
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/justinbneal/ and https://www.instagram.com/holycrowarts