Cafe Daughter is a one-person show about a young girl, Yvette Wong, growing up in Saskatchewan during the 50′s and 60′s. Yvette is unique, her mother is Cree and her father is Chinese. It’s a story about a girl fighting loneliness, isolation and racism as she carves out her own place in the world.
The play was inspired by the life of Dr. Lilian E. Quan Dyck. She’s a well-known neuro-scientist and a current member of Canada’s Senate.
It was recently produced by Whitehorse’s Gwaandak Theatre, starring PJ Prudat and directed by Yvette Nolan. It toured eight communities in the Yukon in May, 2011. It won three Bob Couchman awards for outstanding play, outstanding female performance and outstanding direction.
Here’s a review of the Gwaandak production from What’s Up Yukon: Honest Talk Café.
Update
The Gwaandak Theatre production will tour Canada in 2013. It’ll start in Toronto, co-presented by Native Earth Performing Arts, on January 15th and run till the 20th. It will then be co-presented by Magnus Theatre in Thunder Bay from January 24th till February 9th. The tour will close in Vancouver where it will be part of the Talking Stick Festival, February 25th to 27th.
Not only that, but Saskatoon’s Saskatchewan Native Theatre Company will produce their own version of the play that will run from April 19th to the 28th.
Scirocco Drama will publish Cafe Daughter in the fall of 2013.
