PODCAST ALTERNATIVES

The play explores the evolving relationship between Michel and Dave, as well as the tensions between Colleen and Angel. Michel and Dave's relationship becomes strained when Dave breaks his veganism, leading to an altercation. Colleen and Angel's relationship is also tested when Colleen invites Angel's childhood friends, and it is revealed that Angel may have ulterior motives for being with her. Yvonne criticizes Colleen's teaching of Native literature, believing only a Native person can accurately represent the experiences. The play also addresses stereotypes and expectations surrounding Native identity. Hi guys, my name is Yanis and we're back for a daily dose of Frontier Play. Today I have the honor to welcome three guests, which are Yacine, Ferdaus and Rania. So let's not waste any more time and let's begin. So Yacine, how does the relationship between Michel and Dale evolve through the play? First of all, from what I've seen, their relationship evolves in a really humoristic yet also in a sad way. At the beginning of the play we could see that they were not that strange and looked like a normal American-Canadian couple. Michel and Dave are invited for dinner in Angel's and Colleen's house. Michel is vegan and Dave became vegan with Michel not long ago. As soon as they entered the house, Dave smelled the scent of a mousse roast. He then described that he was a professional in terms of meat before he turned vegan. Everyone in the house drank wine here and there, but it took no time for Michel to drink too much and become drunk. Indeed, she finished at least two bottles by herself. The couple were very friendly with each other. During the first part of the play, Dave offered to take care of the mousse cooking. When Yvonne and Bobby arrived, they quickly took the attention away from Dave and Michel. Indeed, they barely talked during that part of the play. After a while, Bobby decided to help Dave cook the meat roast. Michel went into the kitchen looking for wine, but instead caught Dave eating a piece from the meat roast. Very angry, she snapped on him and said that she felt betrayed. An altercation between the two started. They both expressed what was on their heart to each other. Dave said that he always did what Michel wanted. For example, he became a vegan to please his wife, who was absolutely disgusted by animal cruelty and that she was the main character in their relationship. She never really cared about his interest as long as she got what she wanted. Michel then tried to deny everything and said that it was better for him to become vegan anyway. After this, Michel stormed out of the room and Dave let her go. After a while, Dave returned to his mind and followed her outside running. And you Yanis, tell me, what did you think about the play? If I understood what you said, the couple were pickling and interacting with the others about their lives in the first part of the play, but the laughing quickly stopped as Yvonne and Bobby entered the scene. And you Rania, how does the relationship between Colleen and Angel evolve through the play? So we first saw Colleen and Angel as a happy couple. They looked so in love and perfect for each other. It quickly became less than a fairy tale when Colleen mentioned that her surprise for her boyfriend was actually inviting his childhood friends, Yvonne and Bobby. That's when the tension started to build up because Angel got upset for her prying into his life. The more we saw them, the less perfect they actually looked. When Colleen and Michel had a time alone, they discussed men and Colleen raised some concerns about how secretive and close her boyfriend is. He doesn't mention his past or talk about his reserve whatsoever. While Colleen is constantly telling Angel what to do, like what he should wear for the guests or what type of books he should write or read, she doesn't acknowledge that she's trying to change him. When all the guests were there, the atmosphere was pretty tense. Yvonne complicated things when she told Colleen that her relationship with Angel was actually more than just a friendship and she threw some shades at her all night while Angel wasn't defending her. So their relationship just took a sad turn when Colleen learned that Angel was probably just with her because his mother wanted him to marry a white woman. As the night kept unveiling a lot of truths, Angel and Colleen were left alone and started talking about their issues. Asking herself questions and realizing that their love was a lie from the beginning since Angel knew who she was and he knew he had lied to her when he was younger. He actually made up stories about his culture that Colleen teaches to this day. Colleen and Angel's relationship is strange due to both their age gap and the disparities in their cultural backgrounds. So what seemed to be like an idyllic love story actually took a dark turn and it was worsened when Angel's past deception about his cultural background came to light. Yvonne's insinuations and Angel's lack of defense further strained their relationship. Not only did the age gap and the cultural differences coupled with dishonesty created a rift forcing them to confront the painful truth that their love was founded on deception and misunderstanding. Oh wow that was pretty interesting. Now let's move on to you Ferdows. How does Yvonne criticize Colleen's posture as a teacher of Native literature? So Yvonne feels like it's now Colleen's place to be teaching the Native's life and history. For Yvonne, Colleen cannot coherently represent the perspective of a Native person. In her view, Colleen's use of the book about legends that Rania talked about which is called The Legends about Ontario Ojibwe is evidence that even a crucial book in her curriculum is rigged and not authentic. The backstory of this book is that Bobby and Angel were interviewed by the writers when they were young and they invented multiple fictional stories so that they could get money and buy candy from the stores. This led to multiple fake legends being told about the Natives to thousands of students across multiple universities. Yvonne also believes that only a Native person can genuinely capture the experiences her people endured. Additionally, she questions Colleen's connection to her Jewish culture revealing that maybe Colleen is trying to fill a void by obsessing over her own people. Just to know that Colleen cannot even speak Hebrew but she can fluently speak Angel's language. This way of thinking shows that Colleen's endeavor might be about self-discovery and fulfillment rather than genuine and respectful understanding of Native culture. All these arguments were used by Yvonne to prove to Colleen that she has no respect for teaching careers and that her admiration of the Native's culture is actually a bad thing and can lead her to an unhealthy obsession which is already in place because Colleen centered her whole life around a culture that wasn't hers. What about you Yanis? What is the play saying about Native identity? So the play is saying that Natives are seen like exotic creatures. It tries to prevent stereotypes around the Native communities. We can see examples such as when Dave asks Gosh questions when Yvonne and Bobby show up or when Angel makes a joke about alcoholism or the moose from the movie. There is a conflict between the Native Colleen wants Angel to be and the Native he actually is. He doesn't write deep things about his culture like Yvonne does and that somehow makes him a bad Native. Angel is the perfect representation of what society expects Natives to be, victims of colonization. As if they couldn't be anything more than that, we can see that Bobby's character has a lot of frustration and he expresses that anger towards Michelle, mostly when he keeps asking questions that made her seem uncultured and a bit racist. There were a lot of tensions regarding the Native's topic and a lot of controversies were seen. I think that Native identity can be defined as a whole and each person has his own experiences and stories. Every Native lives a certain way and is unique in their own way. And when I say this, it doesn't rely only on the Native people, but on everybody. It's not because of your origins or your ethnicity that you shouldn't be yourself. So well, that's it for today. We hope you tune in for our next episode about Shakespeare.