The Firehall Arts Centre presents award-winning Cree actress Michelle Thrush’s Inner Elder (until May 31, Firehall Theatre), a solo show exploring the power of transformation. Written and performed by Thrush, Inner Elder is a memoir drawn from her personal experiences and honours the resilience of her family.

“We are resilient because of our ability to laugh and tease and share our stories with each other,” she shares. “I have always loved doing comedy, and this show is a testament of how important laughter is.”

Understanding pain

Thrush is well known for playing Gail Stoney in Blackstone—a role for which she won a Gemini Award in 2011. Broadcasted on the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network, the show portrays an Indigenous community living on a reserve and engages with topics like racism, alcoholism and water pollution. Thrush has also appeared in many films, most recently in Sanjay Patel’s The Birds Who Fear Death (2024).

“As a film actor, I have played some very traumatic roles in my career,” she reflects. “For my show, I wanted to be sure to honour my journey and the journey of my parents and family.”

Inner Elder was first commissioned by The High Performance Rodeo, an international festival for live art held annually in Calgary; it then premiered at their 2018 festival. The event organizers were already familiar with Thrush’s Kookum Martha, a comedic character she played for over 30 years.

Focused on a young Indigenous girl growing up in Alberta, Inner Elder touches on substance abuse, aliens, and grandmothers who serve as guiding forces. For the actress, the show naturally developed into a solo endeavour.

“I wanted to explore my life and that meant it would only be me on the stage talking about some of my memories in a way only I could do,” she shares.

In Cree, Kookum means “your grandmother.” As a child, Thrush witnessed her grandmother’s pain, but did not understand it. Nor did she comprehend why her grandmother did not want to speak about her childhood.

“I grew up holding a lot of the shame of my mother and my grandmother, both being brown Neyhiyo (Cree) women living in a world that rejected them,” she recalls. “It was in the silent looks I would receive as a child that told me I was ‘less than.”

Power in comedy

This all changed when the late Honourable Murray Sinclair led the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). Started in 2008, the TRC sought to uncover, document and share the truth of the residential school system and the suffering it caused Indigenous peoples.

“That was when all the pieces fell into place as to why my family was so lost in their pain,” Thrush recalls. “That is why so many of our Elders are superheroes; they survived a system designed to destroy them, and we are the truth of why they survived.”

Thrush is also aware of the difficulties involved in sharing one’s personal stories on stage. Describing the experience as an “intimate” one, she relies on one of her most well-known tools, that of comedy.

“I also knew I wanted to do it in a way that didn’t make me a victim of the
circumstances,” she says. “I wanted to use comedy to share what I had been through as
an Indigenous woman.”

Like the other elders in her community, Thrush’s kookum remains a superhero, having survived the residential school system. With belief in the power of storytelling and the “power of clown,” she hopes the audience leaves Inner Elder “feeling happy and fulfilled.”

“Many people talk about your inner child and how we need to access our own inner child to help heal,” she adds. “I created this term to say we all have that inner elder inside that helps us heal.”

For more information, see https://www.firehallartscentre.ca/event/inner-elder/.