Agency

Broken Record Productions—The Asper Centre for Theatre & Film (U of W)

I remember spending about a year on a community project once, where we would knock on doors and chat with folks about politics, the economy, the world and their neighbourhood. Twice, we spoke with CFS (Child and Family Services) employees, both Indigenous women, and both trying all they could to try and change the agency from inside, both aware and pessimistic about their chances, aware that structural problems are not often defeated by personal virtue, if not in those exact terms.

Agency explores the multifaceted trauma inflicted by and animating our systems intended to account for the safety of children. Without going into too many details, I greatly appreciated the malevolent representative of these systems, an ageless “protector” of children, shifting from protector of white British Empire in the past to saviour of international victims of prejudice that only adoption to Canada could “rescue” them from. Most of all, I appreciated how even he fell victim to the trauma, trapped within mazes of bureaucracy and pain, despite acting as if he was in control.

Josh Fidelak