In this introduction and before the presentation of this play, I would like to speak about the context, motivation, and effect of writing "Life is a masquerade." I don’t wish to give you an explanation of the play since I would like to invite your response after seeing the play. (You can e-mail your response to mgiard@interchange.ubc.ca). I do want to address what was catalyzed in the play and share with you some ideas that emerged during the writing. I asked myself what other purpose is served by telling my family story. Succinctly, I will explain how my research questions, methodology, and future work in the community emerged from the writing, performing, and sharing of this personal story.

Recently, I took a course with Elvi Whittaker at the University of British Columbia titled "Writing Ethnography from Realism to Postmodernism." As part of the course assignment, I explored feminist issues and focused mostly on notions of femininity and gender definitions. Judith Butler, Julia Kristeva, and Monique Wittig were on the top of my reading list. I became really interested in the ‘theory of masquerade’ elaborated by Luce Irigaray and Joan Riviere and Jacques Lacan. The feminist literature on masquerade is wide ranging and the question once asked by Judith Butler remains to be answered. She asks, "whether masquerade conceals femininity that might be understood as genuine and authentic or whether masquerade is the means by which femininity is produced" (1999:204). I tend to agree with the latter: masquerade is what women do in order to fulfill not their own desires but those of the male gender. Is there a difference between genuine womanliness and the masquerade? According to Riviere (1929:38) and Butler (in Jackson, 1998:137-138) they are the same as a result of our socially constructed meaning.

The more I read on masquerade the more my inner performer wanted to ‘act out’. Images of puppets and masks kept dancing in my head. Filled with memories of my suicidal sister, my dreams turned into nightmares. I did not want to see them nor think about them. I fought and yet had a strong sense that I had to write my sister’s story. At the time I did not understand all the implications of that activity, but soon realized that many feelings shared in the confidentiality of a counseling office about my sister’s suicide had not left my physical and spiritual being. It became also clear that many issues related to her suicide were rooted in the family history. Those issues could not have been addressed in the family without creating more abusive situations. The need to write about the sources of my sister’s despair grew bigger. Her despair was inevitably related to the incestuous overpowering family trauma and the consequent maladaptive behaviors in our lives. Why is it that some people survive this kind of trauma and some others don't? How did I become resilient and she didn't is also a question worth answering but beyond the scope of this presentation. This presentation is about my sister’s story. Is it fiction? Is it reality? Is it my story? I can only say that it is my interpretation, as good or bad as it is, and that it could be many women’s story.

Inspired by the work of these above mentioned post-modernist feminist, I deconstruct the Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalytical definitions of "Women as the Other". I look at my sister’s suicide (Nicole in the play) from this point of view: I understand her suicide as an ecological multifactors event, reflecting the contradictions and weaknesses of a world we are trying to recreate and define. Without a post-modern look at (we) llness and (i) llness, we mistakenly intervene with the "i" as in illness, without inviting the "we" as in wellness, when helping a suicidal person.

The telling of my sister’s suicide and of my interactions with family members was not something I intended to do in academia. The long history of personal narrative as research is one of being invisible, inaudible and ignored (Langellier, 1989). The main reason for ideological discourse being privileged over social and performative discourses is the accusation of lack of clarity and lack of purposes. My experience with clarity and purposes is that they keep changing and evolving so much that it is difficult to take account of these transformations and still be accurate. After the first presentation in Elvi’s class, new insights and ideas emerged. I experienced a wide variety of emotions, thoughts, physical impairments and spiritual transformations that I think are worth talking about.

First, it is important to say that, before I started writing, I did not anticipate any healing or transformative miracle, nor did I have a research question. Actually I did not expect anything. Healing happened as I was remembering and going further into the cellular memory of the events mentioned in the play. The remembering happened while writing the first draft of the play for Elvi’s class. It has evolved since then in this current version as a result not only of conversations and reflections with friends and colleagues but also as a result of the interactions with different performers in the play itself. After each rehearsal, I processed and observed my emotional and psychological reaction to revealing family secrets: incest and suicide. Feelings of shame and guilt were slowly leaving my body.

As an example of emerging purposes, while re-writing the second version for this conference, it became important to incorporate the wisdom acquired from the first learning experience. This new version is filled with a strong desire to remember the events more from feelings of love and compassion than from those of shame and hatred. The transformation of feelings of hatred into feelings of compassion is one example of the healing purpose of writing this play.

Secondly, this play is an interpretation of what I consider the background history of my sister’s mental illness. It must be understood though that I have a holistic approach to wellness, and believe that body mind and spirit cannot be dissociated and that we are all related. A mental or physical illness is the result of an imbalance in the system, which could be caused by a lack of meaning in one’s life.

My own meaning making of my sister’s suicide crystallized during the process of writing. Since meaning making is healing in my understanding of wellness, it soon became a strong motivation to continue writing even though my physical body was showing signs of resistance with acute pain in my hips and back. Meaning and healing happened as I allowed myself to be with strong feelings of loss and body memories of sexual abuse while releasing mentally and spiritually the source of the hurt common both to my sister and myself. In other words, my sister’s story acted as a counter transference effect of my own experience within the family. The physical emotional cognitive and spiritual transformations happened as a result of a greater awareness of this phenomenon, the holistic environmental factors on well-being.

A third function of this play is to engage an audience in the conversation. To often we do not pay enough attention on how the story is told and the dynamics of the storytelling performance event. Moments from this play might stay with you and bring their own meaning to you, at their own time. You might make sense of it or not, now or later. What matters is to investigate your own positioning about suicide and consider its social environmental aspect. Many traditional First Nations people have understood that mental well-being cannot be separated from the context of the community (France & McCormick, 1995).

My assumptions in the foreground are that if we were to consider the whole environment (emotional, cognitive, physical and spiritual) when looking at illness, we might re-define and re-think treatment and therapeutic interventions. This play is suggesting that many underlying factors for my sister’ suicide were left out of the spectrum when her medical treatment was designed. However, these could only be speculations since she is not here to undertake any other kind of treatment. My intention here is not to prove the medical system wrong but to let my embodied feelings and thoughts speak about the complexities of our existence.

Walking on the path traced by Carolyn Ellis and other scholars rethinking methodologies, I propose a performative narrative (Fels, 1999; Giard, 2000). Filled with emotions in order to attain awareness, shaking conventional research methodologies, I choose to perform my research. Together we explore taboos, silences, pain and death, and engage in the conversation on violence.

I take responsibility for shaping the play, giving a voice to the experience of both the living and dead beings. I have no recorded tape to provide evidence only the recorded memories of our conversations and letters, real and imagined. I recall the voices of suffering and despair shared in sacred and intimate moments. The witnessing of those traumatic moments is my testimony, which might or might not be accepted as valid.

The writing of this play has been one of healing and transformation. When asking the question" How could trauma metamorphose itself?" My curiosity leads me to examine further the use of performative narrative as therapeutic re-enactment. Does theatre have the potential to transform destructive emotions experienced during a traumatic event? Would a performance on the effects of colonization on American Indian communities facilitate healing and recovery of Aborigibnal youth? Would the disclosure of family violence, substance abuse, alcoholism, and child abuse help the healing process? Very little research has focussed on solutions to the problem of suicide amongst American Indian people. In order to explore further the healing power of theatre I am committed to working with young adults, many of who are dealing with issues of substance abuse, racism, early childhood trauma, and cultural stress. Too many are contemplating suicide.

During this play, you are listening to a conversation between two friends, Mary and Julia, interrupted by the presence of two characters who embody their hopes and fears. These characters are both real and thought processes at different times. For example, Two-Lips at times is Julia's inner voice.

Phallus is the impersonation of Freud and Lacan whose theory of the Phallus has dominated psychoanalytical discourses. He is also at times, a counselor, an oppressive husband, a sibling, and a transforming being.

Two-Lips is the impersonation of feminist theories. She is also at times, a mother, a wise-woman, and a visionary.

After sharing my experience with this play, the circle would not be complete without your participation in an exchange of thoughts and feelings. You are invited to imagine different end-stories for Nicole, asking the question: "What if?" You will be invited to share your stories in a conversation or with drama, dance, poetry or music.

Butler, Judith (1999) . Lacan, Riviere, and the strategies of masquerade. In Judith Butler (1999) Gender Trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity, NY: Routledge.

Fels, Lynn (1999). In the winds clothes dance on a line: Performative inquiry, a (re)search methodology possibilities and absences within a space-moment of imagining a universe. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of British Columbia, Canada.

France, M. H. McCormick, R. (1995). The Helping Circle: Theoretical and Practical Considerations of Using a First Nations Peer Support Network, G&C, p. 27-31.

Giard, Monique (2000). Performative pedagogy: Writing choreographically a dance space of imaginings. Unpublished Master Thesis, UBC, Canada.

Langellier, Kristin M. (1989). Personal Narratives: Perspectives On Theory and research, Text and Performance Quarterly, Vol. 9, October 1989, Number 4, 243 – 276.