Montreal's theatre, Teesri Duniya, has a new play coming out March 14th.The play the Chemical Valley Project is produced by Broadleaf Theater a company based in Toronto and looks into the issue of environmental racism in Sarnia, Ontario. CUTV reporter Neha Chellanga talks to Kevin Matthew Wong about his inspiration for this production, his work with Indigenous activists Vanessa and Beze Gray and the role of documentary theatre in Montreal and Canada. 

Kevin says he’s been “collaborating for eight years now in multiple iterations of this show trying to get the message across around Vanessa and Beze’s activism and to encourage Canadians to interrogate their own place in Canada and where they should put their solidarity, which is with Indigenous nations and water protectors and land defenders.” 

It’s important now more than ever to weave art and politics. Kevin says when it comes to the theatre world. Many artists shy away from heavy subjects such as environmental racism. Even within documentary theatre, he found that the “deep dives” can remain superficial. 

“The other thing was lack of Indigenous perspectives. I saw a show in which the piece alluded to the fact that there were no Indigenous perspectives in it in a way that I thought was very deeply disingenuous and dissatisfying and it was a very widely circulated piece. It was one of the most aggravating things for me,” says Kevin.

“I think really there's people who need to get over themselves, especially artists, to make real relationships with people. I recognized in myself that I was encountering a lot of this fear and it actually is one scene in the show acknowledges if I am the right voice to be engaging with this topic. I was just frustrated that I felt like the rigour that was put into other places in those dramatic productions weren't actually being put into the real world research.”