Guide My Way concert launches new album of songs from the long-postponed musical Sedna
A pandemic and flood damage haven’t dampened the Urban Ink crew’s hopes for the grand-scale, Inuit-inspired production
Urban Ink’s Corey Payette sings in the concert of music from Sedna.
Urban Ink presents Guide My Way: A celebration of the music from Sedna on August 12 at the York Theatre
CALL IT irony, a coincidence, or perhaps a message from some higher power that the Sedna musical should be temporarily washed out by a flood.
Urban Ink’s ambitious, multiyear project, based on an Inuk story, is, after all, a warning about climate change and a reminder of our reliance on water for life itself. In it, an Indigenous woman named Selia faces a pipeline coming through her peoples’ territory, and a cataclysmic storm brings her face to face with Sedna, Goddess of the Arctic Sea.
Sedna had already been postponed from its grand premiere outdoors in Stanley Park in summer 2020, along with a national tour, when its huge puppet-lanterns—Arctic wolves, narwhals, seals—were destroyed. Stored in a container in Abbotsford, they were ruined by flooding during the “atmospheric river” of November 2021.
“It’s not lost on us that the force of the story is to return those puppets to the water,” says Urban Ink artistic director and Sedna cocreator Corey Payette.
Rebuilding those set pieces will take time, but showing characteristic resilience, Urban Ink is bringing its haunting score, inspired by Inuit music, to the stage in concert form.
The one-night Guide My Way premieres the music from the show, featuring Payette, Chelsea Rose, and Merewyn Comeau, with an opening performance by singer-songwriter Desirée Dawson. The concert will feature dancers with choreography by Shion Skye Carter and kick off the release of the new Sedna album. Projected video elements will give audiences a glimpse of what the lanterns in the production will illuminate in the future.
“This production has hit so many hurdles, and so we’re just trying right now to find a way to come together and share music and get back into reaching out to audiences and having in-person performances,” says an ever-positive Payette. “So it's a nice way of sharing some of the music, but not necessarily having to put on the full production. Because, my goodness, that was a full production.”
Payette, known for his acclaimed musicals Children of God and Les Filles du Roi (created with Julie McIsaac), had worked with Reneltta Arluk and Marshall McMahen on the new musical since at least 2015.
“We went up to Nunavut and spoke to elders there and did some development up in the North,” he recalls. “Then we brought it to Caravan Farm Theatre and had an interesting run there.”
Singer Chelsea Rose. Brandon Hart Photography
Though they won’t yet see the full production, audiences will get a taste of a different musical palette from Payette—his compositions emerging from a soundscape this time around, rather than song by song.
Singer Merewyn Comeau
“It was more like a film score, where you’re building ambiance, and finding the melodies and different voices and characters through that environment,” he explains.
The songs, some of which tend toward vocables instead of traditional lyrics, also sound different from Payette’s other works due to the influences of Inuit music—going back to the driving rhythms of their drums.
“First Nations people have a different sound and aesthetic than a lot of Inuk people,” explains the artist, who is of Oji-Cree heritage. “Like, when I play my drum, it’s a deer-hide drum, and because of that it has a rich, bass-y sound. [The Inuk] drum is much thinner and they hit the edges a lot. It has a pingy sound to it, so the tonality of the drum is a lot different.”
In another poignant aspect of the concert, it will feature a work by late young Inuk singer-songwriter Kelly Fraser, who died tragically in 2019. She had collaborated with Payette earlier in the process to create additional music for Sedna.
“There’s a lot of her cultural history and knowledge in Sedna,” Payette says. “Audiences who love her as a performer will really be surprised to hear this hidden track that no one has heard before. She sang it, and we’ve built that [recording] into the track.”
For now, Payette can’t yet say when audiences will be able to see the full, dazzling version of Sedna in Stanley Park. With characteristic optimism, he’s looking forward to reworking and even improving the giant lantern sculptures as they’re rebuilt. And he’s keeping the washing away of the show’s integral props in perspective.
“The plus side was we didn’t lose our sets or costumes from Les Filles du Roi or Children of God. But it was so bad,” he relates. “Just before last Christmas, I had to go out there and take all these soggy, raggy things out of the container. It was so sad. But throughout the whole process, we just kept remembering that people lost their homes, their family farms, and so much.”
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