The Whitehorse-born circus artist brought her original work to the Yukon this September
“My family is here, and I started practising circus in the Arts Centre when I was eleven years old. I worked at circus camps there when I was twelve, thirteen and fourteen, and I’ve spent a lot of time in that building. It’s where I began circus, so I’ve been looking for the opportunity to come back and perform for awhile.”
Alyssa Bunce
Alyssa Bunce began working on what would become Our Lady of the Home, eight years ago when she was attending École Nationale de Cirque (the National Circus School) in Montreal. Her first independent production, the show uses Bunce’s specialized media forms of aerial hoop and contortion, with minimal speech, to tell the story of Liza, a housewife of the 1960s who is prescribed medication to deal with a perceived mental imbalance. Using lipstick as a metaphor for the medication, the piece walks through the feminist themes of identity, mental health, self-reclamation and empowerment.
“I decided to use that symbol to describe substance, in order to try and link it with the feminine experience,” Bunce explains. “At that time, I was just beginning to become aware of feminist themes and reading a lot of feminist books, and I was thinking no wonder we all feel terrible.
“No wonder we all feel like we need to take something or we need some kind of support, because everything is wrong. That opened up the theme of why do we think something is wrong with us for not feeling balanced in a world that isn’t balanced itself?”
With Bunce as the sole performer onstage, her piece draws on both historical beliefs and her personal experiences. She moved from Whitehorse to attend circus school when she was 16 and struggled with her own mental health, when she felt alone, as she was far from her home and family and under immense pressure in her schooling.
“Pretty early on, at sixteen, I was given a diagnosis and medication from a doctor I hardly knew who told me I had anxiety and depression,” she says. “I started taking medication and took it for five years. For me, it didn’t really work … there were side effects I wasn’t aware of before I started taking it, and I also wasn’t aware that it was habit-forming so it would be difficult to stop when I wanted to.”
After numerous dose changes when Bunce expressed that she didn’t think her medication was helping, she was frustrated to find no other avenues presented to her. In retrospect, she says she doesn’t believe she was ill in the way she was made to believe, and that her feelings were valid emotional responses to her circumstances.
“When I finally wanted to stop taking that medication, I changed the context of my life, and that gave me the support I needed to stop,” she says. “That being said, I definitely don’t want to stigmatize or isolate anyone who does find help with medication, because I don’t think it’s something bad at all, and I’ve seen it help people. That’s not at all what I’m trying to say with this piece.”
Bunce found herself left with burning questions as to why mental health struggles are seemingly universal; yet resources, particularly for women, are treated as blanket solutions, and the idea that something must be wrong with the individual is prevalent. From these thoughts, the concept of her piece was born.
“When I was in school, I did a couple numbers with this character and this concept,” says Bunce. “A number is usually around five to ten minutes, so I did some short versions exploring this theme. After I graduated, I expanded it into longer versions, but it was never over fifteen or twenty minutes. Still, I was beginning to explore this theme more and go a little bit deeper.”
Now, with a full hour-long performance, Bunce’s vision has been fully realized, after nearly a decade in the making. She performed work-in-progress versions in the U.S.A. and in Mexico, throughout the past year, before officially premiering the completed piece at the Montréal Complètement Cirque (Montreal Circus Festival) in July.
“I performed the show twice in the experimental branch of the festival and it was received really well,” she says. “It was amazing to finally give a completed version to the audience, because it had been in my head for so long.”
This September, Bunce performed Our Lady of the Home at the Yukon Arts Centre (YAC), marking the first time in around 10 years since she performed original work in her home territory.
“It was incredibly special,” she says of her hometown performance. “My family is here, and I started practising circus in the Arts Centre when I was eleven years old. I worked at circus camps there when I was twelve, thirteen and fourteen, and I’ve spent a lot of time in that building. It’s where I began circus, so I’ve been looking for the opportunity to come back and perform for awhile.”
Rigging an aerial hoop can be difficult structurally, as Bunce explains, so there are special requirements for a venue to be able to stage a show like hers. Luckily, the YAC was willing to work with her to accommodate the performance.
“The story was born on a personal level for me, here in Whitehorse, and I think it’s a really important theme to address here, the theme of mental health and substances,” Bunce says. “It’s good to talk about it and be vulnerable. I’m not a person who represses her emotions … I have difficulty doing that. I feel a lot, and in this show I’m putting that in front of the audience for a full hour.”
Though the Yukon will always be home to her, the nature of Bunce’s work sees her travelling a lot, so she is savouring her time with family now before bringing her production overseas to Spain and Germany this fall. Eventually, she hopes to settle down and focus on building the circus community in the Yukon. She credits local artist Claire Ness and the Yukon Circus Society with sparking her love of the circus arts.
“Every time I come back, I see that they’re continuing that work, which is really exciting,” Bunce says. “What I personally dream of, and I think there’s space in the Yukon for it, is a company that’s geared towards creating original work and hopefully socially-engaged work that can be created and performed here and, ultimately, I dream of the creation of a space where residencies can take place and there could be a mixture of international artists that come to contribute and bring their experience to the territory, and also locals … I dream of involving older people and children in productions.”
Bunce thanks the Canada Council for the Arts for the funding and support she has received along her path to bringing this performance to the stage. While the work explores heavy subject matter, Bunce says it approaches its themes tastefully, ultimately telling a story of empowerment.
“I use the narrative as a way to give commentary on themes that I believe in and I think are very relevant today,” she explains. “Using a narrative set in the past I feel gives me more space to address the theme with lightness and comedy, because although I’m talking about all these really heavy subjects, it’s very important for me to deliver it in a light way and to empower the character and have it end on a hopeful note. It’s not a heavy show of suffering, even though that is part of it.”
Visit alyssabunce.com to learn more about Bunce and Our Lady of the Home.
