Performance in the Pacific Northwest

Gallery

Performance in the Pacific Northwest takes performance-related materials and objects out of their museum drawer, display case, or archival folder to uncover the stories of these unique objects and materials, reactivate their creative and imaginative uses, and discuss the significant cultural and political impact made by a range of performances across the Pacific Northwest region.

We invite you to explore a range of performance-related artifacts, including costumes, props, and an array of other materials our research team has encountered through fieldwork visiting museums, galleries, libraries and archives. 

Built without glue or nails, the wooden Cantonese Opera Chair was imported from China in 1910 by the manager of Lun Yick Opera House, a 400-seat Chinese Opera House in Nanaimo, British Columbia. It was used as a stage prop for touring opera productions that entertained immigrant coal miners in Chinatown settlements across Vancouver Island.

An early communications device that enabled audiences to tune into live opera broadcasts, first used in colonial British Columbia around 1893, when a local telecommunications company installed receivers in the rafters of the New Westminster opera house, transmitting a performance of Gilbert & Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance (1879).

This is a costume of poet-performer E. Pauline Johnson Tekahionwake (Mohawk/Six Nations), donated to the Museum of Vancouver in 1913, catalogued as #AG 27A-B and described as “Pauline Johnson’s dress.” Johnson wore this dress for her touring performances across Canada, the United States and the UK, beginning in 1892.

A playbill for Nootka Sound; or, Britain Prepar’d, held in the BC Archives. This pantomime was performed in 1790 at London’s Covent Garden Theatre and addressed the Nootka Sound Crisis, a military skirmish between England and Spain over the right to trade and settle on the Pacific Northwest Coast.

A popular slideshow machine used extensively throughout colonial British Columbia from the 1860s onward. Also known as a stereopticon, the magic lantern played an active role in shaping nineteenth-century visual culture in the Pacific Northwest, from religious proselytizing to children's shows. Many of the first shows were performed at the Mechanics’ Literary Institute in Victoria, BC.

An article by J. Gordon Smith published in the Victoria Daily Colonist on 16 June 1901, providing a detailed account of a religious drama that was performed in Chilliwack, BC, on 8 June 1901.