PJ Prudat
Creator-in-Residence 2019-2025
PJ Prudat is an actor and playwright. She participated in Brian’s Playwriting and Dramaturgy course, which led to an invitation to develop a new project during a residency with Nightswimming’s dramaturgical support. PJ’s first residency period focused on this project:
Constellations, Michif Shaped (Kiskisiwin Nimihko) digs deeply into the aftermath/tidal wave experience of a family in the time of Truth and Reconciliation — it is a story of catastrophic anger, darkness, Women, healing, returning light, and of what it can be to have a Mom. An online reading during the pandemic of this work-in-progress in 2020 pushed the project toward a complete first draft.
In 2021, PJ created a short film version of this project for the Toronto Digital Fringe Festival. Entitled kiskisiwin nimihko (remembering my blood), the film included PJ herself in a 30 minute monologue drawing on text from the play, and her own commentary on reconciliation, ancestry and loss.
“Writer PJ Prudat’s 30-minute monologue is a cry from the heart. It’s family lore and cultural ode, storytelling and memory as rebellion, and, most importantly, a way to “no longer be invisible.” It is relevant, required viewing.”
– Mooney on Theatre. Read the full review here.
In Fall 2021, PJ returned to the project with the Nightswimming team, in a workshop at Native Earth’s Aki Studio. Through physical improvisations, writing and drawing exercises, and field-trips to view Indigenous art and artifacts around Toronto, PJ developed a dramaturgy using the Métis octopus bag as a framework.
In November 2022, Nightswimming held a workshop of an updated draft of Constellations, Michif Shaped, explored its layered structure and concluded with a powerful reading of the latest edition.
PJ’s work during her second residency focused on developing Nimihko as a solo piece for herself as a performer. We held studio sessions with collaborators Waawaate Fobister and Hailey Verbonac as PJ reshaped the text with bold visual and physical imagery and shifted its narrative to focus on the powerful story of giving a stem cell transplant for her brother.
A series of Nightswimming readings in 2023 and 2024 culminated in a workshop presentation of kiskisiwin nimihko/my blood remembers at Native Earth Performing Arts’ Weesageechak Festival on November 28, 2024. PJ combined her powerful text with beautiful and evocative vocal contributions from Rosary Spence.
PJ’s creation residencies (2019-2020 and 2022-2023) have been generously funded by the Ontario Arts Council and we are grateful for their support.
PJ Prudat is a Treaty-6-born, proud Métis ~Michif~nehiyaw~saulteaux playwright, actor and writer. PJ is a daughter-of-the-fur-trade; her otanskotapew~matrilineal ancestors-travelled by dog team, were Buffalo hunters, Métis Résistance Fighters & Treaty Six hereditary-chief signatories.
PJ has been greatly supported as a Creator-in-Residence with Nightswimming while working on her solo-show kiskisiwin nimihko (remembering my blood) and also holds a Residency with the Theatre Centre. She is a Co-Artistic-Leader at Shakespeare in the Ruff, where her play otîhêw premiered last summer (produced by Shakespeare in Action for summer 2023).
PJ has toured luminous IBPOC-creative-led shows across the country and is among the first ever Indigenous Women
to hold space as a Company Actor at both the National Arts Centre and the Shaw Festival.
She loves tacos, hats, poetry, and believes riding horses at break-neck speed are what dreams are made of. PJ is guided by Indigenous and ancestral stories of these lands— and she is currently pursuing her MFA Creative Writing at UBC.