Cian Parker
Cian Parker brought her show Sorry For Your Loss to the Bus Stop Theatre in Halifax last night all the way from New Zealand for a very limited run there as the Opening of the Prismatic Arts Festival. Prismatic runs in venues throughout the city until October 5th, 2025.
At the beginning of the play Parker comes onstage with the house lights still up and introduces us to Gaitrie Persaud-Killings, who performs integrated ASL interpretation for the show. I had never seen anything like this before. As Parker moves about the stage telling the story in words, but also very much using her body to convey shades of the narrative as well, Persaud-Killings tells the story in American sign language, and also moves about the space, not doing identical movements, but adjacent, as she also fully embodies the story they are telling. At the beginning Parker speaks directly to the audience, bantering with them, which sets a friendly tone between Parker, Persaud-Killings, and the audience.
The play centres on a young girl named Cian who is being raised by a single mother. Until she is nine years old she has had no contact with her father and she knows very little about him, beyond that he is Māori, and thus so is she. She has a vivid imagination and often fantasizes about what her father might be like, but she also finds herself inventing elaborate stories about him to fend off the curiosity of other kids her age. When she is nine years old, she has an unexpected opportunity to meet him and other members of their family, which fills her with exuberance, but all doesn’t go as planned, and Cian must carry the consequences of his actions well into her adulthood, regardless of how hard she tries to repress them. She also comes to understand more and more the emotional journey of her mother, who is both navigating her own relationship with this man, and helping to guide her child.
Parker and Persaud-Killings play all the characters in the play- oscillating between inhabiting precocious Cian, both her parents, and her mother’s older friend who is part of the village that helps to raise Cian. Parker uses very specific physicality, especially excellent miming skills, both to create the worlds of each scene from a teenagers’ garage party to a child’s traditional dance performance, and also to transition in and out of each one. Parker is beautifully skilled at portraying little nine year old Cian, capturing the way she moves with constant excited anticipation and especially the range of feelings that accompany her public performance- from unbridled giggling to being frozen with stage fright and all the awkwardness in between. It is very easy to love little Cian, and to feel the absolute bliss she feels at the idea of having a family larger than “just” her and her mom, and how devastating it is to have this rug pulled out from under her.
One thing that I found so captivating in watching Parker’s performance is her huge, infectious smile, and the way that little Cian especially smiles both organically to express her joy, but also when she wants to make herself the most loveable, irresistible, or as a placeholder when she doesn’t know quite what to say- her smile is a bright, captivating light- it is hard to believe that anyone could walk away from it. And yet, as Cian grows up, I think the play also shows her determination to not allow her father to dim her light, to deflate her smile, but, eventually, this does require that she seek a certain level of closure.
As someone who was also raised by an extraordinary mother who “did everything,” and who had nearly zero contact with her father I found Sorry For Your Loss to be viscerally relatable, both in the way that Parker depicts her younger self yearning for a more “typical” family, and also in the way that her interest in exploring this story has changed and deepened over time. For me, my father’s ancestry is more overtly colonial than my mother’s, but in this story Parker is also exploring being cut off from her Māori roots, which is just yet another severing that her father has inflicted on her.
Sorry For Your Loss is a poignant story told by a truly enchanting performer in a physically vibrant and memorable way. The integrated ASL interpretation is quite seamless in bringing the ASL right into the story, and creating a dual experience for Deaf and hearing audiences to enjoy simultaneously.
Sorry For Your Loss has closed in Halifax, but Prismatic, a multidisciplinary arts festival that showcases and celebrates innovative work by Indigenous artists and artists of colour from across Canada (and beyond!) continues in venues throughout the city until October 5th, 2025. For more information about their programming please visit this website.
