Linking who we are and where we are: Saskatchewan's legacy of community and site-oriented performance

In Saskatchewan, Common Weal Community Arts, born in the 1990s under Rachael Van Fossen and subsequently led by Marnie Badham, used the community event to promote social and cultural understanding between diverse communities in rural and urban settings to promote social change. Since 2002, Knowhere Productions Inc. has used site and community to investigate physical and conceptual space through large-scale performances that explore the relationship between people, memories, landscape and the anachronism of performing one's place in the world in the age of hyperconnectivity. Through collaborative and non-matrixed performances, both companies address the meaning(s) of belonging by amplifying the multiplicity of voices from certain places and cultures across rural/urban differentiations through new media and innovative processes. This article explores aesthetic and communal practices within a socio-historic context and grounded in a perception of the land as a potent and persistent actant in place making and playmaking.