God of Gods: A Canadian Play

For her exhibition at the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery at Hart House, internationally renowned, Toronto-based artist Deanna Bowen revisits The God of Gods (1919), a play written and directed by Carroll Aikins (1888-1967), founder of the first national theatre in Canada and artistic director of Hart House Theatre (1927–29). Aikins’ play, staged at Hart House in 1922, projected the horrors of war into a loose adaptation of Romeo and Juliet — using ‘native’ motifs. Deanna Bowen’s film is a conversation by Indigenous artists and writers John G. Hampton, Peter Morin, Lisa Myers, and Archer Pechawis, with cheyanne turions.

Deanna Bowen is a descendant of the Alabama and Kentucky born Black Prairie pioneers of Amber Valley and Campsie, Alberta. Bowen’s family history has been the central pivot of her auto-ethnographic interdisciplinary works since the early 1990s. Her broader artistic/educational practice examines history, historical writing and the ways in which artistic and technological advancements impact individual and collective authorship.

Produced on the occasion of the Hart House Centennial.