Through tamales and kitchen-table talk, Vancouver theatre artist draws attention to exploitation of migrant workers
Pedro Chamale hosts free virtual cooking demo and discussion in Playwrights Theatre Centre’s Unscripted: Made in Canada
Pedro Chamale will show viewers how to make tamales, using his mom’s recipe, during Unscripted: Made in Canada.
Unscripted: Made in Canada happens January 24 at 5 pm PST via YouTube.
VANCOUVER TENDS TO be a health- and environmentally conscious market when it comes to food. “Locally sourced”, “farm to table”, and “seasonal ingredients” are phrases that a lot of consumers look for on restaurant menus and at grocery stores, with more wanting to know where their food comes from.
Vancouver-based Latinx-Canadian theatre artist Pedro Chamale aims to take that conversation a step further: while you may know the name of the farm where you got your peppers and squash from, do you know who planted and picked your produce?
It’s a question Chamale will use as a springboard for discussion during Unscripted: Made in Canada, a free online conversation and tamale-cooking demonstration on January 24 at 5 pm PST presented by Playwrights Theatre Centre (PTC).
Pedro Chamale.
Co-founder of rice & beans theatre with Derek Chan, Chamale is a director, playwright, and performer who also co-founded the Canadian Latinx Theatre Artist Alliance. Part of PTC’s Unscripted series, the virtual event will also feature Byron Cruz, outreach coordinator for the BC Federation of Labor’s Occupational Health and Safety Centre’s Migrant Worker Program, and documentary filmmaker Min Sook Lee. Among Lee’s films is Migrant Dreams, which tells the under-told story of migrant workers struggling within Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program.
Together, they’ll explore the exploitation of migrant workers and seasonal agricultural workers as well as the role art can play in creating positive change.
“Unscripted: Made in Canada is really about just asking the Canadian public to think about the food that they’re eating,” Chamale tells Stir. “‘Organic’ and ‘local’ doesn’t always mean that it’s ethically sourced; we don’t know the people power behind the picking of our food all the time. That’s because things get greenwashed or organic-washed.
“A majority of our labour that picks our fruits and vegetables is labour that is costing us less because they’re coming from different countries and often are exploited because of the system,” he says. “It’s not that every farmer in Canada is out to exploit farmworkers; it’s the capitalist venture of agriculture. Every human deserves a basic right to food, but we’re also demanding our food to be profitable….Because we demand cheap and fresh, often that hurts farmers and workers.”
Documentary filmmaker Min Sook Lee (Migrant Dreams) appears in Unscripted: Made in Canada.
During the hour-long YouTube event, which includes the opportunity for viewers to ask questions of and interact with the speakers, Chamale will show people how to make tamales. It’s a food that represents his roots; he was born in Chetwynd to parents who moved to the small B.C. town from Guatemala in the 1970s seeking a new life. This part of the presentation, which he says has a kind of Binging With Babish feel, was pre-recorded, because of the effort that’s involved in making the traditional dish.
“Tamales take all day to make,” Chamale says. “You have to prep the meat, make the sauce, package them, then boil them for two hours… They’re a Christmas tradition for me. It’s not Christmas if I’m not having tamales. When I moved here [from Chetwynd], and not being home for Christmas, I had to get my mom’s recipe. Now I make them for my family and hand them out to friends. I don’t know how to make a small batch.” (His mom makes hers with pork and chicken; for his vegan friends, Chamale swaps the meat for cremini mushrooms.)
The YouTube chat is a lead-up to rice and beans’ forthcoming Made in Canada: an agricultural song cycle. Originally intended as a live theatre production, the work has morphed, due to the pandemic, into a 10-track song cycle, with a vinyl album and digital recording and accompanying podcast series, set to launch in March.
Unscripted: Made in Canada is free, though there will be an option to purchase a ticket at a price of your own choosing afterward. Registration information is here.
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