Stir Cheat Sheet: 4 things to know about Kevin Loring's award-winning Where the Blood Mixes
With the Firehall Arts Centre hosting the first local production of the play since 2010, a look back on its legacy, its Lytton setting, and its acclaim
Playwright Kevin Loring
The Firehall Arts Centre, in association with Savage Society, presents Where the Blood Mixes, from November 14 to Decembr 6
A LOT HAS CHANGED since the Firehall Arts Centre first played host to Where the Blood Mixes during the 2010 Cultural Olympiad, in a coproduction with the Vancouver Playhouse and Belfry Theatre. And yet, in many ways, Canada is still grappling with one of the award-winning work’s main themes: the intergenerational trauma of residential schools.
N'lakap'mux playwright Kevin Loring’s groundbreaking script is set during the salmon run in Lytton. It focuses on Floyd, an Indigenous man who’s haunted by a painful past that includes the residential school system, and his buddy Mooch. Together, they spend the bulk of their time at the local bar, playing pull-tab lotteries and talking about fishing. But Floyd will soon have to face the history he’s been trying to forget: after two decades, his daughter Christine, once taken into foster care, is returning home to confront her father.
In the 16 years since its debut, the show has seen its playwright become the first leader of the National Arts Centre’s Indigenous Theatre program, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission has taken place, and the once-neglected history of residential schools is much more widely known.
But you only have to read news stories about everything from the rise of residential-school denialism to the new B.C. Conservative government’s plan to repeal DRIPA to know Canada is still grappling with its painful past. And so, the Firehall is bringing the play back to Vancouver, for the first time since 2010, at a timely moment in history.
The new production will star Jonathan Fisher, Trevor Duplessis, Columpa Bobb, Danica Charlie, and Mike Wasko.
Here are four things to know about the play, mixed in with some compelling reasons to see it.
The story has a deep connection to Lytton, B.C.
Today, sadly, Lytton, B.C. is probably best known for being destroyed by wildfire in July 2021—a trauma from which it is still trying to rebuild. But set at the crucial meeting point of the mighty Thomson and Fraser rivers, the town has deep significance for Indigenous people, and especially the Nlaka’pamux, to whom Loring traces back his own heritage.
In fact, the play takes its title from the town’s Nlaka’pamux name, Kumsheen—“the place inside the heart where the blood mixes”. The first staged reading of the work took place there, in Loring’s own hometown, in 2008—part of a workshop tour by the play’s producers, the Playhouse Theatre Company and the Savage Society, in conjunction with Kamloops’s Western Canadian Theatre.
Past productions of Where the Blood Mixes have been called a “love letter” to Lytton, and the show is in many ways a reminder of its dramatic landscape and once-thriving sense of community—despite the scars of history. And in fact, in the play, the land helps heals the characters.
James Dallas Smith, Sheldon Elter, and Craig Lauzon in a 2022 production of Soulpepper Theatre and Native Earth’s Where The Blood Mixes. Photo by Dahlia Katz.
The play has won numerous awards
From the moment it debuted, Where the Blood Mixes has received critical praise as an instant Canadian classic—an “unforgettable” work of subtlety, dark humour, and heartbreaking humanity.
Among its major accolades, in 2009 alone it took a national Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama, received the Jessie Richardson Award for Outstanding Original Script, and won the Sydney J. Risk Prize for Outstanding Original Script by an Emerging Playwright. The same year, it was nominated for a Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding New Play.
Kevin Loring. Photo by John Kealey
This is the first time playwright Kevin Loring will direct it
A multitalented playwright, actor, and director, Loring also serves as artistic director and founder of Savage Society. After he completed his theatre education at Studio 58, his many writing credits would grow to span plays like Little Red Warrior and His Lawyer, Battle of the Birds, and The Boy Who Was Abandoned. (Fun fact: Where the Blood Mixes originally began as a short, 15-minute solo character study titled “The Ballad of Floyd” while Loring was in theatre school.)
But this is the first time Vancouver audiences will see Loring helm the production of Where the Blood Mixes.
When it premiered as a fully staged production in June 2008 at Factory Theatre at Toronto’s Luminato fest, B.C.’s Glynis Leyshon directed the show (which starred big local names like Margo Kane, Quelemia Sparrow, and Tom McBeath). She also led the version that played here during the Cultural Olympiad.
Lytton’s St. George’s Residential School. Photo courtesy NTRC
Where the Blood Mixes played an important role raising the issue of residential schools
Loring’s play provided a cultural wake-up call about the legacy of residential schools, staged as it was at major Canadian platforms like Toronto’s Luminato Festival and the National Arts Centre. The script refers to St. George’s Residential School, administered by the Anglican Church of Canada, sitting just northwest of the Lytton townsite until 1979; its main building was destroyed by a fire in 1982. A landmark legal action was brought against the church and federal government for severe abuse at the school, in one of the country’s first cases brought forward by residential school survivors.
Where the Blood Mixes was also an important milestone in understanding the ongoing intergenerational trauma of the residential-school system. As the character Mooch says, “Don’t matter how long ago it was. It happened yesterday, it happened today, it’ll happen tomorrow.”
Note that due to the play’s themes, an audience support worker will be available at the Firehall for anyone who needs support during or after the performance. 
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