Les Filles du Roi

By Corey Payette and Julie McIsaac

Les Filles du Roi (The King’s Daughters) is a gorgeous new trilingual musical written in English, French, and Kanien’kéha (Mohawk). The powerful story of Kateri, a young Kanien'kehá:ka girl, and her brother Jean-Baptiste whose lives are disrupted upon the arrival of les filles du roi in 1665. They forge an unlikely relationship with young fille Marie-Jeanne Lespérance, whose dreams of a new life are more complicated than she could have imagined. Over the course of a year, Kanien'kehá:ka, French and English journeys collide, setting the stage for the Canada we know today. Payette's music connects the heartbeat of the drum and the soaring voices of our female ancestors in a thrilling contemporary score, weaving three languages and rivaling the beauty of Canada's most stunning landscapes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Scirocco Drama
• Release date: Jul 21, 2022
• ISBN: 9781990737442

Corey Payette

Corey Payette is proud of his Oji-Cree heritage from Northern Ontario. He has worked across Canada as a playwright, actor, composer, and director, and is the winner of the John Hirsch Prize, two Jessie Awards, and two Ovation Awards. Corey’s work includes the original musical Children of God (book/music/lyrics & direction) which premiered in 2017 and has toured extensively since, Les Filles du Roi (music and direction, with co-book/lyrics with Julie McIsaac), which was written in English, French, and Kanien’kéha (Mohawk), and Sedna (music composition and direction, co-created with Reneltta Arluk and Marshall McMahen). Corey is the Artistic Director of Vancouver’s Urban Ink, past Artist-in-Residence with English Theatre at Canada’s National Arts Centre, and the founding Artistic Director of Raven Theatre. He was the past Grand Chief of the Board of Directors of the Indigenous Performing Arts Alliance. Corey lives on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and səl’ilwətaɁɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) peoples.

Book preview

Nia:wen/Merci/Thank You

Cecelia King, Darren Bonaparte, Iawenta’s Mabel White, JoAnn Swamp, Kahentawaks Perkins, Kahniehtiio Horn, Kathy Herne, Michel Cadieux, Pascal Perron, Sue Ann Swamp, Tekonwakwenni Nanticoke, Marshall McMahen, Patrice Bowler, Lisa Goebel, Alex Schoen, Anita Rochon, Anna Kuman, Barbara Adler, Caitlyn Hayes, Cate Richardson, Dawn Brennan, Deneh’Cho Thompson, Elliot Vaughan, Estelle Shook, Evan Frayne, Geneva Perkins, Heather Redfern, JD Derbyshire, Jeff Gladstone, Jesse Martyn, Johnny Trinh, Julie Trépanier, Karliana DeWolff, Kevin Loring, Laura Di Cicco, Laura Ross, Lindsay Warnock, Lucy Sim, Mara Gottler, Maria Jose Herrera, Megan Stewart, Melanie Thompson, Michael Creber, Michael James Park, Robyn Wallis, Sidney Klips, and to the community members of Akwesasne.

The creators are grateful to all the funders of this work: City of Vancouver, BC Arts Council, Vancouver Foundation, and especially to the Canada Council New Chapter Grant.

This is one of the 200 exceptional projects funded through the Canada Council for the Arts’ New Chapter program. With this $35M investment, the Council supports the creation and sharing of the arts in communities across Canada.

Ce projet est l’un des 200 projets exceptionnels soutenus par le programme Nouveau chapitre du Conseil des arts du Canada. Avec cet investissement 35 M$, le Conseil des arts appuie la création et le partage des arts au coeur de nos vies et dans l’ensemble du Canada.

Logo: Canada Council for the Arts; Logo: Conseil des Arts du Canada; Logo: New chapter 2017 and Beyond; Logo: Nouveau Chapitre 2017 et au-delà.

Director/Composer/Co-Book/Lyricist’s

Statement

My great-grandmother Mabel moved from Caughnawaga (Kahnawake) Mohawk Territory on the south shore of the St. Lawrence River, across from Montreal, to Northern Ontario in the early 1900s. She spoke English and French but Kanien’kéha (Mohawk) was her first language. She was discriminated against for being Indigenous and never taught Kanien’kéha to her children; the language was lost in our family. In fact she shared very little with them about their own language or culture. Now with the support of the Native North American Travelling College in Akwesasne, we not only received some teachings of the Kanien’kéha language but also some of the worldview that is embedded within this complex language. With only two generations between us, I feel like this reclaiming of Indigenous language through Les Filles du Roi is part of a larger story that will resonate with many young Indigenous peoples who are on this same path.

We are using this musical as a vehicle to tell the story through the perspective of generations of silenced Indigenous peoples whose stories have gone unheard by the mainstream. It challenges the history we’ve been told and asks us to reconsider the narrative. Stories are powerful, they shift how we see the world, and our history has been shaped through a predominantly white male perspective. Much of our work in Les Filles is about Indigenizing the narrative because these perspectives are missing. Even when we spoke to Indigenous scholars in Akwesasne, many of their sources were through the same white lens we were looking to subvert.

In addition to the Indigenous perspective being missing, we found few perspectives of les filles who had come over. Our work has been about feminizing this history through the eyes of these women. The chorus sheds light on the aspects of truth that are lost by having such a narrow perspective of these complex histories. We now have the opportunity to share all the complexities of these women told through the extraordinary talents of our women’s chorus, who represent what our community is comprised of today. It has been 352 years since the time our story is set, and in that time we have experienced the loss of matriarchy, which was the way of governance in the Kanien’kehá:ka nation at the time of our story. This is why the women needed to play all characters in this story – because they have all felt the impacts of the loss of this Indigenous worldview. I hope it serves as a reminder of what was once present on this land and of what we still could be.

I never met Great-Grandmother Mabel, but I know she would be proud that we are reclaiming Kanien’kéha in this way. We will speak our language again, language will bring songs again, songs will bring dances again, and even if we have to create the story anew, these stories will remind us of who we have always been.

All my relations,

Corey Payette

Director/Composer/Co-book/Lyricist – Les Filles du Roi

Artistic Director of Urban Ink

Founder of Raven Theatre

Co-Book/Lyricist’s Statement

When I first learned about the historical filles du roi, I was in Grade 8 at L’École Saint-Joseph in Penetanguishene, Ontario. I felt a fierce kinship with these girls, likely because I was the same age as many of them would have been when they left France to become young wives (and mothers) in the new world. I’ve never stopped wondering about these girls; why they went, what they left behind, and what really happened when they arrived. The documented history is narrow, paternalistic, wholly unsatisfying. Statistics are available – passenger manifests, marriage certificates, census records – but what about the lived experiences of these women? Yes, they were population-boosting possessions of the patriarchy. But what did they themselves think, dream, feel?

This gap in the narrative is what prompted me to talk to Laura Di Cicco, Artistic Director of Fugue Theatre, about a show that would give voice to les filles. At the same time, I knew there were/are other perspectives missing from accounts of our nation’s history. These young women arrived as products and agents of a system, a system that was bent on destroying the way of life of the Indigenous people of this continent, a system that has resulted in centuries of oppression, violence, and erasure. A system that is ongoing, and