For people who work in Canadian theatre, the name Iris Turcott is iconic.

But those who haven’t heard of the famed, late Canadian dramaturge will soon have the chance to take an intimate look into her life and legacy.

Métis playwright and Brock instructor Matthew MacKenzie and co-creator Daniel MacIvor are shining a spotlight on Turcott in their new work, The Situation We Find Ourselves In Is This.

The free online play is being presented as a one-time YouTube live event on Saturday, Jan. 30 at 7 p.m.

Written by MacKenzie and directed and dramaturged by MacIvor, an accomplished Canadian actor, playwright and director, The Situation We Find Ourselves In Is This is based on the time MacKenzie spent with Turcott during her final days before her death in 2016.

MacKenzie found his time with the theatre visionary to be a profound experience.

“Iris had a direct impact on the lives of hundreds of Canadian artists and worked on many of Canada’s greatest plays,” MacKenzie says. “It’s important to me that people learn about who Iris was and the impact she had.”

While the play touches on dark subject matter, it has humorous elements reflective of MacKenzie, MacIvor and Turcott’s senses of humour.

David Fancy, Chair of Dramatic Arts at Brock University’s Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts (MIWSFPA), also worked with Turcott on his play Khalida. Fancy’s play won the Enbridge Alberta Theatre Projects Emerging playRites Prize and was featured at the 2009 International Director’s Lab at Lincoln Centre in New York City.

“Iris was incredibly affirming of the role of the text in the theatre,” Fancy observes, “and her passion was matched by an acute dramaturgical skill and play development capacity.”

MacKenzie is remotely teaching Brock’s DART 2P96: Indigenous Theatre from Edmonton, Treaty 6 territory. From an Indigenous perspective, he hopes that students and audience members take away a key lesson: “Any work written by an Indigenous person is Indigenous theatre.”

“It does not need to have overt ‘Indigenous’ themes, issues or content. It is simply Indigenous because I am,” MacKenzie says.

Students studying performing arts during the pandemic have had to learn new skills and performance techniques, often with a digital spin. MacKenzie’s play is indicative of the hard work being done by theatre makers and artists on the professional stage across Canada, inspiring and motivating students to thrive in the current landscape.

“We have really tried to embrace the medium and not use it as an excuse not to do something innovative and meaningful. Something I really respect about MacIvor is that he continues to work,” says MacKenzie. “Of course, doing the show in a theatre would be preferable, but he hasn’t sat back and done nothing creative through the pandemic because doing something online isn’t ‘real theatre.’”

The show was originally slated to premiere at the Theatre Centre in Toronto this past September but was postponed due to pandemic-related public health protocols. Now, the show will stream from Edmonton and Cape Breton for viewers across Canada.

MacKenzie believes there are many lessons Brock students and the next generation of artists can learn from the life and work of Turcott.

“Iris believed the stories we tell each other are the most essential thing. That is something she shared with me the night before she died,” MacKenzie reflects.

“There are many people like Iris who have devoted their lives to the theatre, who have never gotten a fraction of the gratitude they deserve. There are countless individuals who work behind the scenes, or in learning institutions, who have shaped what we know as Canadian theatre.”

The Situation We Find Ourselves In Is This, presented in partnership with Punctuate! Theatre, reWork Productions, Cape Breton University and The Theatre Centre, can be viewed Saturday, Jan. 30 at 7 p.m. as a YouTube Live event.