The Eye of Ra was Carved Above the Door, 2011

I developed this sound walk, inspired by the Egypt Gallery at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), as a summative project for my M.A. in Theatre Studies at York University. I had spent my childhood attending art and history classes at the ROM and my teens and early twenties teaching those same classes. The Egypt Gallery has always been one of my favourites. My M.A. year was spent communting for more than an hour to York while I listened to podcasts and audiobooks about the history of Rome, Islam and Mesopotamia. These two factors informed my project. I built the sound walk using devised theatre strategies and the creative labour of three talented undergraduate students, Meg Moran, Meara Tubman-Broeren, and Wes Lincoln Reibeling. We spent the winter term walking through the gallery, reading about Amice Mary Calverley (a Canadian Egyptologist), the female Pharoh Hatshepsut, and then creating maps, drawings and songs about what we learned. We combined this research with poetry, music, personal letters, sound scapes and even a long distance call from Sudan to create The Eye of Rah was Carved Above the Door.