Thursday, November 26, 2026
This one person cabaret explores the tension between bodies of women, water and possessing agency that are placed upon them. The show intentionally juxtaposes the morbid with caresse (French for gentle touch), symbolizing a rejection of “oppression"" in favor of grace, power, and satire. Erica’s performance style aims to be simultaneously burlesque and haunting, utilizing contemporary movement, mask work, and puppetry to create otherworldly cabaret experiences.
Centered on the themes of water, drawing from original poetry, she parallels the shapeshifting, extracted, and life-giving nature of water. Embracing the concept of ""removal"" shedding layers and revealing the mechanics of transformation rather than hiding them like flowing water. Through Miss Carcass Caresse, she reclaims her artistic narrative, blending silliness, and stillness to build new worlds on stage.
Creator: Erica Wilson (Pine Creek First Nation)
Content Warning: Sexual Content, Implied Nudity, Moments of Tension, Possible Fog, Loud music for 1 show, Psychiatric Conditions, Language & Tone, Environment & Sensory
Presentation
[soft waters]
by Erica Wilson
Erica Wilson, Creator
Erica Wilson is a Winnipeg born Indigenous Artist with ties to Pine Creek First Nation, Treaty 4. Forever fascinated with the Eerie aesthetic and the never ending sociopolitical reality of Indigenous womanhood, Her work explores the tension between being viewed as a statistic and possessing agency. Intentionally juxtaposes the morbid with caresse (French for gentle touch), symbolizing a rejection of “oppression" in favor of grace, power, and satire.
Her performance style aims to be simultaneously ethereal and haunting, utilizing contemporary movement, mask work, and puppetry to create otherworldly cabaret experiences. Her current work centers on the theme of Water. Drawing from original poetry, she parallels the shapeshifting, extracted, and life-giving nature of water with the resilience of women. Embracing the concept of "full removal" shedding layers and revealing the mechanics of transformation rather than hiding them. She reclaims her artistic narrative blending silliness, stillness, to create a spectacle to build new worlds.
The story involves a familial confrontation between an Ojibway brother and his two-spirited sibling. They meet after a period of estrangement: on one hand, the older brother is a nurse who has effectively lost his way in terms of his connection to his culture and ethnicity. The nurse meets the estranged sibling at an encampment and so a reconciliation is set to occur. But the tensions, from their personal history to their respective positions in the unhoused discourse, will not make for an easy truce.
Creator: Curtis Kaltenbaugh (Anishnaabe)
Content Warning: Mature content, Coarse language, Sexual content, Substance use, Yelling, Violence
Presentation
Shelter from the Storm
by Curtis Kaltenbaugh
Curtis Kaltenbaugh, Creator
Curtis Kaltenbaugh (he/they) is of Anishnaabe and Scottish/Irish heritage. His biological mom was Ojibway, with roots in Sandy Bay, while his birth father had Scottish and Irish roots. Curtis and his brother were adopted into a white, Lutheran family in Pennsylvania, at the tail end of the sixties scoop.
Curtis has been a registered nurse for nearly eight years. He works as a street outreach nurse with a non-profit, providing harm reduction services and street-based nursing, for the unhoused community, in downtown Winnipeg. Prior to becoming a nurse, Curtis worked in documentaries; most notably, sharing his own cross-cultural adoption experience in the NFB film, A Place Between: The Story of an Adoption. He also worked as writer/director/researcher on The Sharing Circle, a television documentary series exploring issues relevant to indigenous communities. Shelter from the Storm is Curtis’s first play. He currently resides in Winnipeg.