Evalyn Parry

Park Songs: Artist Statement

Inspired by the complex intersections of geographic, social, historic, human, and more-than-human life narratives that reside within the urban greenspace now known as Belle Park, Park Songs is a Research-Creation project that asks how songwriting can bring both researcher and audience into greater presence with the layers of time and life-worlds contained in the land.   

Using a somatic research method I call walkingsingingthinking, I have composed a short song-cycle of interconnected songs, organized around each of four historical worlds within the Belle Park site: The Wetland, The Dump, The Golf Course and The Urban Park. Informed by the practice of walking, as a tool for gathering sensory information, also responding to  research materials, each song takes the perspective of one of the site’s more-than-human beings. The project will culminate in a live concert performance in the park, where, through the perspectives of beavers, poplar trees, birds and fish, I explore and express some of the histories, life-worlds and meanings that live today in Belle Park. 

About the Artist

Evalyn Parry is a songwriter and theatre-maker. Her award-winning, interdisciplinary work has toured nationally and internationally; recent productions include Kiinalik:These Sharp Tools (Teatro A Mil, Chile; Edinburgh International Festival); SPIN (a musical work about the feminist history of the bicycle, currently being adapted for film); Gertrude and Alice (a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama); The Dialysis Project by Leah Lewis, (RCAT Newfoundland), The Youth/ Elders Project (Buddies). Evalyn has released five albums of music and spoken word and is the recipient of the Colleen Peterson Songwriting Award (Ontario Arts Council), The KM Hunter Award for Theatre and The Ken McDougall Award for Directing. Evalyn served as Artistic Director of Buddies in Bad TImes Theatre in T’karonto / Toronto from 2015 to 2020. She was the 2022/23 Walker Cultural Leader at Brock University’s Department of Dramatic Arts, and is currently finishing her MA in Cultural Studies at Queen’s; her research explores connections between leadership, creative practice, decolonial futures and systems change.