Projects / Artist Support & Training

Core Artist

The Core Artist is an independent artist whose work aligns with and supports the core values of The Only Animal — to empower people to reconnect to the land they live on, using art and creative engagement to inspire hope and imagination for a more sustainable future.

They have an affinity for "slow practices" that prioritize relationships to place alongside time for ‘non-productive’ labour, going against the notion that faster is always better.

The Only Animal supports the Core Artist with administrative and financial assistance, mentorship, networking, access to grant programs and foundations and the autonomy to work on other projects.

Core Artist: Lara Aysal

Lara Aysal is a climate justice and human rights activist, performance artist, and facilitator of community-oriented projects. She has worked across borders with international theatre companies and facilitated the development of projects in conflict settings with refugees, prisoners, ethnically diverse, and Indigenous communities in South Africa, South America, Turkey, Italy, Germany, and so-called Canada.

She is one of the co-founders of AA+A Contemporary Performance Research Project and Ray Performance Collective (where?). She taught first- and second-year acting classes at Beykent University and published individual and collaborative ideas on Conference of the Parties (COP20), civil disobedience, theatre in conflict zones and poems on possibilities of hope.

She has collaborated with the Snuneymuxw Nation, UVic, and SFU, and co-developed the project “Hul’q’umi’num’ Heroes: Reclaiming Language Through Theatre” (2018) by dramatizing traditional stories of Snuneymuxw heroes. With the support of Elders and Snuneymuxw communities, she also directed "Jealous Moon” (2020) and received the SSHRC Storytellers Challenge Prize (2020). She is the co-creator and actor in the production of "The Donation" by Jordan Hall (2020), which she transformed into an online applied theatre project with a team of international artists, scientists, global activists and Haida Elder Káawan Sangáa Woody Morrison with the support of the National Theatre School of Canada.

She is currently the Core Artist at The Only Animal Theatre. Since 2022, her ongoing collaboration with artist/storyteller Rosemary Georgeson (Coast Salish/Sahtu Dene) for Etuaptmumk/Two-Eyed Seeing: Ways of Being and Seeing brings Indigenous knowledge holders and communities together to co-create multidisciplinary processes about the climate crisis. www.laraaysal.com

Current Core Artist Work

Etuaptmumk/Two-Eyed Seeing: Ways of Being and Seeing (TES) is a collaborative process-based project led by Lara Aysal (Core Artist) and Rosemary Georgeson (Coast Salish/Sahtu Dene storyteller). TES focuses on bringing together Indigenous Knowledge Holders to create space for stories in this era of ecological destruction, climate crisis, decolonization and collaboration between various knowledge systems.

Etuaptmumk/Two-Eyed Seeing is a concept created by a leading environmental voice in Unama’ki Cape Breton, Mi’kmaq Elder Advisor Albert Marshall. He describes Etuaptmumk as “learning to see from one eye with the strengths of Indigenous knowledge and ways of knowing, and from the other eye with the strengths of Western knowledge and ways of knowing … and learning to use both these eyes together, for the benefit of all”.

With the guiding principles of Etuaptmumk/Two-Eyed Seeing, Lara and Rosemary collaborate with Knowledge Holders, artists, activists, and youth to creatively respond to questions about how the elements of Mother Earth speak to us. How it was? How it is? and how do we have hope for Mother Earth? The responses to these questions can be found in discussion circles with Knowledge Holders, creative community engaged workshops, and the performative co-creation of stories, comic apps, videos, and multimedia installations.

Find out more at laraaysal.com