Evolve Restoration

Melissa’s deathbed request catapults her son Aaron on a journey from her family’s Mississippian clinic to the Salish Sea to claim a mysterious legacy. Meeting his niece Rafa en route, he continues overland with her, and uncle and niece come to know and depend on each other. On arriving at the Saltspring Island Research Center (SIRC), Sarah, now the keeper of the center’s narratives, confesses that Aaron’s legacy is a task: to apply his mother’s philosophy to SIRC’s lifeways in order to revitalize it.

Having come to know the community, Aaron receives his legacy as a series of enactments of SIRC’s history. The surviving members of his mother’s old friendship group—Sarah, Doug, and John—join the audience and performers in processing and adapting their shared narrative. In the intervals between enactments, Rafa undergoes initiation while Aaron explores the composer, an instrument that enables a player to evoke memories with images and express the player’s responses as soundscapes.

A decade later in Australia, Parvati and Björn give up on effecting meaningful restoration there. Dirk, while on his annual circuit of the north, arrives in Jokkmok for the annual Sami gathering to learn that SIRC is in crisis.