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MITTIMATALIK/POND INLET - Residents of Pond Inlet can look forward to a special evening of live entertainment this week. The Tununiq Arsarniit Theatre Group will present the original production Qaggiq on Friday, Nov. 14 in the Attakaalik Community Hall.

Students from the Nasivvik High School drama class will open the evening with their own short play starting at 7:30 p.m.

"It's been a lot of fun working with the students," said Sheena Akoomalik, a writer and actor with the theatre group.

Akoomalik worked with drama teacher Julia Landry and her students to create the opening performance.

"It's a very collaborative project in that everyone assumes the different roles," Landry said. "We all contribute to each other and give each other feedback which I think helps everybody grow and contribute to the play. Not everybody wants to act in it but we still have everybody contributing."

Students from Grades 10 to 12 have been hard at work on the project in school and at home memorizing their lines, which are in Inuktitut and English. The students created all the props and costumes and built the minimalist set.

The students' play is a comedy with a strong social message, Landry said.

"It's to try to stop the stereotyping and racism around our community," Akoomalik explained. "It was a lot of fun to write and we're having a lot of fun rehearsing it, too."

Grade 10 student Abbie Ootoova expressed pride in the play's message.

"Teenagers have to stand up and be more responsible," she said.

Ootoova has performed in several theatre productions in her community and has traveled to Iqaluit to perform during the Alianait! festival. She has been acting and singing since age 10.

In Friday's show she portrays the role of a television news anchor.

Fellow actor T.J. Innualuk, a Grade 11 student, plays the role of "Bob the ignorant Qallunaaq." His dialogue alongside an Inuit character starts the play off with lots of laughs.

"Are you a real Eskimo?" he asks the other actor.

Their dialogue explores stereotypes that many people have about Inuit identity. The performance also addresses issues of drug and alcohol abuse, the importance of staying in school and the value of sharing mutual respect with others.

Following the student production, 10 performers from the adult theatre group will stage the main feature.

The troupe performed Qaggiq 22 times in the community over the summer in front of audiences made up of guests from the many cruise ships that visited.

"We had people from all over the world," Akoomalik said.

Qaggiq, an Inuktitut reference to the annual spring celebration for the return of the sun, tells the legend of the sun and the moon.

Actors playing children named Siqiniq, the sun, and Taqqaq, the moon, run around an iglu until the boy, Taqqaq, trips and loses his light.

The narrative touches on life in the community during 24-hour sunlight and 24-hour darkness.

It shares the experiences of hunting on the land in springtime and the practice of teaching skills on the land through characters of a father to son.

The set is decorated with seal and caribou hides. Masks were sewn from cotton. Narrators relate the story in English while the actors' dialogue is all in Inuktitut.

Other scenes include the community feast and the return of the sun, traditional games and throat songs, stories about traditional clothes and the importance of the seal for use in kayaks, tents and clothing.

The inuksuk is explained, as well. Far from serving merely as a symbol for tourists' T-shirts and postcards, the inuksuk has long been used as a navigational guide for visitors, to warn of impending danger, as a sign of respect, to draw caribou herds toward hunters and to indicate the presence of a cache of meat or a prime fishing spot.

The history of dwellings in the community, including sod houses, iglus, sealskin tents and wooden homes, is portrayed.

"We also talk about how Nunavut became its own territory from NWT in 1999," Akoomalik said.

"It has changed the map of Canada and the rest of the world."