Tomson Highway's "The Rez" Plays: Theater as the (E)Merging of Native Ritual through Postmodernist Displacement

Introduction Canadian Native playwright Tomson Highway emerged on national and international theatre scene with production of two plays in late 1980s: The Rez Sisters, first staged by Native Earth Performing Arts Toronto in 1986; and Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing, originally produced at Theatre Pass Muraille in Toronto in 1989. Both plays were extremely well-received at time and made Highway talk of Canadian theatre establishment. Both plays won Dora Mavor Moore Award for an Outstanding New Play (1988-89), as well as Floyd S. Chalmers Canadian Play Award, given to Canadian plays produced professionally in Toronto area. Set on fictional Wasaychigan (Window) Hill reserve on Manitoulin Island, Ontario, The Rez Sisters and Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing can be seen as obverse sides of a coin--or as mirror images of shared theme of the big game, viewed from a gendered perspective. The Rez Sisters tells story of seven Native women on a largely comic quest to attend The World's Biggest Bingo Game in city of Toronto, several hundred miles from reserve. There are no men in play except, perhaps, for figure of Nanabush, who resembles Trickster Coyote from traditional Native mythology. Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing concentrates on seven men (some of whom are mentioned in The Rez Sisters), who must deal with creation of a women's hockey team on reserve. There are no women in play, except for Nanabush, now manifested in various female forms. This evaluates Highway's success in taking what is essentially an oral tradition of storytelling and translating it into a tradition in which designated actors perform a script for an audience in a specific space designed especially for performances. This transition is examined in terms of theatrical form used by Highway, as well as use of some of elements from traditional storytelling and Native mythology (with special reference to Nanabush and how his/her role in Highway's plays differs significantly from that role in traditional storytelling). As well, takes a look at how Highway manages to walk fine line between Native ritual performance and theatrical entertainment. Finally, examines Highway's ability to perform this transformation, arguing that his success depends on having avoided mimetic forms and making a leap instead from oral storytelling directly to a postmodern theatre that contains elements of theatre of absurd, magic realism, and hybridity. Turning Oral into Written Word In context of power relationships between Natives and colonizers, written English language has always been too easily twisted, too easily made to reflect whatever colonizing forces wanted it to. In one creation story from Salish people of British Columbia interior, white man acts as betrayer of his older brother, Native. As told by elder Harry Robinson, younger brother, being literate, stole the paper from God and thus usurped Native's rightful inheritance: And that younger one, now today, that's white man. And older one, that's me. That's Indian. And that's why white man, they can tell a lie more than Indian. But white man, they got law. (Robinson, 1989, pp. 45-46) Thus, while Natives eventually became literate themselves, original betrayal is still considered part of colonizing process even today. Native writing tends to reflect act of remembering (pre- and post-betrayal) so important in oral storytelling tradition. According to Metis writer Emma LaRoque: Some themes unique to a person dispossessed stand out: a haunting and hounding sense of loss that drives one to reminisce. 'I remember,' many of us write, 'I remember'. …

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