Inspired by my recent trip to Stratford to watch The Rez Sisters, I decided to sit down and read these two plays by Tomson Highway. As noted in many other reviews, the plays are essentially mirror images of each other. There are 7 female First Nations female parts in The Rez Sisters with a male actor playing Nanabush (a trickster figure) and 7 male actors in Dry Lips and a very female Nanabush. If anything there is more of a female presence in Dry Lips because the Nanabush character interacts far more often and directly with the men in Dry Lips, because the wife on one of the men turns up at the end and because there is an (unseen) women's hockey game that Big Joey announces on his radio program. The characters all live on the Wasaychigan Hill reservation and they are pretty much all related to one another. However, it isn't until Rose (which I will review later) that you really see the men and women interact. There are two different controversies that surround these plays and make them a bit challenging to put on. First, there is the very strong notion that only Native actors should play Native parts. Highway has addressed this numerous times, including writing an essay republished at the back of Rose, where he argues it is just as absurd to only "allow" Native actors to play such roles as it would be to expect Danish actors to play the roles in Hamlet. That said, feelings around cultural appropriation run very high these days, and most theatrical producers either agree with the angry Twitter mobs or are simply too cowed by the fear of being attacked by said mobs.* I don't really expect either play to be performed again, in Canada at any rate, unless the cast is entirely or predominantly made up of First Nations actors. (I'm sure it doesn't help that Highway sprinkles a fair bit of Cree or Ojibway phrases throughout the texts...)
The second source of controversy is the level of misogyny (overt and covert) and on-stage violence directed at women, though this is more specific to Dry Lips. While Highway implies in a general way that this ultimately stems from colonization, the fact that this is not a fairy tale with comeuppance for all the sexist males will not sit well with many (and in that sense Rose is even more upsetting). Generally audiences are not that pleased with stories where the unworthy are not punished in some way, though of course that is a fairly accurate representation of "life." I'm not 100% sure I would actually enjoy watching either Dry Lips or Rose, but I think I would at least attend if they ever do turn up again in Toronto or nearby.
To write more about the plays, I'll have to reveal at least a few plot points, so the standard SPOILER warnings apply.
SPOLIERS ahead.
As far as I can tell, the Stratford production was accurate, though I think they streamlined one section where all 7 characters are talking at the same time and insulting each other. It just seemed completely chaotic. Also, I think the moment when the band council turns down their request for funding for their road trip to Toronto (to play in the Biggest Bingo Game in the World) was altered a bit, and I do wonder if the original stage directions wouldn't have been a bit more effective. At any rate, I hope to find out soon when the recorded performance streams, and I'll watch it again.
I think my favourite character is Annie Cook, a relatively uncomplicated music-lover and part-time backup singer who wants to win the bingo so she can buy a ton of records and a huge jukebox. One interesting thing about her and also Pelajia Patchnose is they have children living in urban centres (Sudbury and Toronto), presumably because there are more economic opportunities of the Rez.
The first half of the play mostly focuses on the low-level conflicts between them and a much more active conflict between Emily Dictionary and the never seen Gazelle Nataways to win the heart of Big Joey. The second half shows them working together to raise money for the trip and then what happens on the road trip itself. The bingo game and its aftermath are somewhat compressed into a couple of scenes. While the dynamic is different (and the ending not quite as deflating), I was definitely seeing connections with Tremblay's Les Belles-soeurs. I don't think it a stretch that Highway was at least aware of Tremblay's play. All in all, this is a relatively straight-forward play to produce if one can find enough Native actors.
Dry Lips starts off with a man (Zachary), lying mostly naked on a couch in someone else's house, getting a glowing neon kiss on his behind from the female-incarnation of Nanabush, losing his underwear and splitting his pants, remaining in split pants for roughly most of the play. It isn't really clear why Nanabush messes with him in this way, as Zachary is generally one of the few men to really stick up for the women, both in Dry Lips and Rose. It may just be his/her mischievous nature or because Zachary is more in touch with his feminine side (he opposes Big Joey's plays to expand his radio station in favour of his own plans to open a bakery on the reservation). At any rate, much like Puck, Nanabush seems to set things right between Zacahary and Hera, his wife, at the end. I almost wondered if the whole play was sort of a fever dream (a la Bobby Ewing coming back from the dead on Dallas), but in Rose we find that some of the tragic events in Dry Lip s do in fact occur and have lasting outcomes.
There are a number of memorable characters in Dry Lips, though almost no one I would care to spend time with, aside from Zachary. First, we meet Big Joey, who is a philanderer and self-professed woman-hater who plans to use a photo of the nude Zachary in a blackmail scheme. Then there is Pierre St. Pierre, who is a lush whose loyalty is easily bought, and again this is even more apparent in Rose.** And Spooky, a former alcoholic who has turned heavily to religion and become pretty insufferable about it. Finally, there is the mute Dickie Bird Halked who lives with some unimaginable trauma. At one point in the play, for reasons that are still not very clear to me, he attacks a woman (or rather Nanabush representing a clanswoman) and rapes her with Spooky's crucifix. All portrayed on-stage. So you can see why this play would have ruffled some feathers...
One of the amusing subplots is watching Pierre St. Pierre try to retrieve his skates so he can be the referee in the women's hockey game. The idea of the women playing hockey generally upsets the men quite a bit. Though I guess to his credit Big Joey will broadcast the game on the radio in order to boost his ratings.
Neither play ends tied up in a neat little bow. If there really is a message in The Rez Sisters it might be that female solidarity is hard-won but it can be achieved for certain objectives when goals overlap. It's even harder to say in Dry Lips, but it is probably that while most Native men, conditioned by their broken home environment, continue to oppress their women, a more balanced and healthy family life is possible, as represented by Zachary, Hera and their baby daughter.
* Indeed it wasn't that long ago that a new movement sprung up demanding that even translators should be of the same race or nationality as the author. I'm kind of hoping these sentiments run their course and die down when they prove to be unworkable in practice, but sadly it seems that Twitter outage is the closest we've come yet to perfecting a perpetual motion machine.
** Aside from the questionable loyalty, he reminded me a bit of the rummy, Eddie, in To Have and Have Not.
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