The Occupied

September 30The Dora Mavor Moore Awards [TAPA]The B.A.A.N.N. Theatre Centre One Yellow RabbitEspace GoFringe Festivals (Edmonton, Toronto)Tarragon Theatre

Scene Reading

“The rhetorical proposal of a national theatre in effect means the canonization of a theatre and drama that reflects the national ideals of the governing elite.”

Alan Filewod, “National Theatre, National Obsession”

Maggie & Pierre by Linda Griffiths

The first play staged in Canada…

….was Marc Lescarbot’s 1606 Théâtre Neptune en la Nouvelle France, presented by French explorers. It included words in various native Canadian languages, as well as references to Canadian geography, within a more typically French style of play. The nature of theatre designed for colonial officers and/or troops (and the nature of colonialism itself) required that the plays produced in these countries be reproductions of imperial models in style, theme, and content. Various elements of ‘local colour’ were of course included, so that an early settler play might position a native character in the same way that the nineteenth-century British theatre figured the drunken Irishman: as an outsider, someone who was in some central way ridiculous or intolerable.

from Helen Gilbert, Post-colonial drama: theory, practice, politics

1967

Louis Riel, the opera• Written for the 1967

centennial, by Canadian composer Harry Somers

• About the controversial Métis leader executed in 1885

• Libretto by Mavor Moore and Lacques Languirand

• Produced by the Canadian Opera Company

The Ecstasy of Rita JoeWritten by George Ryga Premiered at the Vancouver Playhouse 1967The (abysmal) story of a young Aboriginal woman in the cityThe first play in English to be presented in the National Arts Centre in Ottawa in 1969Julius Novick, of The New York Times, wrote:

“Canadian Playwright.” The words seem a little incongruous

together, like ‘Panamanian hockey-player,’ almost, or

‘Lebanese fur-trapper.’

NYT

1971

“Esker Mike & His Wife, Agiluk is a social satire about Eskimo life in the Mackenzie River Delta and how it is affected by white settlers, priests and government officials. The play is also a tragic reflection on the role of women who are forced to bear children in a society that cannot afford to support them.”

in parentheses..

George Ryga (1932-1987)

• Indian written for TV in 1961 is not staged in the theatre until 1974

• The Indian (note the word) is treated like a slave, abused, nameless

• He terrorizes a land agent • Indian was based on Ryga’s experiences

working with Cree Indians on his father's farm during a period when he was recovering from a bout of pneumonia. He said he understood how the Crees could view white man's society as a prison.

• READ NR. 1

• Ecstasy of Rita Joe, 1967 – the story of a young native woman who ends up on Skid Row

• READ NR. 2

Ukrainian background

Tomson Highway b.1951

• Spent seven years immersed in Native social work

• The first Native playwright to break into the ‘mainstream’ and “win as much celebrity as Canadian theatre accords” (Filewod, 37)

• Rez Sisters developed for a collective group called the Native Earth Performing Arts, a loose group of individuals at the Native Friendship Centre

• Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing, the sequel to The Rez Sisters, moves to Royal Alex in 1991

• From 1986 to 1992, he is Artistic Director of Native Earth Performing Arts

• Winner of very many awards, including the Order of Canada, “and others too embarrassingly numerous to list. In fact, at one point in his life, his trophy case collapsed from the terrible weight and killed three people.” (from his website)

• He holds ten honorary doctorates• Trained as a concert pianist

Tomson Highway was born in a snow bank on the Manitoba/Nunavut border to a family of nomadic caribou hunters. He had the great privilege of growing up in two languages, neither of which was French or English; they were Cree, his mother tongue, and Dene, the language of the neighbouring "nation," a people with whom they roamed and hunted.

www.tomsonhighway.com

The Rez Sisters 1986Directed by Larry Lewis.Premiered by Native Earth Performing Arts in Toronto

Highway’s play about bingo has a huge impact.

All women, all lower-income, all Manitoulin island, but above all:

A revival of Native culture

SIMILARITIES

Les Belles Soeurs• localized, women• 2 acts• direct address• winning big – chance• material goods• oppressed by the men• joual • family values• dependents

The Rez Sisters• localized, women• 2 acts • inner monologues • winning big- chance• material goods• oppressed by the mean• community-specific

language, Cree• family values

SIMILARITIES

Les Belles Soeurs• All women • Working-class• Predominant cultures, but

minorities• Quick fix – chance• Faith – dominated by

Catholic religion• Language wars• structure

The Rez Sisters• All women • Economically deprived• Predominant cultures, but

minorities• Importance of chance• Faith – mingling of

Christianity and Native spiritualism

• Celebrating Native life• structure

A call to arms/a call for culture

Les Belles Soeurs• Women = the local culture• Women – suffer and survive

abuse• Bingo+: ruled by games of chance• A closed society – dislike of

Italians• Material fetishes• Joual• Religion

The Rez Sisters• Women = the local culture• Women – suffer and survive abuse• Bingo –an ecstatic spiritual

transformation, via Nanabush• A closed society – outsiders the

Frenchman, the Jew (get quote)• Fetishization of appliances (toilet,

stove)• Rooted in the real: The Silver Dollar• Use of second language• The Trickster Nanabush “a metonym

for the suppressed spirituality in the lives of Native people” (Filewod, 41)

Form: The theatre of orphans

Nanabush: The Trickster

From a blog called: Bingo Rage. My Art. Native Art.Other stuff that bugs me. (Ojibway artist Eric C. Keast)

Rez Sisters: Highlights

Positioning:

PELAJIA: Philomena. I wanna go to Toronto.

Not vanishing:

PELAJIA: And the old stories, the old language. Almost all gone..was a time Nanabush and Windigo and everyone here could rattle away in Indian fast as Bingo Betty could lay her bingo chips down on a hot night. (5)

Iconoclastic – or misogynist?

ANNIE: Hit the bitch. One good bang is all she needs.

EMILY: Yeah, right. A gang-bang is more like it. (43)

I am sensitive to women because of the matrilineal principle in our culture, which has gone on for thousands of years. Women have such an ability to express themselves emotionally…

Tomson Highway

Dry Lips is not only about misogyny but isa drama studded with misogyny.. Marian Botsford Fraser

I have heard of Native women having nightmares for a week or feeling depressed after seeing Dry Lips..

Marie Annharte Baker

Aboriginal womenOver the past 30 years, 1,200 aboriginal women have been recorded murdered or missing in Canada. Even more have likely vanished unnoticed. Stories of bodies found and loved ones lost have become so commonplace that the public has casually adopted the term “Highway of Tears” to refer to a stretch of Highway 16 between the northern towns of Prince George and Prince Rupert, in British Columbia. Along that road, 18 women (most of them aboriginal) have disappeared, their cases unsolved. The blunt message of the #AmINext campaign is not surprising – for many young women, they really could be.

Lyndsie Bourgon, theguardian.com,

Saturday 27 September 2014, accessed same date

Survivors

EMILY: You see this fist? You see these knuckles? You wanna know where they come from? Ten years. Every second night for 10 long ass-fuckin’ years that goddam Yellowknife asshole Henry Dadzinanare come home to me so drunk his eyes was spittin’ blood like Red Lucifer himself and he’d beat me purple. (50)

ANNIE: And she took the bus to San Francisco.

PHILOMENA: And gets herself mixed up with a motorcycle gang, for God’s sake.

EMILY:Rosabella Baez, Hortensia(51) Colorado, Liz Jones, Pussy Commanda. And me. The best. “Rose and the Rez Sisters,” that’s us. And man, us sisters could weave some knuckle magic.

“ECSTASY”“I’d say in 75 per cent of the Native plays written and produced, there is a rape. Why? One theory is that rape represents the horrific amount of sexual abuse that exists in Native communities because of the residential school system, because of alcoholism, because of the breakdown of the extended families, because of adoption..The dramatic version of rape is also the perfect metaphor for what happened to Native culture..Another culture comes in, forcing itself on the community, basically eradicating everything there, subjugating that culture to its will.’

- Drew Hayden Taylor

…. the metaphorical link between woman and the land is "a powerful trope in imperial discourse and one which is reinforced, consciously or not, in much post-colonial drama, particularly by male writers. In some instances, women' s bodies are not only exploited by the colonisers but also reappropriated by the colonised patriarchy as part of a political agenda which may not fully serve the interests of the women in question.

Rape is a prominent signifier in a number of plays, particularly in countries where settlers' annexation of so-called 'unoccupied territories' disrupted not only the culture but also the livelihoods of indigenous peoples." "they also challenge the voyeuristic gaze of the white spectator, inviting him/her to admit complicity in that violence."

Gilbert and Tompkins, Post-Colonial Drama (213-214)

Prior to WWII, it was illegal for Native people to leave the reserve without written permission from an Indian agentIn 1960, Native people got the right to vote in Canada

Context: The Rez Sisters

Wounded Knee, 1973 200 Oglala Dakota seize and control theTown of Wounded Knee in South Dakota for 71 days

Blue Quills Residential School, 1970: In 1970, the Blue Quills residential school in Saddle Lake, Alberta, became the first such institution to come under the control of the First Nations. In the wake of the 1969 “Statement of the Government of Canada on Indian Policy,” which sought complete assimilation of aboriginals into Canadian culture, natives demanded they be able to exert control over their children’s education—and the government conceded. Two years later, the National Indian Brotherhood released the “Indian Control of Indian Education” policy, a necessary step on the the path to self-governance.

Haida logging blockades, 1985: After years of watching the impact of commercial logging on their Northwest B.C. community, the Haida First Nation people had enough. In 1985, the natives – supported by environmentalists – staged blockades, preventing any outside logging companies from accessing their land. Eight years later, the southern half of the land was established as a protected heritage site, and the Canadian government and council of the Haida Nation co-manage the territory.

Oka Crisis On July 11 1990, Quebec provincial police tried to dismantle a roadblock set up in mid-March by a group of Mohawks from the community of Kanesatake on the outskirts of Montréal who were trying to prevent the nearby town of Oka from expanding a golf course onto lands sacred to local Mohawks. One police officer was killed during the raid. For 78 days, armed Mohawk warriors faced Quebec provincial police, and later the Canadian Armed Forces, across a roadblock barricade.

Context: The Rez Sisters

PELAJIA: I know how to handle that tired old chief.. I’ll tell him we’ll build paved roads all over the reserve with our prize money. I’ll tell him the people will stop drinking themselves to death because they’ll have paved roads to walk on. I’ll tell him there’ll be more jobs because the people will have paved roads to drive to work on. I’ll tell him the people will stop fighting and screwing around and Nanabush will come back to us because he’ll have paved roads to dance on. (59)

Every colonized people – in other words every people in whose soul an inferiority complex has been created by the death and burial of its local cultural orginality – finds itself face to face with the language of the civilizing nation: that is with the culture of the mother country. The colonized is elevated..in proportion to his adoption of the mother country’s cultural standards.”

-- Franz Fanon, in Black Skins, White Masks as quoted by S.M.Crean, “The Invisible Country” (1976)

Drew Hayden Taylor, Ojibway playwright, Artistic Directorof Native Earth Performing Arts,1996

If in 1986 there was one working Native playwright in all of Canada, today at least two dozen playwrights of aboriginal descent are being produced.If the rate of increase continues, by the year 2020 it is conceivable that everybody in Canada will be a Native playwright!

Tomson Highway: thank you for the love you gave me [videorecording] /

written, directed and narrated by Donald Winkler ; produced by Craig Graham.imprint{Toronto, ON] : Cenepro C.T.F. Productions : Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 1997.description1 videocassette (45 min.) : sd., col. ; 1/2 in. (VHS)formatVideocassette

We watched from: 4.54 to 15.27, then 18-21.

NEXT WEEK

October 7 Immigration and its Discontents  Sharon Pollock, Komagata Maru Incident (1976) (CW) Ninette Kelley and Michael Trebilcock, "The Postwar Boom, 1946-1962:

Reopening the Doors Selectively."  Activities:Scene readingsLibrary workshop

Assignment due: Michel Tremblay Review