4 - Sunday, May 5, 1991 -- North Shore News

Native play

MANITOBA CREE playwright Tomson Highway’s
disturbing and powerful Dry Lips Oughta Move To

Kapuskasing is one hell of a tough play to sit through.

fam about as much of a liberal
when it comes to the arts as any-
body you’re going to find, and
there were several times when I
found myself wondering: Should |
be watching this?

The play starts with a fat, nak-
ed fellow passed out drunk on a
couch. A chubby Indian woman,
wearing only her panties, kisses
his ass, leaving a bright lipstick
mark.

Throughout the piece, the same
woman cavorts on the back of the
stage, assuming a variety of roles,
each of them a burlesque. She
wears grotesquely-large falsies,
appears with a huge pregnant bel-
ly, slops beer and does a near
strip-tease.

Another Indian woman is raped
by a half-wit whose brain was
fried thanks to Fetal Aicohol
Syndrome. But it is far from a
conventional rape. He uses a
crucifix to violate her.

The dialogue, while often as
brilliant and sparkling as decent
Dylan Thomas poetry, reverts
time and again to the most basic
street language.

Sexism prevails.

Of course, this is precisely the
message the playwright intended.
Not all of the audience could
telate. I saw it in the Royal Alex
Theatre in Toronto the same night
as newspaper columnist Gary
Lautens (Trevor’s big brother)
walked out.

The applause at the end was
just barely enough to allow the
actors to get off stage without los-
ing face. There was no encore.

As we were leaving, my wife
asked me what I thought. And for

AFTER HOURS

STRICTLY PERSONAL

a change, I didn’t have an im-
mediate response, except to shake
my head and say: *‘Whew.”

I’ve been thinking about it for a
few days now, I realize the reason
it was so hard to respond posi-
tively at first was because the
message, after all, was so bleak.

Not that it wasn’t, in places, a
tremendously funny play. There
were a couple of scenes that were
not just hysterical but somewhere
around genius level, with
choreography and acting (especial-
ly on the part of Dances With
Wolves star Graham Greene)
which knocked tny socks off.

The humor served, as it should,
to set us up for the tragedy at the
end. All of which made reason-
able sense to me, except that the
author threw in an ending that
portrayed it all as a dream, which
left me really confused.

ARDAGH HUNTER TURNER |

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PROGRAMME-CADRE
DE FRANCAIS

Le Conseil Scolaire de Vanceuver Nord invite i

cordiatement les parents francophones a inscrire leurs

enfants au Programme-Cadre de Francais pour l’‘année

scolaire 1991-92,

Ce Programme dessert toute la Rive Nord, de Deep Cove &
Horseshoe Bay et s’‘adresse aux parents francophones qui

désirent offrir 4 Jeurs enfants une éducation de qualité en fj

francais. Actuellement, I’école André Piolat de Vancouver |

Nord accueille plus de 120 éléves de la maternelle a la 7e §

annee.

MATERNELLE: Entrée en septembre 1991
pour les enfants qui auronnt 5 ans fe ou
avant le 31 octobre 1991
Entrée en janvier 1992
pour les enfants qui auront 5 ans le ou
avant fe 350 avril 1992

a“ .
Le programme cadre est egalement offert au niveau

secondaire: _-

Ecofe Balmoral (8, 9, 10e années)

Ecote Carson Graham (11 et 12e années}

il y aura porte-ouverte fe 8 mai, 1991 de 11:00 a 21:00 a: §

Lécole Andre Piolat

370 C.H. Kings Quest. Vancouver Nord, V7N 2L9
RENSEIGNEMENTS: 980-6040
Le Conseil Scolaire de Yancouver Nord

That’s all right. I don't mind
being confused by art. Sometimes
it means I'll figure it out a week,
a month or years later, when I fi-
nally reach the level of insight the
artist had achieved long before.

In this case, it finally dawned
on me that this was a play from a
man who was far angrier than I
am. Well, little wonder! I’m a
white middle class middle-aged
Canuck male.

Tomson Highway’s vision is
driven by engines of rage that I
can only guess at.

Upon reflection, I think Dry
Lips Oughta Move To Kapuskas-
ing is the best piece of theatre
about Indians in Canada since the
Ecstasy of Rita Joe, except that
because it was written by an In-
dian (and mostly acted by superb
Indian talent) it goes deeper. It
has a raw, jagged edge to it that
no white writer could manage.

The parts where I thought the
whole thing went over the top —
thar is, becoming banal or strident
or even juvenile —- were precisely
those places where the anger came
out in unadultered, undeleted ex-
pletives.

This is the art, after all, of the
conquered, of the dispossessed
and oppressed. No matter how
hard most Canadians try to ignore
the issue of what has become of
the people whose land we invaded,
our very own Palestinians, the
fate of the native people will con-
tinue to be one of the great
determining factors in the shaping
of our nation or nations, if that’s
what we become.

I'd have written a different
play, of course. I wouldn’t have
dared attempt to tread the
tightrope across the pit of racism
and sexism that Mr. Highway
walked.

driven by engines

The play is about identity. Sex-
ual identity. Racial identity. Cul-
tural identity. Linguistic identity.
And, above all, spiritual identity.

In many Indian languages —
Cree and Ojibwa, for example —
there is no word for male or fe-
male. Thus, the idea of God being
a fasher, rather than a sexually
neutral entity, threw native society
for a loop when the concept was
forced upon them.

God, they could understand.
But a male God, no.

Christianity becomes in itself a
form of psychic rape. More than
anything else — the loss of ter-
ritory and power, the destruction
of indigenous political systems,
the rear-eradication of Janguages,
the decimation of eco-systems ~—
it was the introduction of the
concept of God as a male that

of rage

struck at the heart of native iden-
tity,

The search throughout the play
is for a way to reconnect with the
fost Indian sou!, which is neither
male nor female, but possesses the
energy and power of both.

The rape scene involving the
crucifix is the symbol of all this.

So, while I was sometimes not
sure that ¥ should be watching,
the fact is that the ‘‘rape’’ of the
Indian has been going on
throughout the history of the
modern nation-state of Canada,
and continues.

Like the characters in the play,
I can ignore it and pretend it isn’t
happening.

But I don’t think that’s what
the author intended.

——

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