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KRISZTINA Kopó
the mind, the imagination, and transposing it — using words, actors, lights, sound
— onto the stage in a theater. For me, it is really a matter of taking a mythology as
extraordinary and as powerful as the human imagination itself and re-working it
to fit, snugly and comfortably, the medium of the stage."
The theater has become an important medium for Native writers, because
drama is ultimately the closest to storytelling and within its scope humor
is an essential factor with a major driving force. This serves as a basis for
maintaining the oral tradition, the ritual practices and for the formulation of
a new form of expression.
As mentioned above, Native theater is a relatively recent development
which considers the works written and performed by Native people. These
plays discuss and portray the culture and everyday lives of the Native Peoples
in Canada. Like all theater, Native theater also “provides the possibility of
direct confrontation, brings people together, introduces thought-provoking
ideas and fosters an openness to dialogue and change.”'?
Within a multicultural Anglophone society, how effective is Native drama
in its portrayal of the contemporary Indian with an oral culture based on
storytelling, vibrant and full of symbolism, which reaches back to an oral
tradition of thousands of years? Native heritage inherent in contemporary
Native theater and drama is an experimental platform that combines Native
symbolism, ritual, belief and heritage with contemporary cultural trends and
genres. Furthermore, with the use of the trickster figure or tricksterish spirit
— the figure that traditionally links the spiritual world with the physical world
— the audiences are introduced to the concept of magic and the absurd. This
allows for the dramatic demonstration of the constant opposing entities of
fantasy and reality on stage on the one hand, and the projection of identities
and stereotypical images as they accommodate themselves to the English
language and non-Native culture, on the other. The function of Native humor,
therefore, aided by the trickster is to hold up a mirror to humanity in which
we, as Natives and non-Natives, see ourselves.”°
The above features can be further expanded by exploring the blues and
the Gothic as diverse genres that highlight the grotesque and absurd factors
that support Native humor. These elements will be examined within the
framework of the article. One of the most well-known and active figures
within the Native theatrical scene is Drew Hayden Taylor, whose plays focus
8 Tomson Highway: On Native Mythology, in Don Rubin (ed.), Canadian Theatre History,
Selected Readings, Toronto, Playwrights Canada, 2006, 405.
Mirjam Hirch: Subversive Humour: Canadian Native Playwrights’ Winning Weapon of
Resistance, in Drew Hayden Taylor (ed.) Me Funny, British Columbia, Douglas and McIntyre
Ltd., 2005, 102.
Hirch, Subversive Humour, 114.
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