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CANADIAN LANDSCAPES/ PAYSAGES CANADIENS
Indigenous theatre is one of the best outlets for Native humour and some
of the most well-known playwrights in the field are Drew Hayden Taylor,
Tomson Highway, Monigue Mojica, Daniel David Moses, Marie Clements, etc.,
who “have paved the way since the 1980s for many Native playwrights here in
Canada” (Stella 139). Simply put, Indigenous theatre is “about telling stories”
(Stella 138). As Thomas King says, “stories are everything we are and [...] the
only way to understand the world is to tell a story” (The Truth About Stories
32). Ihe plays written by Drew Hayden Taylor and Tomson Highway focus on
contemporary themes set on the reserve and offer a glimpse of the Rez-milieu
in Canada. Well-known examples of popular plays by Tomson Highway are
The Rez Sisters (1988), Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing (1989); while
Drew Hayden Taylor’s iconic plays are: Toronto at Dreamer’s Rock (1991), The
Bootlegger Blues (1991), The Baby Blues (1999), The Buz’Gem Blues (2002). Ihe
aim ofthese works is to tell a funny story. Allthe protagonists are stock char¬
acters, who represent the average Native person living in Canada today. But
among such characters there is always the odd one out, who questions “whether
one should live without any social restrictions or follow the unwritten social
norms of the dominant white Anglophone Canadian” (Kod6é 297).The works
explore Indigenous transcultural identity and the ways in which Indigenous
people move and connect across cultures, adopting or appropriating words,
phrases, and behavioural attitudes to explore the depth to which Indigenous
heritage (language and culture) can adapt to English Canada in a globalized
environment, and vice versa.
Humour therefore is a “cross-cultural language,” which, according to Hirch,
acts as a weapon that can “bridge two worlds on one stage” (114), which is thus
the basis of Indigenous plays. And “whether confronting annihilation in the
physical or in the spiritual sense, the comic tenacity of Native playwrights
suggests that the most deeply liberating function of humour is to free others
to hope for the impossible” (Hirch 114). However, these plays are written not
only for Indigenous but also for non-Indigenous audiences.
One of the biggest obstacles that Indigenous people had to overcome was
the use of English, which is very different from the language and worldview of
Indigenous peoples. The language that Indigenous writers use is English, which
is constantly changing, but if they want their voices to be heard, these writers
and playwrights must adapt to the expectations of the dominant society. How¬
ever, Drew Hayden Taylor says that the mastery of the English language is
secondary, because “what Native people like me knew and were very comfort¬
able expressing was their knowledge of oral storytelling. [...] Culturally, Native
people knew how to generate and tell a story through dialogue. What is theatre
but that?” (Me Artsy 161).
In their plays Taylor, and Highway use humour to highlight the importance
of consciously maintaining both cultures, while also recalling and identifying
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