Interview With Tomson Highway

Tomson Highway is a multi-talented artist who began his performance career as a classically trained musician. Born in Northern Manitoba, Tomson first learned English (Cree is his native tongue) when he was sent to boarding school in the Pas (Manitoba). His formal education continued at the University of Manitoba and the University of Western Ontario, from which he graduated in 1975. After excelling in piano and studying briefly in England, Tomson returned to Canada to become a social worker and organizer. For seven years he worked with native political and cultural organizations across the country, acting as Artistic Director of Native Earth Performing Arts from 1986 until he stepped down in 1992. His writing credits include The Sage, The Dancer and the Fool, A Ridiculous Spectacle in One Act, and his trilogy: The Rez Sisters, Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing, and Rose. At present, he is working on a novel set for publication in the fall of 1998.

Tomson spoke with Susannah Schmidt in May 1998 from his home in Toronto.

So we're interested in play development here. Tell me how a piece as sprawling as Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing came to be.

It was hilarious. Actually we were in Vancouver, and had to stop over in Winnipeg. Kim McKaw gave me a call he was the Artistic Director of Prairie Theatre Exchange. He said he'd like to commission a show from me and I said sure, so he said there's a $1000 cheque waiting for you, you can pop by and pick it up. I was broke, and I got it . . . and then awhile after I realised I had to write a play. That was in late June of 1987. I didn't do it for the longest time.

I was the Artistic Director of native Earth performing Arts, and I started a new play development program, out of that came The Rez Sisters. It was a raging hit; it was travelling across the country. I was at my brother's house, Rene, a bunch of us were hanging out. The phone rang and my brother answered, and I said to my lover, something's wrong. [My brother] was speaking in Cree, so I knew it was someone from our family (I come from a huge family). My brother said my father had a collapsed lung he had cancer it didn't look good. He was 79. The next day we had to go back to touring, and it seemed that every free day, my dad's condition worsened. Well, as I said, we were in the midst of touring The Rez Sisters . . . and every time we had a three day break there was just enough time to fly off and be with my dad. So here it was, this raging hit, I mean mega box office seller . . . and at the same time, dad was dying.

So he was dying, right fading fast. I said, I can't go to Vancouver [with the tour]. [My dad] was in the hospital by then, 30 kms away from our home, by Leaf Rapids. He was a beautiful man, a powerful man. Magnificent. He had the golden touch, whatever he touched turned to gold.... When I got to my parents' house, I was there for the night and I was sleeping in his bed my parents were old and they had their own beds and I had the most powerful dreams. My mind tells me I was dreaming his dreams. Someone asked my father earlier, "Do you think your people will find their way out of their current despair_", and he said "Yes".... The way my parents trained us and they were incredible people it was to serve our people. So whatever I do, whatever my family does, it's for my dad's vision, to fulfill it.

But these dreams I had in his bed: it was a hockey game with this young man who was about 17 years old, and the women were playing. Something happened on the ice, and the man had an epileptic fit, started speaking in tongues, you know, freaking out. It was a desperate thing. So that's where the play started, that was [the character] Dickie Bird.

Dad got transferred to Thompson Hospital, so mom and some of my family stayed at my cousins' house. So I started writing the play in his hospital room, with my feet on his bed. So that's when I did the first draft. And while I was there I went into town in the middle of a Wednesday afternoon and ran into these beautiful young men, many of whom I knew I mean physically beautiful. There were ten tables put together [in the bar there] and people were having a riot: laughing and telling stories around these tables. But this day all these men were crowded into the bar, and there was a story about women playing baseball, and someone did a fly-ball and the ball was stuck down a woman's cleavage, and she was so embarrassed that she walked right off the field. And this was all in Cree, and it's a hilarious language, and everybody was laughing so hard. Then a light went on, and there was a mini stage, and I turned around and the stripper was right above me, just twirling her tits. And the perspective I had from that angle was seeing fifteen to twenty men staring at the stage, like they were seeing God . . . God as a woman, God as a stripper, which is some of what I was looking at in the play [Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing].

And all this time my father was dying. The Vancouver tour ended and I flew to Toronto, to Regina, and all this time I was writing writing in airport waiting lounges, everywhere. The first draft blew out of me as a cry of despair. Two nights before the end of the tour, he died, which was the perfect time, like he knew. So the play came from the heart, it was a cry, it came from such a deep place.

Yeah, that's right. Kim [McKaw] organized with you people for us to workshop it there. A bunch of us [Larry Lewis, Graham Greene, Gary Farmer, Billy Merasty, Doris Linklater] came up from Toronto and had a ball. I tell you, from the moment we left Toronto we laughed uncontrollably. We laughed all the way to Montreal. We laughed for a solid week and by the end I was laughing so hard that I was farting. So I laughing from both ends.

Interview with Tomson Highway

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