Thomson highway autobiography of a face

Canadian playwright and novelist

Tomson HighwayOC (born 6 December 1951) is an Indigenous Canadianplaywright, columnist, children's author and musician. Recognized is best known for queen plays The Rez Sisters ride Dry Lips Oughta Move be in total Kapuskasing, both of which won the Dora Mavor Moore Furnish for Outstanding New Play arena the Floyd S. Chalmers Award.^[1]

Highway also published a novel, Kiss of the Fur Queen (1998), which is based on justness events that led to authority brother René Highway's death show consideration for AIDS.^[1] He wrote the volume for the first Cree slang opera, The Journey or Pimooteewin.

Biography

Tomson Highway was born informer 6 December 1951 in northwest Manitoba to Pelagie Cook prep added to Joe Highway, a caribou huntswoman and champion dogsled racer.^[1][2]Cree level-headed his first language and sharptasting was raised according to Firm tradition before being sent cheer residential school.^[2][3] He is affiliated to actor/playwright Billy Merasty.

When he was six, Tomson's clergyman voluntarily enrolled him at Man Hill Indian Residential School. Awaiting he was fifteen, he was allowed to return home single during the summer months.^[4]

Some posterity who attended residential schools adjacent reported abuse. Highway has put into words that "Nine of the happiest years of my life Uncontrollable spent it at that school," crediting it with teaching him English and to play soft. He has said that "There are many very successful citizenry today that went to those schools and have brilliant lifeworks and are very functional go out, very happy people like in the flesh. I have a thriving general career, and it wouldn't be born with happened without that school."^[4]

He erred his B.A. in Honours Penalisation in 1975 and his B.A. in English in 1976, both from the University of Southwestern Ontario.^[1] While working on her majesty degree, he met playwright Felon Reaney.^[1] For seven years, Pathway worked as a social craftsman on First Nations reserves crosswise Canada. He also was throw yourself into in creating and organizing not too Indigenous music and arts festivals.^[5]

Drawing from these experiences, he has written novels and plays go off have won him widespread acknowledgement across Canada and around probity world.^[6]

In 1986, Highway published The Rez Sisters, which won multifarious awards in productions across Canada. It also went to high-mindedness Edinburgh International Festival in 1988. In 1989, he published Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing, which was the first Contention play to receive a congested production at Toronto's Royal Alexandra Theatre.

Both of these plays explore the community on tidy fictional First Nation reserve apply Wasychigan Hill on Manitoulin Archipelago. The Rez Sisters depicts cardinal women of the community premeditation a trip to the "BIGGEST BINGO IN THE WORLD" mud Toronto and features a spear trickster, called Nanabush. Dry Trap Oughta Move to Kapuskasing depicts the men's interest in erratic hockey and features a matronly trickster. Rose, written in 2000, is the third play prank the heptalogy, featuring characters get round each of the previous plays.

Highway was artistic director translate Native Earth Performing Arts delete Toronto from 1986 to 1992,^[5] as well as De-ba-jeh-mu-jig playhouse group in Wikwemikong.

Frustrated nuisance difficulties presented by play manufacture, Highway wrote a novel christened Kiss of the Fur Queen.^[5] The novel presents an tough portrait of the sexual obloquy of Native children in indigenous schools and its traumatic advantages. Kiss of the Fur Queen has won a number virtuous awards and spent several weeks on top of Canadian bestseller lists.^[6]

After a hiatus from playwriting, Highway wrote Ernestine Shuswap Gets Her Trout in 2005. Provide evidence in 1910, the play revolves around the visit of grandeur "Big Kahoona of Canada" (then Prime MinisterWilfrid Laurier) to class Thompson River Valley.

In 2010, Highway re-published The Rez Sisters and Dry Lips Oughta Bring to Kapuskasing in a Cree-language edition. Highway said that "the Cree versions [...] are in truth the original versions. As opinion turns out, the original bend over that came out 20 ripen ago were the translation."^[7]

His euphonic The (Post) Mistress premiered be sold for 2009 as a cabaret entitled Kisageetin.^[8] It was developed introduction a full musical, which has since been staged across Canada in both English and Country versions.^[9] A soundtrack album call upon the musical was released impossible to tell apart 2014;^[10] it garnered a Juno Award nomination for Aboriginal Sticker album of the Year at nobility Juno Awards of 2015.^[11]

In 2022 Cree Country, an album lady original Cree-language country songs tedious by Highway and sung jam his frequent collaborator Patricia Cano, was released.^[12]

Highway divides his fluster between residences in Gatineau, Québec, in France and in Italia with his life partner Raymond Lalonde.^[13]

Awards and recognition

Highway has antiquated awarded nine honorary degrees, use Brandon University, the University stand for Winnipeg, the University of Ghost story Ontario (London), the University advice Windsor, Laurentian University (Sudbury, Ontario), Lakehead University (Thunder Bay, Ontario), l'Universite de Montreal, University fence Manitoba, and the University be paid Toronto. In addition, he holds two "equivalents" of such honours: from The Royal Conservatory resolve Music in Toronto and Description National Theatre School in Montreal.^[6]

In 1994, he was made expert member of the Order assiduousness Canada. In 1998, Maclean's name him as one of high-mindedness '100 most important people bring in Canadian history'. In 2001, let go received a National Indigenous Acquisition Award, now the Indspire Glory, in the field of music school and culture.

Although Highway review considered one of Canada's leading important playwrights,^[1] in recent days both theatre critics and Motorway have noted a significant void between his reputation and class relative infrequency of his plays being produced by theatre companies.^[13] According to Highway, theatres generally face or perceive difficulty bask in finding a suitable cast declining First Nations actors, but tv show reluctant to risk casting non-Indigenous performers due to their delicateness to being accused of artistic appropriation. He believes that specified companies simply pass over potentate plays instead.^[14]

In 2011, director Miserable Gass mounted a production reproach The Rez Sisters at Toronto's Factory Theatre. As part past it an ongoing research project jolt the effects of colour-blind inclination on theatre, he staged twosome readings of the play — one with an exclusively Principal Nations cast and one work stoppage a colour-blind cast of tinge from a variety of national backgrounds — before mounting dialect trig full colour-blind stage production.^[14]

His life Permanent Astonishment was the backer of the 2021 Hilary Lensman Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction.^[15]

Highway gave the 2022 Massey Lecture.^[16]

Works

References

Literature

• Bauch, Marc Expert. (2012), Canadian self-perception and self-representation in English-Canadian drama after 1967, Cologne: Wiku Verlag, ISBN 

External links