About the Play:

Finalist for the 1988 Governor General's Award for Drama (Canadian equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize)

The Rez Sisters has long been a favourite of acting teachers for Female Monologues and Female/Male Scenes.

The Rez Sisters is a full-length comedy by Tomson Highway. A powerful and moving portrayal of seven women from a Manitoulin Island reserve attempting to beat the odds by winning at bingo. The Rez Sisters is a seminal work of Indigenous drama that celebrates the spirit of resilience and the powerful beauty these women bring to the tough world in which they live.

The Rez Sisters is partially inspired by Michel Tremblay's play Les Belles-soeurs, as it focuses on the hopes and dreams of a group of seven women – sisters, half-sisters, sisters-in-law – who squabble like one big, unruly family on the mythical Wasaychigan Hill Reserve. They have their dreams and their difficulties, these seven "Wasy" women. One yearns for a singing career; another for white porcelain toilet. One grieves for her lover, killed in a motorcycle accident; another harbours the memory of a horrific sexual assault. The cancer that afflicts one of them is not the only malignancy they confront. But one dream they hold in common is that of a road trip to Toronto and a chance to win at bingo. And not just any bingo. It is the "Biggest Bingo in the World." It has them pulling together to raise the necessary travel money, each hoping to win the jackpot and change their lives forever and one day, accompanied by the transformative spirit guide Nanabush, they leave their Manitoulin Island reserve and set out for Toronto to do just that. Ribald, harrowing, and mystical, The Rez Sisters is a rich, magical journey of redemption by celebrated First Nations writer Tomson Highway.

The Rez Sisters premiered in 1986 at Native Canadian Centre of Toronto and was the first play by an Indigenous playwright to tour Canada. The play has become a favourite scene study vehicle in acting classes and is widely recognized as seminal in Canadian theatre, with Canadian and international performances and inclusion in anthologies of Canadian drama and in university courses of study.

Cast: 7 female, 1 male

What people say:

"One of the most touching, exuberant, cleverly crafted and utterly entrancing plays." — The Toronto Star

"Five stars. The Rez Sisters is funny, poignant and heartbreaking." — The Times Colonist (Victoria)

About the Playwright:

Tomson Highway is a Cree playwright, composer and classical pianist. He is considered one of Canada's foremost First Nations voices, and is best known for his award-winning "rez" cycle of plays: The Rez Sisters, Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing, and Rose. He earned a Bachelor's degree in Music and a Bachelor's degree in English from the University of Western Ontario. He ran Canada's premiere Indigenous theatre company, Native Earth Performing Arts, for many years and impacted a generation of professional playwrights and actors. Born in northern Manitoba to a family of nomadic caribou hunters, he speaks Cree, Dene, English, and French. He has won four Dora Mavor Moore Awards, a Chalmers Award, and a Wang Festival Award. The first Aboriginal writer to be inducted into the Order of Canada, and named one of the 100 most important people in Canadian history by Macleans in 2000, he has shaped the development of Aboriginal theatre in both Canada and around the world.