About the Play:

Rose is a full-length musical comedy by Tomson Highway. The third instalment in the author's "rez" cycle – a large-cast musical set on the mythical Wasaychigan Hill Reserve, reintroducing many of the characters from the first two plays; the bingo playing women of The Rez Sisters and the hockey-mad men of Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing, plus a few characters who were only mentioned in the first two plays.

Rose, the third instalment in the author's acclaimed cycle, is set in 1992 on Manitoulin Island's fictional Wasaychigan Hill Reserve, and brings together the seven plucky women of The Rez Sisters with the seven eccentric men of Dry Lips Oughta Move To Kapuskasing. This time, their attention is focused on gambling. Reserve bully Big Joey has hooked up with mobsters from Sudbury and Toronto to open a casino on the reserve. Standing in his way is Chief Big Rose, a woman who has recently become chief of the reserve and must fight constantly to keep her position and maintain the integrity of her native culture. The play features, as the title suggests, Roses. The storyline mainly serves as the backdrop to a more personal drama involving Emily Dictionary, the leader of "the Rez Sisters" motorcycle gang, who continues to mourn the loss of two Roses. One was the child she miscarried after being assaulted by Joey's main squeeze Gazelle Nataways. The other was a female lover who died seven years earlier in the saddle of her Harley while on her glorious, but grievous journey to women's liberation. The the eldest Rez sister, Chief Big Rose, is working on her own scheme to have the land ceded back to the Indigenous People and to restore the matriarchal structure that prevailed before Europeans came along. The Premier of Ontario at the time, makes an appearance in a land claims negotiation to sign the first Treaty in a hundred years with Chief Big Rose. Violence against women is once again a powerful issue in the play as the battle for the future of the community builds to its shattering climax.

Rose premiered in 2000 at Helen Gardiner Phelan Playhouse on the University of Toronto campus and all scheduled shows sold out before the first performance.

Cast: 10 female, 7 male

What people say:

"Tomson Highway has been a groundbreaking foundational dramatist — the inaugural voice of a generation of First Nations playwrights in Canada.." — Canadian Literature

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.