About the Play:

Finalist for the 2019 Governor General's Award for Drama (Canadian equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize)

Thanks for Giving is a full-length comedy by Kevin Loring. While Nan bastes the turkey and prepares the stuffing, her husband hides a freshly hunted bear in the garage and her troublesome daughter is raiding her purse again. To top it all off, her grandchildren have chosen this Thanksgiving to disclose some unexpected personal truths to the family.

Thanks for Giving tells the story of a First Nations family at Thanksgiving. Grandmother Nan, the family matriarch, is a First Nations woman whose second husband, Clifford, is a white man and avid hunter who never even attempts to understand the issues facing Indigenous people. Nan's family is home for Thanksgiving. Over dinner, the family argues about the importance of acknowledging history. Some unsolicited truths are about to be dropped as old wounds and new realities collide, and sibling rivalry is stoked between twins Marie and John, but the enduring spirit that guides this family charges on, ever fierce. Thanks for Giving offers plenty to chew on. This intimate and restorative play from Governor General's Literary Award winner Kevin Loring is about legacy – the legacy of our personal and collective histories, and a family's legacy as it moves into an age where the assumptions of the old ways surrender to new possibilities. But if this intimate and restorative play's main course is legacy, the dessert is pumpkin pie. Tuck in!

Thanks for Giving premiered in 2017 at the Arts Club Granville Island Stage in Vancouver.

Cast: 5 female, 3 male

What people say:

"Thanks for Giving is an exquisite portrait of a contemporary family, and one that is immediately and wholly familiar thanks to Governor General's Award-winning playwright and director Kevin Loring's gifted work in establishing fully realized charactersy." — |The Georgia Straight

"Loring has a lot to say – about colonialism, reconciliation, residential schools, intergenerational trauma and its contemporary effects, but also about the rich, matriarchal First Nations culture, Indigenous respect for the land, the need for new perspectives on history." — Globe and Mail

About the Playwright:

Kevin Loring is an accomplished Canadian playwright, actor and director. As an actor, he has performed on stages across the Canada, on radio, in animation, and on the large and small screens. He was the winner of the Governor General’s Award for English Language Drama for his outstanding first play, Where the Blood Mixes in 2009, as well as the Jessie Richardson Award for Outstanding Original Script, and the Sydney J. Risk Prize for Outstanding Original Script by an Emerging Playwright. A Nlaka'pamux from the Lytton First Nation (previously known as the Thompson) in British Columbia, he is a graduate of Studio 58 and the Ensemble Training Program through Full Circle First Nations Performance. In 2017 he was appointed as the first Artistic Director of Indigenous Theatre at the National Arts Centre of Canada (NAC).