Tomson Highway : Theatrical Pioneer

by Christopher DiRaddo

Despite feeling wobbly and weak from a severe cold, Canadian playwright and author Tomson Highway summoned up the strength he needed to keep his date with the School and traveled to Montreal to deliver an inspirational speech to NTS students eager to hear from one of the country’s great theatre artists.

“It’s always a tremendous pleasure to be here in Montreal,” Highway said before the crowd of NTS students that had gathered in the Ludger-Duvernay Theatre to hear him speak. “I’ve been here so many times, and it feels like home.” Highway was in Montreal to receive the 2003 Gascon-Thomas Award, a yearly prize awarded by the School to two artists, one Anglophone and one Francophone, who have immensely contributed to the world of theatre and whose careers serve as inspiration to NTS students.

Highway was first introduced by his friend and colleague Alanis King, a playwright and actor who was also the first aboriginal woman to graduate from the NTS back in 1992. “I was really happy to get the invite to present this prestigious award to Tomson. He’s been a longtime friend and mentor,” she said. King called him a pioneer and went on to tell the crowd all about Highway’s life and his career in the theatre and literature.

Tomson Highway was born on his father’s trapline in Northern Manitoba on December 6, 1951. He was the 11th of 12 children raised in a traditional nomadic lifestyle in the remote forests and lakes of Northwestern Manitoba. His father, Joe Highway, was a trapper, fisherman and legendary dogsled racer. Cree was the only language spoken at home and Highway became fluent in English only in his late teens.

At the age of six, Tomson was sent to a Roman Catholic Boarding School where he stayed until age 15. He then went on to Churchill High School in Winnipeg where he graduated in 1970. After high school he spent two years studying piano at the University of Manitoba before heading off to London, England to be trained as a concert pianist. He returned to Canada and graduated with a Bachelor of Music in 1975 from the University of Western Ontario. It was another seven years before Highway began to write.

Better Late Than Never

“I’m a very late bloomer,” he said. “I didn’t start writing until I was 31 or 32.” Highway had become inspired by the work he had been doing since graduation, working with Native political and cultural groups in Ontario and across Canada. It was only in his early 30s that he decided to bring these experiences together and write plays.

“I wrote six plays and nobody would touch them, nobody would produce them,” he said. “You wait for the telephone to ring, and it doesn’t. Then eventually you lose the telephone because you can’t afford to pay the phone bill.”

One of the most important pieces of advice Highway gave to NTS students was that if they wanted to see their work produced, they would have to go out there and produce it themselves. “I worked at all kinds of jobs and paid actors out of my own pocket. I paid their salaries, I paid for the sets.” Highway’s first plays were all presented mostly on reserves and Native community centres where the ceilings weren’t even high enough for them to be able to perform on top of their set. These small plays became more and more successful as time went on. “They became stronger and stronger because I just refused to give up.”

A Star Is Born

In December of 1986, his play The Rez Sisters became a hit and subsequently went on to win the Dora Mavor Moore Award for best new play. It catapulted him into renown and was performed across the country. His next play, Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing, won him the Chalmers Award in additionto another Dora Mavor Moore Award.

Highway also was appointed Artistic Director of Native Earth Performing Arts (NEPA) from 1986 to 1992, and in 1994 he became the first aboriginal writer to be inducted into the Order of Canada. In 1998 he published his first novel, Kiss of the Fur Queen, which became a Canadian bestseller and was subsequently nominated for several prestigious literary awards. His latest book, Fox on the Ice, is the third in a bilingual trilogy of children’s books he has written in Cree and English. His most recent play, Ernestine Shuswap Gets Her Trout, will open this January in Kamloops BC at the Western Canada Theatre.

“It takes time and perseverance and many days of despair, especially for a northerner.” Highway went on to talk about the geographical difficulties people who live in Northern Canada have trying to make it as artists. “Most Canadians come from a very narrow strip of cities along the American border. I come from somewhere between the Northwest Territories border and the Manitoba border, a part of the world where a plane ticket to get anywhere costs you more than a plane ticket to go around the world. Coming from that kind of environment, traveling to the cities in the south and trying to make a living in the theatre is almost an impossible dream. Those of us who are doing it are thankful to people like Robert Lepage (fellow Gascon-Thomas Award recipient) and all the other fabulous artists in this Canadian theatre industry who have done so much to inspire us. They keep us going.”

A Spark of Inspiration

Highway also offered a warning to students about how tough it is going to be out there, but encouraged them to keep at it. “It’s not going to be a piece of cake. If it were a piece of cake it wouldn’t be as interesting. It would be boring. What makes your life interesting, what gives it spark, is difficulty, challenge. You have to use every ounce of your being to invent ideas, to invent objects, to invent images out of nothing — that’s where the challenge comes from.”

Highway believes that that’s where sparks of genius come from. “I hope you learn to use that kind of energy and that kind of gumption to go out there and carve for yourselves careers that are just fabulous, that will contribute to the cultural reality of this country.”

Over the years, Highway has traveled the world over and found that Canada is unique in its cultural richness. Before he left the stage he encouraged the students to “go out there and make this country even richer and more exciting and extraordinary than it has been made so far by the theatre artists of this generation and previous generations.”

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