The Rez Sisters

Blurb

The Rez Sisters is a two-act play by Cree Canadian writer Tomson Highway, first performed on November 26, 1986, by Act IV Theatre Company and Native Earth Performing Arts.
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 on the Wasaychigan Hill Indian reserve. While Highway's treatment of his women characters is sympathetic and perhaps gentler than Tremblay's, their portrayal can only be described as gritty and grim realism.
The Rez Sisters is the first of an unfinished cycle of seven plays the playwright refers to as his Rez Septology, which also includes 1989's 'flip side' play Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing, originally entitled The Rez Brothers.
The Rez Sisters features an ensemble cast of seven women dreaming of winning, and working toward raising enough money to attend, "The Biggest Bingo in the World," and one male actor/dancer in the role of Nanabush. The play melds the sometimes dark realities of life on an Indian reserve with humour and elements of Aboriginal spirituality. It features excerpts of dialogue in the Cree and Ojibway languages.