“It’s hard to be an Indian woman in this fucking country,” says character Emily Dictionary during the Belfry Theatre’s production of The Rez Sisters.
The play, written by Manitoban playwright Tomson Highway, is set on an Indian reserve where seven women cross on conflicting paths that throw them into humorous and turbulent (and defining) situations.
“The biggest bingo in the world” is the consistent motivation for these women, as they each envision what they would do if they won the grand prize.
“Some of the actors are mothers, are grandmothers, are not,” says Lisa Ravensbergen, who portrays Annie Cook, a fast-talking, heartbroken character in the play. “Some spoke the language, some used to, some never did. In the cast there’s a lot of affinity and empathy.”
Ravensbergen and Tracey Nepinak (who plays character Philomena Moosetail) agree that working with this particular cast, not to mention director Peter Hinton, has been an engaging process.
“I love working with Peter. I’ve never worked with this process. We’ve spent a lot of time discussing the characters and what’s going on,” says Nepinak, who previously performed in The Rez Sisters as character Veronique St. Pierre in a 2004 Winnipeg Prairie Theatre Exchange production.
In this latest incarnation of the play, Nepinak portrays Philomena Moosetail, a woman who conceived a child from an affair and proceeded to give her baby away. In the play, Philomena represses her emotions by maintaining surface appearances, such as the glamorous porcelain toilet bowl she dreams of buying if she wins the bingo event.
“It just renewed my love for this play even more,” says Nepinak, going on to describe the reality-based, poignant characters she was able to discover with Hinton’s guidance. “It’s a beautiful metaphor for our history.”
Losing her lover to her sister, the Cook character is described as having a cloud of dust that follows her fiery gait, explains Ravensbergen.
“I feel like she’s always running towards love. What she thinks is love. What she hopes is love. And she’s running away from the pain of love. What was taken from her,” she says.
The moral relevance of The Rez Sisters to today’s First Nations reservation conditions are apparent as the actors illustrate scenes with spoken and sung scripts. Ravensbergen says the play’s ensemble cast has the all-encompassing ability to deliver raw performances.
“In the Aboriginal theatre, where the characters are Aboriginal, I really do feel like there’s a richness, an empathy, a pride that inherently affects the work,” she says. “It’s a kind of honour that we’re able to give to the script.”
The Rez Sisters
Until October 19
$24.75 and up, Belfry Theatre
belfry.bc.ca