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  • Tomson Highway

    Canadian playwright and novelist

    Tomson Highway


    OC

    Highway in

    Born () 6 December (age&#;73)
    Manitoba, Canada
    OccupationPlaywright, novelist, children's author, pianist
    LanguageEnglish, Cree
    Alma&#;materUniversity of Western Ontario
    Notable worksThe Rez Sisters, Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing, Kiss of the Fur Queen
    Notable awardsDora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding New Play, Floyd S.

    Chalmers Award Winner of the Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction for Permanent Astonishment, a Memoir. The book chronicles the first 15 years of Highways life in the remote Subarctic.

    Tomson HighwayOC (born 6 December ) is an Indigenous Canadianplaywright, novelist, children's author and musician.

    He is best known for his plays The Rez Sisters and Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing, both of which won the Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding New Play and the Floyd S. Chalmers Award.[1]

    Highway also published a novel, Kiss of the Fur Queen (), which is based on the events that led to his brother René Highway's death of AIDS.[1] He wrote the libretto for the first Cree language opera, The Journey or Pimooteewin.

    Biography

    Tomson Highway was born on 6 December in northwestern Manitoba to Pelagie Cook and Joe Highway, a caribou hunter and champion dogsled racer.[1][2]Cree is his first language and he was raised according to Cree tradition before being sent to residential school.[2][3] He is related to actor/playwright Billy Merasty.

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  • When he was six, Tomson's father voluntarily enrolled him at Guy Hill Indian Residential School. Until he was fifteen, he was allowed to return home only during the summer months.[4]

    Some children who attended residential schools later reported abuse. Highway has said that "Nine of the happiest years of my life I spent it at that school," crediting it with teaching him English and to play piano.

    He has said that "There are many very successful people today that went to those schools and have brilliant careers and are very functional people, very happy people like myself. I have a thriving international career, and it wouldn't have happened without that school."[4]

    He obtained his B.A. in Honours Music in and his B.A.

    in English in , both from the University of Western Ontario.[1] While working on his degree, he met playwright James Reaney.[1] For seven years, Highway worked as a social worker on First Nations reserves across Canada. He also was involved in creating and organizing several Indigenous music and arts festivals.[5]

    Drawing from these experiences, he has written novels and plays that have won him widespread recognition across Canada and around the world.[6]

    In , Highway published The Rez Sisters, which won multiple awards in productions across Canada.

    Thomson highway autobiography vs biography Tomson Highway OC (born 6 December ) is an Indigenous Canadian playwright, novelist, children's author and musician. He is best known for his plays The Rez Sisters and Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing, both of which won the Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding New Play and the Floyd S. Chalmers Award.

    It also went to the Edinburgh International Festival in In , he published Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing, which was the first Canadian play to receive a full production at Toronto's Royal Alexandra Theatre.

    Both of these plays explore the community on a fictional First Nation reserve of Wasychigan Hill on Manitoulin Island.

    The Rez Sisters depicts seven women of the community planning a trip to the "BIGGEST BINGO IN THE WORLD" in Toronto and features a male trickster, called Nanabush. Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing depicts the men's interest in ice hockey and features a female trickster. Rose, written in , is the third play in the heptalogy, featuring characters from each of the previous plays.

    Highway was artistic director of Native Earth Performing Arts in Toronto from to ,[5] as well as De-ba-jeh-mu-jig theatre group in Wikwemikong.

    Frustrated with difficulties presented by play production, Highway wrote a novel called Kiss of the Fur Queen.[5] The novel presents an uncompromising portrait of the sexual abuse of Native children in residential schools and its traumatic consequences.

    Kiss of the Fur Queen has won a number of awards and spent several weeks on top of Canadian bestseller lists.[6]

    After a hiatus from playwriting, Highway wrote Ernestine Shuswap Gets Her Trout in Set in , the play revolves around the visit of the "Big Kahoona of Canada" (then Prime MinisterWilfrid Laurier) to the Thompson River Valley.

    In , Highway re-published The Rez Sisters and Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing in a Cree-language edition. Highway said that "the Cree versions [] are actually the original versions. As it turns out, the original ones that came out 20 years ago were the translation."[7]

    His musical The (Post) Mistress premiered in as a cabaret titled Kisageetin.[8] It was developed as a full musical, which has since been staged across Canada in both English and French versions.[9] A soundtrack album for the musical was released in ;[10] it garnered a Juno Award nomination for Aboriginal Album of the Year at the Juno Awards of [11]

    In Cree Country, an album of original Cree-language country songs written by Highway and sung by his frequent collaborator Patricia Cano, was released.[12]

    Highway divides his time between residences in Gatineau, Québec, in France and in Italy with his life partner Raymond Lalonde.[13]

    Awards and recognition

    Highway has been awarded nine honorary degrees, from Brandon University, the University of Winnipeg, the University of Western Ontario (London), the University of Windsor, Laurentian University (Sudbury, Ontario), Lakehead University (Thunder Bay, Ontario), l'Universite de Montreal, University of Manitoba, and the University of Toronto.

    Thomson highway autobiography vs biography definition Originally published on November 12, Tomson Highway celebrates his astonishing life in his new memoir, Permanent Astonishment, which centres on his childhood growing up in sub-Arctic Canada.

    In addition, he holds two "equivalents" of such honours: from The Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto and The National Theatre School in Montreal.[6]

    In , he was made a member of the Order of Canada. In , Maclean's named him as one of the ' most important people in Canadian history'. In , he received a National Indigenous Achievement Award, now the Indspire Awards, in the field of arts and culture.

    Although Highway is considered one of Canada's most important playwrights,[1] in recent years both theatre critics and Highway have noted a significant gap between his reputation and the relative infrequency of his plays being produced by theatre companies.[13] According to Highway, theatres frequently face or perceive difficulty in finding a suitable cast of First Nations actors, but are reluctant to risk casting non-Indigenous performers due to their sensitivity to being accused of cultural appropriation.

    He believes that such companies simply pass over his plays instead.[14]

    In , director Ken Gass mounted a production of The Rez Sisters at Toronto's Factory Theatre. As part of an ongoing research project into the effects of colour-blind casting on theatre, he staged two readings of the play — one with an exclusively First Nations cast and one with a colour-blind cast of actors from a variety of racial backgrounds — before mounting a full colour-blind stage production.[14]

    His memoir Permanent Astonishment was the winner of the Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction.[15]

    Highway gave the Massey Lecture.[16]

    Works

    Plays

    Novels

    • Kiss of the Fur Queen - (shortlisted for the Chapters/Books in Canada First Novel Award and the Canadian Booksellers' Association Fiction Book of the Year Award)

    Films

    • Tomson Highway appears in the documentary Chaakapesh which describes the process by which the Montreal Symphony Orchestra presented a trilingual (Innu, Cree, Inuktitut) chamber opera called Chaakapesh, le périple du fripon, in

    Critical works

    • Comparing Mythologies -
    • From Oral to Written: A Celebration of Indigenous Literature in Canada, -

    Children's books

    • Caribou Song - (selected as one of the "Top 10 Children's Books" by Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail)
    • Dragonfly Kites -
    • Fox on the Ice -

    Libretti

    • Pimooteewin -
    • Chaakapesh: The Trickster's Quest -

    Essay

    Memoir

    • Permanent Astonishment -

    References

    1. ^ abcdefBoyd, Colin ().

      "Tomson Highway". The Canadian Encyclopedia. Retrieved

    2. ^ abvan Koeverden, Jane (). "Tomson Highway's memoir, Permanent Astonishment, is written as 'a symphony to life'". Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Retrieved
    3. ^Methot, Suzanne (November ).

      "The universe of Tomson Highway". Quill & Quire.

      Famous autobiographies: Tomson Highway OC (born 6 December ) is an Indigenous Canadian playwright, novelist, children's author and musician. He is best known for his plays The Rez Sisters and Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing, both of which won the Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding New Play and the Floyd S. Chalmers Award.

      Retrieved

    4. ^ abOstroff, Joshua (15 December ). "Tomson Highway Has A Surprisingly Positive Take On Residential Schools". The Huffington Post Canada. Retrieved 4 March
    5. ^ abcLee Skallerup, Tomson Highway.

      Athabasca University, February 12,

    6. ^ abc" — official web-site". Archived from the original on Retrieved
    7. ^"Tomson Highway releases plays in Cree". CBC News. 8 November
    8. ^"Composer hopes cabaret will keep audience laughing".

      Northern Life, July 31,

    9. ^"A one-of-a-kind musical"Archived at the Wayback Machine. Sudbury Star, October 25,
    10. ^"CBC Indigenous's top 10 indigenous music picks for ". CBC News, December 31,
    11. ^"Tanya Tagaq, Leela Gilday nominated for Juno Awards". CBC North, January 27,
    12. ^Jesse Locke, "Tomson Highway invites listeners to ‘Cree Country,’ the Two-Spirit artist’s new Cree-language country album".

      Thomson highway autobiography vs biography meaning

      Canadians know Highway as a world-renowned composer, pianist, playwright and author of the novel Kiss of the Fur Queen. He chronicles the first 15 years of his life in the memoir Permanent.

      Xtra!, May 20,

    13. ^ ab"In conversation with Tomson Highway". Maclean's, September 30, Archived March 5, , at the Wayback Machine
    14. ^ ab"A new staging of 'The Rez Sisters' defies political correctness".

      The Globe and Mail, November 9,

    15. ^Jane van Koeverden, "Katherena Vermette, Tomson Highway and Cherie Dimaline among winners at Writers' Trust Awards". CBC Books, November 3,
    16. ^"Tomson Highway to explore life through laughter in CBC Massey Lectures". .

      Autobiography vs memoir When Tomson Highway says he was born in a snowbank, he means it literally. He arrived in December , ahead of schedule, forcing his parents to stop their dogsled, pitch a tent in a snowbank in.

      June 20, Retrieved January 1,

    17. ^"Tomson Highway, "Floating down Yonge Street"". Canada Writes - CBC Books. Retrieved

    Literature

    • Bauch, Marc A. (), Canadian self-perception and self-representation in English-Canadian drama after , Cologne: Wiku Verlag, ISBN&#;

    External links