A group of American Indians, mostly from Penobscot Nation in Maine, came to USM last week to perform a play reading of Tomson Highway’s “The Rez Sisters.” The reading was part of opening events week for the top floors of Glickman library, and was co-sponsored by USM Multicultural Student Affairs, the Women’s Resource Center, the Center for Sexualities and Gender Diversity and the women’s studies department.
The play tells the story of 10 women who live on an Indian reservation and aspire to travel to Toronto to win “the world’s biggest bingo” with a $500,000 jackpot. The women bicker and chide one another while dreaming of what they would do if they won the money. They work to raise enough cash to travel to the game, and in the course of their trip they encounter both farce and tragedy.
The motley crew of characters includes the toilet-obsessed Philomena Moosetail (read by Rhonda Frey) and the placid but tortured young Zhaboonigan Peterson (read by Maulian Dana), who talks to birds. The vain, country music-loving Annie Cook (read by Irene Dennis) dreams of going to a place where she can “drink beer quietly… not noisy and crazy like here.”
Emily Dictionary, read by Michelle Bernard, is a moody and argumentative young woman who grieves the death of her lover and speaks of “how fucking hard it is to be an Indian in this country.” Dale Lolar read the part of Nanabush, a spirit who appears in the form of a seagull, as well as the part of the Bingo Master. Rounding out the cast were Maria Girourd as Veronique St. Pierre and Kathleen Paul as Marie-Adele Starblanket.
Brian O’Keefe can be contacted at [email protected]