{"id":9624,"date":"2014-10-01T07:04:53","date_gmt":"2014-10-01T14:04:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=9624"},"modified":"2014-09-30T10:40:46","modified_gmt":"2014-09-30T17:40:46","slug":"belfrys-the-rez-sisters-looks-at-rez-life-for-women","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2014\/10\/01\/belfrys-the-rez-sisters-looks-at-rez-life-for-women\/","title":{"rendered":"Belfry\u2019s The Rez Sisters<\/em> looks at rez life for women"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cIt\u2019s hard to be an Indian woman in this fucking country,\u201d says character Emily Dictionary during the Belfry Theatre\u2019s production of The Rez Sisters.<\/i><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe biggest bingo in the world\u201d is the consistent motivation for these women, as they each envision what they would do if they won the grand prize.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
The Rez Sisters follows the lives of seven women on conflicting paths (photo by David Cooper).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cSome of the actors are mothers, are grandmothers, are not,\u201d says Lisa Ravensbergen, who portrays Annie Cook, a fast-talking, heartbroken character in the play. \u201cSome spoke the language, some used to, some never did. In the cast there\u2019s a lot of affinity and empathy.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love working with Peter. I\u2019ve never worked with this process. We\u2019ve spent a lot of time discussing the characters and what\u2019s going on,\u201d says Nepinak, who previously performed in The Rez Sisters<\/i> as character Veronique St. Pierre in a 2004 Winnipeg Prairie Theatre Exchange production.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt just renewed my love for this play even more,\u201d says Nepinak, going on to describe the reality-based, poignant characters she was able to discover with Hinton\u2019s guidance. \u201cIt\u2019s a beautiful metaphor for our history.\u201d<\/p>\n

Losing her lover to her sister, the Cook character is described as having a cloud of dust that follows her fiery gait, explains Ravensbergen.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like she\u2019s always running towards love. What she thinks is love. What she hopes is love. And she\u2019s running away from the pain of love. What was taken from her,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

The moral relevance of The Rez Sisters<\/i> to today\u2019s First Nations reservation conditions are apparent as the actors illustrate scenes with spoken and sung scripts. Ravensbergen says the play\u2019s ensemble cast has the all-encompassing ability to deliver raw performances.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the Aboriginal theatre, where the characters are Aboriginal, I really do feel like there\u2019s a richness, an empathy, a pride that inherently affects the work,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s a kind of honour that we\u2019re able to give to the script.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Rez Sisters
\n<\/i>Until October 19
\n$24.75 and up, Belfry Theatre
\nbelfry.bc.ca<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cIt\u2019s hard to be an Indian woman in this fucking country,\u201d says character Emily Dictionary during the Belfry Theatre\u2019s 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. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9626,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,132],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts","category-october-1-2014"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9624"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9624\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9627,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9624\/revisions\/9627"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}