Revolution Night in Canada: Hockey and Theatre in Tomson Highway’s Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing

Abstract

This article reconsiders the place of hockey within Tomson Highway’s play Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing, ultimately arguing that the re-evaluative, adaptive, and transformative power enacted at the textual level when the Cree/Anishnaabe women of Wasaychigan Hill take up a Western, male sport mirrors the power reclaimed through the performance of the play itself. Moreover, as a sport that has been adopted and adapted by First Nations communities, hockey provides an ideal reflection of what Highway is doing with Euro-Canadian dramatic conventions, on a micro-scale, and with colonial traditions and powers, on a macro-scale. Just as the female hockey players force spectators to reconsider what hockey means, so too does Highway force his audience to reconsider what constitutes theatre, and, in so doing, reflect on how they distinguish between First Nations and European culture.