Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
Playwright Ross sees gains for aboriginals
James Durham and Ross in a scene from An Illustrated History of the Anishinabe.
ABORIGINAL writer Ian Ross believes things are improving for his people.
In the eight years since his teen-oriented play An Illustrated History of the Anishnabe had its premiere at Manitoba Theatre for Young People, the affable Winnipegger says he has seen many positive changes on the cultural scene.
Among them are the inauguration of the Manito-Ahbee and aboriginal film festivals, the growth of the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network, and the explosion of aboriginal newspapers.
"There must be five or six of them now," says Ross, who is performing in the MTYP remount of the 50-minute production, which is in the midst of an 11-week provincial tour.
"Native people are the fastest-growing demographic in Manitoba. You see us as more a part of society than before."
Ross's three-person play, just arrived in Winnipeg for eight days of school performances, uses healthy doses of humour to tell the story of First Nations history on the Prairies. "Anishnabe" is the word the prairie Ojibwa people used to describe themselves.
"I believe in using the 'tickle technique,'" says Ross, who grew up on the Fairford Reserve near Selkirk.
"You have to make audiences laugh. Hitting them with a bat is not the way to win them over."
The decision to remount Ross's play came easily, says MTYP artistic director Leslee Silverman. Manitoba teachers consistently have picked it as one of their students' most popular MTYP plays.
"We approach all things Anishnabe with heaviness and pain," Silverman says. "But Ian has found the heart of the culture in humour, patience and an intelligent cosmology."
One of the continent's leading children's theatre companies, MTYP established a program five years ago to teach film and theatre to aboriginal students.
"There are 500 students in it now," Silverman boasts. "I don't think there's anything like it in the country."
Since Ross won the Governor General's Award for his 1997 play fareWel, a tragicomedy about life on a Manitoba reserve staged by Prairie Theatre Exchange, he has been a favourite on the Canadian arts scene for his genial manner and willingness to take on any number of projects.
"Anne Frank said that in spite of everything, people are basically good," says Ross, 41, the father of a seven-year-old daughter. "I believe that."
He was thrilled to hear that another aboriginal writer, Vancouver's Kevin Loring, has won this year's $25,000 playwriting GG, for his drama Where the Blood Mixes, which PTE has on tap for next March.
"Now I'm not alone," Ross says of Loring's win. "I hope he buys himself something nice, like a new computer."
In the years since his GG win, Ross has done all sorts of writing, including children's plays, adult plays, TV scriptwriting and even government reports. He is probably still best known for his CBC Radio commentaries as the archetypal aboriginal man "Joe from Winnipeg."
These days he has a regular paycheque as an issues manager for the provincial Child and Family Services Department.
"I'm kind of a diplomat," he says. "Since becoming a father myself, I realize how tough raising children can be."
But he always comes back to the theatre.
"No other form has more ability to change you," he says. "Anyone off the street can stumble into a theatre and be grabbed. There's just something about the power of live theatre."
Theatre Preview
An Illustrated History of the Anishnabe
Manitoba Theatre for Young People
Public performances Nov. 20, 21 and 27
Tickets $13.60
Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition November 19, 2009 D4
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