Ernestine Shuswap Gets Her Trout

... good entertainment ... free for U of C Students ...
$15 for others

Thomson Highway’s Ernestine Shuswap Gets Her Trout is playing at 7:30 pm at the Reeve Theatre until December 10.

I am going to slip over and see it again this week.

The last names of the protagonists represent B.C. First Nations tribes: Ernestine Shuswap, Isabel Thompson and Annabel Okanagan.

The figures wear Greek masks – really abbreviated masks that only cover their cheeks and forehead, the rest of their faces heavily painted.

The coyote, raven and otter appear as trickster figures. The big kahuna of the play is Sir Wilfred Laurier, who made a visit to the First Nations people in B.C. in 1910. He promised to take action on their concerns. A few months later he lost the federal election and their troubled relationship with the federal government is still a point being addressed.

The play is a mix of Greek, Christian and native mythology and the mix kept me on my toes all evening.

Mak and I looked at the stage setting before the play began. I couldn’t figure out why there was a large five dollar bill on the curtain, until half-way through the play when I figured out – yes, Sir Wilfred Laurier’s face is on that bill. The play is fun and vivacious ... and also political and sad.

Hard not to be laughing when you hear that Ernestine Shuswap is to cook a rainbow trout for the banquet, since no one from the east wants to eat salmon.

Isabel Thomson is to bring 624 Saskatoon pies so she spends a lot of time onstage, picking berries.

Annabel is boiling beaver for the feast but tells us at the end of the play, her food really stinks and she finally admits she should have stuffed the beaver with berries.

And Delilah Rose Johnson wonders why she has to hem table clothes for the event since she and her people have been sitting on the ground and eating their food for 6,000 years.  Why the change now?

Did I like the play?

I am going again before the weeks is out – trying for tomorrow night.  Here is a review from a 2009 production in Vancouver if you wish to read more about the play.

Email me if you can join me.