Canadian Theatre Encyclopedia
Taylor, Drew Hayden
Aboriginal playwright and humorist born at the Curve Lake First Nation, Ontario in 1962. Taylor’s writings are a significant part of the Native cultural renaissance which has been gathering momentum since the 1980s. Humour figures in all Taylor’s work, eliciting laughter edged with disturbing awareness of stereotypes being exploded and bitter truths being given a very thin sugar coating.
He first worked in radio and television, but since 1989 has been primarily a playwright. He began writing plays under the mentorship of director Larry Lewis and in close association with the Aboriginal theatre company, the De-Ba-Jeh-Mu-Jig Theatre Group, Manitoulin Island, Ontario.
His first play, Toronto at Dreamer’s Rock (premiered at Sheshegwaning Reserve, Ontario, 1989, directed by Larry Lewis), a play for young audiences, is about three Ojibway youths, one from the past, one from the present, and one from the future, who meet at a site of vision quests. There they struggle with pressing issues of identity. Taylor has written a number of other plays for young audiences, including Girl Who Loved Her Horses (1995) and The Boy in the Treehouse(2000).
His second play, The Bootlegger Blues (Wikwimikon Unceded Reserve, 1990, directed by Lewis), was the first of a projected quartet of comedies celebrating Native humour. It was followed up by The Baby Blues (1995) and The Buz’Gem Blues (2001).
Another series of plays began with Someday (De-Ba-Jeh-Mu-Jig Theatre Group, Manitoulin Island, Ontario, 1991, directed by Lewis), a bittersweet play about the reunion of a Native mother and the young woman who as a baby was forcibly taken away from her by the authorities to be adopted by a white family — a fictional story about a real abuse common in the 1960s and 70s. It has played across the country including at Centaur Theatre .
Two sequels follow the story of the young woman’s struggle to incorporate her Native heritage into her sense of who she is. Only Drunks and Children Tell the Truth (Native Canadian Centre 1996) takes place after the death of her mother. She returns unwillingly to the reserve, where she is finally able to mourn the mother she never knew. In January 2000, Crazy Horse Theatre in Calgary launched with Only Drunks. 400 Kilometres (Wolfville, Nova Scotia 1999) follows the twists and turns of her developing relationship with a young man from the reserve and the strains that it places on her relationship with her adoptive parents.
Other plays include Pictures on the Wall (De-Ba-Jeh-Mu-Jig, 1990, Lewis), Education is Our Right (De-Ba-Jeh-Mu-Jig, 1990, Lewis), A Contemporary Gothic Indian Vampire Story ( Persephone Theatre , 1992, Tibor Feheregyhazi), The All Complete Aboriginal Show Extravaganza ( Youtheatre , 1994, Michel Lefebvre): alterNatives (Bluewater Summer Playhouse 1999, directed by David Ferry ); Sucker Falls: A Musical About Demons of the Forest and the Soul (2001), and In a World Created by a Drunken God (Persephone Theatre 2004).
Taylor has also had a long association with Canada’s premier urban Native theatre company, Native Earth Performing Arts Inc. (Toronto), serving as playwright-in-residence from 1988 to 1989, and as its artistic director from 1994 to 1997. He has also taught at the Centre for Indigenous Theatre .
Taylor’s plays have been produced widely in Canada and the United States, Germany and Italy, and have received a number of awards, most notably the Chalmers Award for Toronto at Dreamer's Rock and the Dora Mavor Moore Award for Only Drunks and Children Tell the Truth. He also won the Canadian Authors Association Award for Bootlegger Blues in 1990.
Many of his plays are in print. In addition, he has published Fearless Warriors (1998), a collection of short stories, and four collections of humorous writings under the running title Funny, You Don’t Look Like One (1996-2004). He reflects on Native humour in a video he directed for the National Film Board of Canada titled Redskins, Tricksters and Puppy Stew (2000), and in Me Funny (2006), a collection of writings on Native humour, which he edited.
In 2010 Knopf Canada published his trickster novel, Motorcyles & Sweetgrass.
Profile by Robert Nunn, St. Catharines, Ontario.
Last updated 2010-06-22
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