September 13, 2006 Source: :
http://www.brandonu.ca/news/article.asp?A_ID=1092 Brandon University welcomes acclaimed writer Tomson Highway to campus as Stanley Knowles Distinguished Visiting Professor Brandon University and the Brandon University Faculty of Arts are proud to welcome internationally acclaimed author and playwright Dr. Tomson Highway to the BU campus as the Stanley Knowles Distinguished Visiting professor. Dr. Highway will be on campus for two terms, the first during the fall of 2006, and the second during the fall of 2007. "We are honoured that Dr. Highway has joined Brandon University’s Faculty of Arts as our newest Stanley Knowles Distinguished Visiting Professor. He brings a wealth of accomplishment and expertise to our campus," says Dean of Arts and Graduate Studies Dr. Scott Grills. "It is a testament to his commitment to the people Manitoba that he has made it a priority to take up this position. I know that his time with us will benefit our students, our faculty and our community." Born in Northern Manitoba, Dr. Highway currently divides his time between a cottage near Sudbury, Ontario and an apartment in the south of France. In addition to being a trained classical pianist, he is one of Canada’s most well known playwrights. Dr. Highway’s stage scripts The Rez Sisters and Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing and his first novel, The Kiss of The Fur Queen are multiple award winners and have been translated into several languages. Dr. Highway himself speaks fluent Cree, English and French, is a recipient of the Order of Canada, and was one of the founders of Native Earth Performing Arts, Toronto’s first professional Aboriginal theatre company, and a large contributor to what is currently the world’s most active and culturally richest Aboriginal theatre industries. Keep your eye on this space for announcements regarding upcoming workshops and readings featuring Dr. Highway, and read on for a full biography! Dr. Tomson Highway: Biography A full-blooded Cree, Tomson Highway is the proud son of legendary caribou hunter and world championship dogsled racer Joe Highway and artist-in-her-own-right (as quilt-maker and bead-worker) Pelagie Highway. A registered member of the Barren Lands Indian Band (the village of which is called Brochet, pronounced "Bro-shay") located in the northwest corner of Manitoba, he writes plays, novels, and music. Having studied music and English literature at the Universities of Manitoba (Winnipeg) and Western Ontario (London), as well as in England, he achieved both his Bachelor of Music Honours (Piano Performance major, 1975) and the equivalent of a Bachelor of Arts (English major, 1976), both from Western. Subsequently, for seven years, Highway immersed himself in the field of Native social work, working with children (and parents) from broken families, with inmates in prisons, with cultural-educational programmes of one kind or another, with other Native social workers and activists, with Native visual artists, writers, healers, Elders, politicians, women, 2-Spirits, etc. For all this, he worked on reserves and in towns and cities across Ontario and, later on, Canada, though based almost always at head offices in Toronto. When he turned 30, Highway decided it was time to put all this extraordinary artistic training and this extraordinary Native social work experience together - he started writing plays, music, and, later on, novels. After many years working in the Toronto theatre industry (and after many plays all of which he both wrote and produced himself), he finally achieved national and international recognition in 1986 with his sixth play, the multi-award-winning (and since cult-status/legendary) The Rez Sisters. This was followed in 1989 by its companion play, the even more successful Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing, which not only was nominated for and won numerous awards but was the first Canadian play in the history of Canadian theatre ever to receive a full production and extended run at Toronto’s legendary Royal Alexandra Theatre (1990). These two plays continue to be produced and/or studied at theatres and universities around the world, including theatres in such centres as New York City (Off-Broadway), Tokyo (in Japanese), and Edinburgh, Scotland (the Edinburgh Festival). Other plays/shows of the many he has written both before and after the above-named two are The Sage, The Dancer, and the Fool; Aria; New Song… New Dance; Annie and the Old One; A Ridiculous Spectacle in One Act; The Incredible Adventures of Mary Jane Mosquito (a one-woman cabaret/musical for young audiences); A Trickster Tale; and Rose (also a musical, though this one for audiences of all ages features many characters, is, like Dry Lips…, a companion piece to the afore-mentioned The Rez Sisters, and is, in fact, the third installment in a planned seven-play cycle all based on the same set of characters, themes, and settings). Most recent (though not part of what he calls "The Rez Cycle") is his tragi-comic yarn, Ernestine Shuswap Gets Her Trout, which had its world premiere on the main stage of the Western Canada Theatre in Kamloops, B.C., January 24, 2004. >From 1986 to 1992, Highway was Artistic Director of Native Earth Performing Arts, Toronto’s only (at the time) professional Native theatre company and (also at the time) virtually Canada’s only such organization, out of which, over the years, have emerged not only some of Canada’s most accomplished and celebrated Native theatre and film artists but, as well, other professional Native theatre companies. In 1998, he published his first novel, Kiss Of The Fur Queen, which, like his plays, was nominated for several awards and, moreover, spent several weeks on Canadian bestseller lists. He has, as well, to his credit three children’s books, all published by HarperCollins Canada, in order: Caribou Song (2001), Dragon Fly Kites (2002), and Fox On The Ice (2003). All are written bilingually (in Cree.and English) and beautifully illustrated by Alberta-born visual artist, Brian Deines. And, again, all three were short-listed for various prizes. Among the many awards he has won are the Dora Mavor Moore Award for Best New Play and Best Production (three wins, five nominations), the Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama (two nominations), the Floyd S. Chalmers Canadian Play Award (two wins), the Toronto Arts Award (for outstanding contributions made over the years to the City of Toronto cultural industries, as winner, not as nominee), the Wang Harbourfront International Festival of Authors Award, the Silver Ticket Award (from the Dora Mavor Moore Awards, for outstanding contributions made over the years to the Toronto theatre industry), the National Aboriginal Achievement Award (2001), the Order of Canada (1994), and others too embarrassingly numerous to list. Highway holds five honorary doctorates: from the University of Winnipeg, Brandon University, the University of Western Ontario (London), the University of Windsor, and Laurentian University (Sudbury, Ontario). As well as equivalents of such honours: from The Royal Conservatory of Music (Toronto) and The National Theatre School (Montreal). He has been Writer-in-Residence at the Universities of Toronto, Concordia (Montréal), British Columbia (Vancouver), and Simon Fraser University (at its Kamloops campus). As well, he has taught (Aboriginal Mythology) at the University of Toronto (University College), at which institution he holds the post of Adjunct Professor. He has lectured, read, and performed at universities, colleges, schools, theatres, bookstores, museums, and other institutions both nation-and-world-wide: in Canada from St. John’s to Victoria and from Whitehorse to Halifax, in many U.S. centres such as Washington, D.C., New York City, Ithaca, N. Y. (Cornell University), Princeton, N.J. (Princeton University), Seattle, in such states as Illinois, Arizona, Alaska, Ohio, the Dakotas, and in such overseas cities such as Tokyo, Nagoya, Mito, Kyoto (all in Japan), Helsinki (Finland), Tartu (Estonia), Venice (Italy), Madrid, Barcelona, Seville, Salamanca, Huelva, Alcala de Henares (the last six all in Spain), Melbourne, Brisbane, Canberra, Perth, Sydney, Hobart (the last six all in Australia), Wellington (New Zealand), Taipei (Taiwan), Berlin, Dusseldorf, Mannheim, etc. (the last three all in Germany), in England, Scotland, Greenland, India, Russia, and so on and so forth, ad infinitum. In fact, as a world traveller (his hobby - born a nomad, always a nomad), he has, to date, circumnavigated the globe three times. Several film and television documentaries on both his work and his background have been produced and shown internationally over the years, most notable among them being, Adrienne Clarkson Presents, Life and Times (respectively 1991 and 1997, both for the CBC), and Tomson Highway Gets His Trout (2003, Getaway Films Inc.). Highway speaks fluent Cree (his mother tongue), French, and English, and is a classically trained pianist. Born the 11th of 12 children on December 6, 1951 in a tent pitched in a snow bank (literally, his caribou-hunting family crossing the tundra, as always in those days, by dogsled) on a lake in remotest northern Manitoba (where it meets Saskatchewan, Nunavut, and the Northwest Territories), he now divides his year equally between a cottage on a lake in the heart of French Ontario (just south of Sudbury from whence hails his partner of 20 years) and an apartment on the Mediterranean coast of France not far from Spain, at both of which locales he is currently at work on his second and, as yet untitled, novel. For more information, or to arrange interviews, please contact: Kelly Stifora
Communications Officer
Brandon University
Phone: (204) 727-9762
Email: communications@brandonu.ca - 30 -
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