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Culture Stage

Kisageetin: A Cabaret

KISAGEETIN: A CABARET by Tomson Highway, with Highway, Patricia Cano and Christopher Plock. Presented by Thunderbird Centre, Denise Bolduc and Miziwe Biik Development Corporation at the Berkeley Street Theatre (26 Berkeley). Tonight through Sunday (June 24-27), Thursday-Saturday 8 pm, matinee Sunday 1 pm. $25, opening gala $75. 416-368-3110. See listing.


“Hello, Holiday Inn,” jokes Tomson Highway, answering the phone in his room at the Banff Centre for the Performing Arts.[rssbreak]

The celebrated Cree playwright has spent the last month rehearsing and performing his new cabaret at the picturesque mountainside campus. In such inspiring surroundings, it’s no surprise that he’s all smiles about returning to his first creative passion: music.

While he’s best known for writing a string of internationally acclaimed plays, beginning with The Rez Sisters, a dark comedy about everyday life on a native reserve that he penned back in 1986, Highway first trained as a classical pianist, earning a BA in music and studying under one of Glenn Gould’s students.

For Highway, who now lives primarily off his literary work, music is still an essential cathartic outlet.

“A writer’s life can be so lonely,” he admits. “I spend 10 months a year in almost complete solitude alone in a room. So I make music to break out of that, to have fun and interact with other people. I do about 15 shows a year, and that’s the perfect counterbalance to my life as a writer.”

It’s fitting, then, that the songs in Kisageetin – a Cree word meaning “I love you” – were originally written as a labour of love.

“It started off as a 60th birthday present for my partner,” he explains. “I wrote 12 new songs and performed versions of them in Sudbury last summer, and they all worked.”

Featuring vocalist Patricia Cano, with Highway on piano, the cabaret is a stepping stone to a show tentatively titled The (Post) Mistress. Highway explains that the songs will eventually be joined together by short scenes focusing on the life of a small-town post office employee whose job allows her to develop a special – almost clairvoyant – intuition into the lives of her customers.

In the cabaret version, Highway is content to playfully explore a wide array of musical styles.

“There are upbeat songs, slow songs, sentimental ballads, a samba, a tango, love songs and lullabies. Imagine Cole Porter with Cree lyrics: that’s what these songs sound like.”

Another reason Highway loves performing his music is that it gives him an opportunity to raise money for worthy causes. Proceeds from Thursday night’s performance will go toward the construction of a native cultural centre here in Toronto.

“That’s something,” says the one-time resident of the city, “that’s long overdue.”

stage@nowtoronto.com

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