38 pages • 1 hour read
Tomson HighwayThe Rez Sisters
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1986A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Act I, Pages 1-37Act Summaries & Analyses
Act I, Pages 1-18 Summary
The play is set in 1986, on the Wasaychigan Hill Indian Reserve (which the characters refer to as “Wasy”) in Ontario, Canada. The 53-year-old Pelajia Patchnose works on her roof while talking to her 49-year-old sister Philomena Moosetail about how she wants to go to Toronto. Philomena believes Pelajia will stay in Wasy, and they debate this topic.
Pelajia complains about the neighbors, but Philomena likes playing bingo on the reserve. Pelajia laments the loss of Indigenous stories and language, and thinks the other residents of the reserve are crazy. Philomena trips while going down the ladder to the roof, ripping her skirt. When she comes back up, they gossip about Big Joey and Gazelle, two other members of their community. Pelajia misses her husband and children, who are in Espanola and Toronto, respectively. She complains about the dirt roads in Wasy, and wants to win a big bingo jackpot and use the winnings to get paved roads built.
Annie Cook, the 36-year-old half-sister of Philomena and Pelajia, comes up to the roof. They gossip more about Gazelle winning bingo, as well as her relationship with Big Joey. Annie saw a country rock band play, and is expecting mail from her daughter who lives in Sudbury with a white man. Annie heard a rumor about a big bingo game; she wants to win and go to Espanola, and then Sudbury. The women complain about the priest who runs bingo in Wasy and how the pots are too small. They joke about starting a revolution demanding bigger pots—burning the church, scaring the priest, and heading to Espanola.
After Annie leaves, Philomena talks about Bingo Betty going to all the bingo games with her cousins before she died, and describes Betty playing. Philomena almost falls off the roof, and she mentions Betty’s ghost haunting bingo tables. Pelajia believes Bingo Betty should have gone to play bingo in Toronto.
Act I, Pages 18-37 Summary
At the same time as the previous scene, Marie-Adele Starblanket, Annie’s 39-year-sister, plays games in her yard with Nanabush (who is disguised as a seagull), and Zhaboonigan Peterson, a 24-year-old woman with an intellectual disability. Marie-Adele tells the seagull to get out of her yard. When Nanabush tells her to come with him, she says she can’t fly. Then, in Cree, she tells him to stop pooping everywhere. Veronique St. Pierre, Marie-Adele’s 49-year-old sister-in-law and adoptive mother of Zhaboonigan, passes by the yard. They talk about a Frenchman selling cars, and Fire Minklater buying one. Veronique wants to catch a ride to Espanola but dislikes Fire Minklater.
Zhaboonigan asks about Nicky, whom she picked and ate berries with. She unties Marie-Adele’s shoe, and gets upset when she can’t re-tie it. Marie-Adele distracts her by naming pigs (the fence posts), and Zhaboonigan counts along. Veronique complains that people treat her differently because of her adopted daughter and drunk husband, and describes her broken stove. Marie-Adele tries to shoo away seagull, which confuses Veronique because she can’t see it.
Veronique gossips about seeing Gazelle at Big Joey’s place, and Gazelle sharing a rumor about the biggest bingo in the world coming to Toronto. Marie-Adele asks when the game is, but Veronique does not know the date or if the game is real. She also wants to go to the bingo game, and they contemplate going to ask Gazelle. However, women who go into Big Joey’s house are considered immoral. Veronique gossips about Emily Dictionary, Annie and Marie-Adele’s other sister, visiting Big Joey.
Annie comes by the yard after leaving Pelajia’s roof. Zhaboonigan asks Marie-Adele about her cancer. Veronique tries to shush Zhaboonigan. Annie asks if Simon, Marie-Adele’s son, is inside. Marie-Adele says he is in Espanola with Eugene, her husband and Annie’s former lover. Annie and Marie-Adele tell Veronique about their expected mail: a package and a letter from a doctor, respectively. Veronique mentions the biggest bingo game in Toronto to Annie, and they discuss trying to verify this rumor. They decide Annie’s package might include a letter from her daughter about the bingo game. Veronique decides to go to the store with them.
They walk to the store in separate spotlights, each talking about what they would do with their winnings if they won the biggest bingo game in the world. Annie wants to buy records and a record player, as well as pay to hear live music. She has a crush on Fritz the Katz, and wants to be his backup singer. Marie-Adele wants to buy an island with her winnings, one with lots of trees, and live there with her kids and her husband. Veronique wants to buy a new stove to cook for all the kids on the reserve, including Marie-Adele’s and Gazelle’s kids. She also wants to leave her drunk husband Pierre St. Pierre, go to Paris, write a cookbook, and become rich and famous. Zhaboonigan, after swimming in the lake, counts and giggles while following the women.
Act I, Pages 1-37 Analysis
The first scene of Rez Sisters establishes a sense of place, creating context for the story that follows. Pelajia has a view of the whole reserve—and beyond—from the top of her roof. She says, “From here, I can see half of Manitoulin Island on a clear day” (2). Her descriptions give both a theater audience and a reader details about the land and its people. There are “apple trees” and Big Joey’s “garbage heap” nearby, as well as “a mill” in the distance (2). The fact that the play begins and ends with Pelajia putting shingles on her roof, a job that is considered “a man’s job” (7), stresses the importance of the theme of gender roles.
The first scene also introduces a central concern to the main plot of the play: bingo. While much of Rez Sisters focuses on developing the characters of the sisters and the relationships between them, this characterization is organized around playing bingo. The action of the play follows the women as they discover, travel to, attend, and come home from a bingo game in a big city, Toronto. Philomena wants to “go to every bingo” (5) between Wasy and Espanola. Bingo also functions symbolically in the play, representing the women’s hope for financial stability and wealth, the elements of skill and fate at play in their lives, and indicating a degree of remove from religious or spiritual systems of meaning.
Both the first and second scenes—set on Pelajia’s roof and Marie-Adele’s yard, respectively—include gossip. Gossip and rumor among the sisters are not limited to bingo, but also focus on the sexual relationship between Gazelle and Big Joey. Developing the theme of gender roles, the women who associate with Big Joey are judged harshly. Pelajia calls Gazelle an “old cow” pretending to be a “spring chicken” by getting her “legs wrapped around Big Joey day and night” (7). Gazelle’s sexual relationship, Veronique claims, gets in the way of her duties as a mother (28).
Finally, the first two scenes introduce the theme of how the presence of circling seagulls, and a trickster spirit in their guise, signals that death is near. In the second scene, Marie-Adele can see the trickster Nanabush because her cancer is soon to take her life. He appears as a seagull, and a stage direction reads: Marie-Adele and “Zhaboonigan Peterson can see the spirit inside the bird and can sort of (though not quite) recognize him for who he is” (18). Marie-Adele interacts with Nanabush several times in the play, as her death approaches and she passes on. Zhaboonigan’s intellectual disability allows her to also, almost, see the trickster. Later, when Zhaboonigan reveals her sexual assault, it is implied that her experience with violence may also inform her ability to see the trickster Nanabush. Consistent with cultural values at the time of the play, the mid-1980s, only the people at the extremities of human experience are connected with the spirit who was once respected by the entire Indigenous community.
Related Titles
By Tomson Highway
