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 II, Pages 61-88Act Summaries & Analyses
Act II, Pages 61-74 Summary
The women have set up chairs and stools in Pelajia’s basement. They drink tea and beers. Pelajia gives her hammer to Emily to use as a gavel and lead the meeting. Emily asks when they are leaving for Toronto. They debate how long it will take to get there, as well as whose vehicle to borrow, and settle on Eugene’s van. Then, they debate about when to leave and arrange their schedule around Marie-Adele’s medical tests. Annie and Emily are nominated to drive. The women decide to stay with Pelajia’s son, buy groceries and cook at his house. They debate how much money they should contribute toward groceries. After calculations that include the price of admission to bingo, Emily figures that each woman needs to raise $200.
The stage becomes overtaken with their fundraising efforts. The characters perform a montage to music while Nanabush (disguised as a seagull) messes with Marie-Adele’s lines of laundry around the stage. Pelajia hammers on a roof. Emily rings up grocery purchases that Annie, Philomena, Marie-Adele, Zhaboonigan, and Veronique pass across the stage. Zhaboonigan and Annie bring tables onto stage. Philomena, who has a baby attached to her, and Emily move around beer bottles. Veronique cleans windows. Marie-Adele strings up laundry.
Zhaboonigan brings a basket of blueberries on stage and takes over cleaning windows, Philomena and Emily continue to transfer beer bottles from baskets to cases. Philomena now has a second baby attached to her; she is babysitting. Annie carries old clothes and a chair onto stage. Veronique brings in some pies for a bake sale. Marie-Adele continues to string up laundry, and Pelajia continues hammering roofs.
Pelajia moves to hammering the floor. While Zhaboonigan continues to wash windows, Emily and Philomena continue to transfer beer bottles. Philomena gains another baby. Annie brings in a record player and a lamp. Annie and Emily sing. Marie-Adele strings up more laundry, and Veronique brings in bread.
Pelajia continues to hammer everything. Zhaboonigan begins to cry while window-washing. Annie and Emily improve their singing. There is an additional baby attached to Philomena as she moves around beer bottles. Annie brings in a TV and a toaster. Veronique brings in buns. More lines of laundry are strung up by Marie-Adele.
Emily tallies all their earnings at her register. There are now five babies attached to Philomena. Zhaboonigan washes windows as the women put up signs that say: World’s Biggest Bottle Drive, World’s Biggest Bake Sale, World’s Biggest Garage Sale, and Big Blurries and Laundry While You Wait. Pelajia hammers the air. Emily goes “Woah!” and the music stops. Pelajia totals up their earnings (listing all their activities) to $1,233.65.
Act II, Pages 75-88 Summary
The scene changes by using spotlights to show Emily and Annie with microphones at Anchor Inn, Little Current. Emily introduces a song—“I’m Thinkin’ of You”—and they perform it. Meanwhile, the other women have set up and gotten into van seats around the stage (with an implied van). After the audience claps for Emily and Annie’s song, they meet the others in the van.
While riding to Toronto, they talk about the money the women made from singing, and Emily and Annie sing a verse a capella. The drive then becomes quiet, with some women nodding off. Marie-Adele and Annie talk about Ellen and Raymond, Annie’s daughter and son-in-law. They discuss how Eugene chose to be with Marie-Adele, but she fears Annie still wants him. Annie denies this.
Philomena and Pelajia talk about the date of the bingo game—September 8—but Pelajia can’t remember the significance of the date. Zhaboonigan talks to Philomena about birds. Philomena explains that September 8 is when she had a child from an affair with a married man in Toronto. She gave up the child, and wants to find it with her bingo winnings.
Annie and Emily sing, and then talk about the Silver Dollar, specifically the music that plays there. Annie gushes over Fritz the Katz. Emily sings Patsy Cline. They gossip about Big Joey’s anatomy, and Annie says Fritz is Jewish. They compare dating white men and dating men on the reserve. Emily asks Annie about leaving Wasy forever and sings a song about Wasy. Emily says she will take care of them by getting drinks from the guys at the Silver Dollar. Their conversation is cut short when the van gets a flat tire.
Act II, Pages 61-88 Analysis
The first few scenes of Act II contain the women’s efforts to get to the bingo game in Toronto that has the large jackpot. The scenes of organizing and fundraising illuminate interpersonal dynamics among women and how women fit into society in Wasy. In Pelajia’s basement, the women follow a democratic process, with Emily serving as “chair” of the meeting, indicating a marked difference from how the women treated her at the general store. Among the sisters, they use a consensus-based decision-making process to plan the logistics of the trip.
After they come to a consensus on how much each woman needs to contribute to afford the trip, the women begin to fundraise. The kinds of work that the women can obtain to finance their trip evinces the expected roles of women in their society. Signs go up around the stage, clearly marking “Bottle Drive,” “Bake Sale,” “Garage Sale,” and “Laundry” services (73). These types of domestic work that are socially coded as women’s work can be contrasted with the work of male characters like Eugene, who works at a “pulp and paper mill” (36) in Espanola. However, the women raise enough money to fund their trip to the bingo game. In sharp contrast to their fighting in Act I, the sisters display their ability to work together toward a common goal, especially financial goals.
As the women begin their drive to Toronto, Eugene comes up as a potential threat to the bond between Annie and Marie-Adele, as well as the other sisters. Prior to this point in the play, there was gossip about an affair between Annie and Eugene. Marie-Adele, considering what will happen after her death (due to her cancer), says to Annie, “I see you going for him” (78). However, the success of the fundraising strengthens the bonds among the women, enabling them to be more open and honest with each other as they travel to the bingo game. Philomena’s reveal of the child she gave up for adoption evinces how working together toward their dreams of financial and emotional independence empowers the women to reveal the more complex motivations beneath their gossip and bickering from Act I. The significant absence of Nanabush from these two scenes also hints at greater cooperation and understanding among the women. Marie-Adele’s concerns about imminent death are also prescient; she dies at the bingo game later in Act II. However, the relationships between the women, as well as between the sisters and the Starblanket family, are not as deeply disturbed by her passing as Marie-Adele fears they will be.
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By Tomson Highway
