Sir John A is an uproariously funny and sharply inquisitive new play from one of Canada’s leading Indigenous playwrights.
Bobby Rabbit, the play’s Anishnawbe main character, convinces his friend Hugh to accompany him on a “sojourn of justice” to dig up the bones of Canada’s infamous first prime minister and hold them for ransom. Decades before, a medicine pouch belonging to Bobby’s grandfather was taken away by the staff of the residential school where he was detained. The precious object was sent to a British Museum exhibition room for conservation — and now Bobby wants it repatriated. Along the way the pair pick up Anya, a bright, opinionated young woman who is fleeing a bad breakup and holds conflicting ideas about Sir John A.’s place in Canadian history. Not to be left out of the argument, Sir John A. himself, broadcasting live from nineteenth-century Ottawa and full of patriarchal contempt for those “strange and perplexing Indians,” shows up with opinions of his own.
Taylor’s twenty-seventh play, Sir John A: Acts of a Gentrified Ojibway Rebellion explores the possibility of reconciliation and urgently questions past and contemporary forms of Canadian colonialism. A contemporary classic!
