Awoowaakii delivers laughs, tears and Blackfoot reconciliation in moving Theatre Calgary world premiere

Marshall Veille, Jenova Calixto and Garret C. Smith in Awoowaakii at Theatre Calgary (Benjamin Laird)

Toni Twigg needs a new name.

He’s a queer Calgary drag queen crashing at the home of Chrissy (Marshall Vielle), a trans woman trying to juggle her studies with the demands of raising a teenage son named Richie (Jenova Calixto), who is having a hard time at school because his mom is trans.

There’s an elder named Rosie Running Eagle (Cherish Violet Blood), who does Blackfoot naming ceremonies, so Toni (Garret Smith, kicking it) puts aside some cash earned from his drag shows to pay a tribute to Rosie and sets in motion a Blackfoot feast that features a lot of meat dishes.

The challenge of crashing with old pal Chrissy is that her idea of being a good mom to Richie is to hide the fact that Toni is a queer drag queen from him, which Toni finds ridiculous.

“Chrissy, he’s 16!” Toni says. “He probably knows a lot more than you think!”

Just when Awoowaakii, the terrifically two-spirited new dramedy from Mohkinstis playwright Sable Sweetgrass, appears to be a variation on a Blackfoot-infused Le Cage Aux Folles, Crissy’s estranged dad, Joseph Two Guns (Keven Lance Littlelight), shows up after years of drunk rage, and a stint in prison, to announce to his child that he’s there to make amends.

The only problem? It’s been so long since they last spoke that he thinks Toni is his kid.

The program notes for Awoowaakii describe it as a “living room comedy of errors,” which it is, in a way that feels familiar to us in a story setup kind of way.

The set is a small house set on a rotating circle, with scenes alternating between the kitchen, living room and Richie’s bedroom and in the cozy confines of the Big Secret Theatre, which was packed Friday night, it all feels a little close for comfort for a while.

I think it might have been Leo Tolstoy who made the observation that all happy families are alike, but unhappy one are each unhappy in their own unique way, and that’s kind of what’s both comforting and completely engrossing about Awoowaakii, which features virtuoso storytelling from Sweetgrass and crisp, compelling direction from Alanis King.

The more the story digs into the dysfunction and emotional wreckage of this one patched-together bunch of Blackfoot people, the more Sweetgrass layers in the generations of trauma that Indigenous Nations have faced over the last 150 years -- and the ways different individuals search to turn it all around so that they can move forward in a positive direction.

A lot of it has to do with names, in particular Awoowaakii, which is the Blackfoot term for a transgendered two-spirited person -- which, it turns out, was an accepted identity for generations of Blackfoot people until residential schools and Christian culture turned it into a taboo.

There are fine performances throughout in Awoowaakii, most particularly Smith, whose Toni is a lightning fast, funny, and completely mesmorizing character.

Veille’s Chrissy is frustrating at first because they’re sort of stuck playing the same emotional key and you want to yell at them to snap out of it, but Veille delivers a powerful performance that ultimately propels Awoowaaki forward to its moving resolution.

Littlelight’s Joseph Two Guns is a sad shell of a man eager to find some forgiveness for a lifetime of emotional mistakes, and he’s like a lot of old-timers -- he doesn’t quite know how to make it up to the people in his life who he’s hurt, but Littlelight gives him a sympathetic treatment that makes you root for him nevertheless.

Calixto breaks your heart as Richie, who is like a lot of teenage boys, struggling to make sense of his pain by getting lost inside an iPad and in the second act, Violet Blood’s Rosie Running Eagle shows up just in time to be the adult in the room to a family that really, really needs one.

At the end of the day Awoowaakii tells a universal story about families that’s funny, emotionally satisfying and full of hard truths, too, about what we talk about when we talk about reconciliation -- family and nation.

It’s also a wonderful endorsement for Theatre Calgary’s new play development programming. They really did take it from the page to the stage and hit this one out of the park.

At a time when new plays are the toughest sell of them all, and new Canadian plays even tougher, along comes a new name for a good time at the theatre: Awoowaakii.

Awoowaakii runs through May 11 at the Big Secret Theatre. For more info, go here.