Taylor - Only Drunks and Children Tell the Truth

Drew Hayden Taylor Talonbooks Only Drunks and Children Tell the Truth got its start with an earlier play of mine called Someday, a play dealing with what Native people call the scoop up, when Native kids were taken away for adoption too often with tragic results. I had never intended to write Only Drunks and Children Tell the Truth, assuming Someday would say it all for me. Evidently, I was wrong. I am a firm believer that sometimes a story is not quite finished. At the end of Someday, the ambiguity of the ending somehow felt right, but somewhere deep inside I wondered if this was truly the end of the Wabung saga? Does Janice really walk out on the family forever? What are the repercussions of this action? Does it have to be this way? During the rehearsals for the first production of Someday in the fall of 1991, I was in the midst of a conversation with Larry Lewis, the director. At the end of the play, Janice/Grace, the adoptee, leaves her birth family and returns to Toronto in tears, unable to face all the emotions being forced to the surface.

Larry asked me if I thought Janice/Grace would ever return. I responded that it would have to be something awfully important or persuasive to bring her back, knowing the kind of painful emotional experience she was going through. I offhandedly made a comment like Maybe a funeral or something. Maybe the mother dies. It was then that I saw a familiar gleam in Larrys eyes, one that said his mind was already working out the possibilities feverishly. We spent the next hour talking about those possibilities.

So Only Drunks and Children Tell the Truth was born in a messy kitchen, in a trailer located on the Wikwemikong Reserve, Manitoulin Island. But as is my process, I let the idea ferment in my mind, along with all the other plays I was thinking about, for about a year and a half. As it was, I was in the middle of writing another play that was proving to be, shall we say, somewhat difficult. I decided to take a break and finally write Only Drunks and Children Tell the Truth. The first draft took me four and a half days. In approaching this play, I didnt want to rehash all the arguments and points I had explored in Someday.

Instead, I wanted fresh territory to develop and dramatize. Initially, the first play had been about the family learning their long-lost daughter was coming home again after thirty-five years. It was the mothers and the familys story. Only Drunks and Children Tell the Truth was Janice/Graces story. Someday showed that you cant overcome thirty-five years in one hour. All things important and necessary take time.

Repatriation, reunification, whatever you want to call it, takes commitment and resolve. And the road is not always smooth. I felt Janice wasnt as sympathetic in Someday as she could have been. It was time for Janice to have her day and face her demons. I was lucky enough to be a part of her journey. And poor Barb, the real rock of the family, needed to get some stuff off her chest, too.

She was in as much pain, in a different way, as Janice. I also wanted this play to stand on its own, separate and complete. It would have been foolish of me to make Only Drunks and Children Tell the Truth dependent on Someday. This play has been called a clash of wills, of cultures, of philosophies if you will. I think its a story of two sisters finding each other. But as always, you will be the judges.

Drew Hayden Taylor Toronto, December 1997

The birth and growth of a play sometimes involves what could be called an extended family people who have, in one way or another, contributed something substantial and wonderful to its development. Only Drunks and Children Tell the Truth owes many thanks to many different people in this family. This play couldnt have been written without the help and efforts of the people who worked on the original production of Someday (to which Only Drunks and Children Tell the Truth is a sequel of sorts). This play is merely the second step in the journey, and the journey began with De-ba-jeh-mu-jig Theatre Group on Manitoulin Island. Many fabulous things have started there. I am proud that several wonderful organizations and companies saw the potential of this play and aided me in that journey.

I would like to thank all the wonderful people at Canadian Stage company, who provided me with the opportunity to tell this story; the Banff Playwrights Colony, where the actual birthing took place; New York Theatre Workshop and Native Voices (Illinois State University), who allowed me to workshop this humble little play; and of course Native Earth Performing Arts, who produced the play itself. I would also like to confer my appreciation to the following people who gave me advice, support, or the opportunity to further explore and expand on what I hoped would be a good play: Megan Park, Randy Reinholz, Jean Bruce Scott, Carol Greyeyes, Columpa C. Bobb, Darrell Dennis, Kennetch Charlette, and Elizabeth Theobald. Way to go, gang! But perhaps the biggest thank you I could possibly give would have to go to Larry Lewis. This play would not exist without Larrys intelligence, belief, and his ability to convince a man who knew nothing about theatre that perhaps he had a few things to say. It was Larry, wherever he may be, who taught me to ask why not? Finally, a play of this subject matter owes a great debt to the people who have lived through their own stories of adoption and repatriation.

The author only hopes that this play does their experiences justice.

by Lee Maracle There have been a number of Native playwrights plying their craft since Drew Hayden Taylors first play hit the market, but Mr. Taylor was one of the first modern Native playwrights to meet with success. Being first gets you in front of an audience. What keeps you there is continuous growth each work has to be better than the last. Only Drunks and Children Tell the Truth is the second play in a planned trilogy focused on the scoop-up phenomenon, continuing in some form to this day, in which a large number of Native children were removed from their homes, their communities, their culture, never to return.

It is his finest piece of work to date. Characters like those in Only Drunks and Children Tell the Truth can be found on any reserve: the sage, in the form of the not-so-old Tonto, full of understated humour; the clown, Rodney; the modern woman with strong historical roots, Barb; and her sister, the not-quite-as-likely Grace, the lawyer. This play is subtly layered: the conflict between Western values and Native values played out through the sisters, free of the usual didactic preaching; the conflict between Western ideology and Native wisdom, played out through the interaction between Tonto and Grace; and within each are the very specific conflicts that go on within the members of a family that has been torn apart through no fault of its own the internal conflict of those besieged by external forces and dismembered. We all face the invisible enemy of circumstance, which has no face, no name.We often refer to this enemy as the system, white society, structural racism, institutionalized oppression. It is a sticky, gossamer-thin web of hesitation that wraps itself around each one of us, causing us to constantly question our ordinary lives. It creates a dichotomy within.

On one hand, Grace, the sister who was away, is a successful entertainment lawyer. On the other, she is childless, husbandless, living alone in an apartment in Toronto, her work having become her closest friend. Barb, the sister who stayed, works for the band. She is typically connected to her community, tied to her family, and has enjoyed her mothers upbringing, but something inside keeps her frustrated, unable to appreciate her life fully; the missing sister has never been absent from her mothers heart, mind, and spirit. The omnipresence of the missing Grace blinded the mother, reshaped Barb, and blocked both mother and daughter from realizing a full relationship. All are strangely innocent in the creation of these many conflicts.