Drew Hayden Taylor

Drew Hayden Taylor
Drew Hayden Taylor, playwright, broadcaster, writer (b at Curve Lake First Nation near Peterborough, Ont, 1 July 1962). Drew Hayden Taylor is one of Canada's leading native playwrights and humorists. In 1982 he graduated from Seneca College, Toronto, with a diploma in radio and television broadcasting. After graduating, he worked in radio as native affairs reporter for the CBC. In print journalism he contributed articles to a large number of magazines and newspapers, an activity that continues to this day. In television he worked as a consultant on several series, and wrote scripts for The Beachcombers, Street Legal and North of 60. Humour figures in all Taylor's work, eliciting laughter edged with disturbing awareness of exploded stereotypes and bitter truths given a very thin sugar coating.

View a video clip of Drew Hayden Taylor reading excerpts from his play Berlin Blues at Words Aloud 2009. From YouTube.

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Taylor learned the craft of playwriting during his two-year involvement with a native theatre company, the De-Ba-Jeh-Mu-Jig Theatre Group on Ontario's Manitoulin Island, from 1989 to 1991, under the mentorship of director Larry Lewis. Three plays from that period begin the explorations he has continued since. Toronto at Dreamer's Rock (1989) places three native youths from the past, present and future on an ancient site of vision quests. There they struggle to understand how native identity can survive under the pressure of the settler culture. The Bootlegger Blues (1990) was Taylor's response to a challenge from Lewis to write a comedy about native life. Someday (1991) is a bittersweet story of the reunion of a native mother and the grownup child forcibly taken away from her by the authorities to be adopted by a white family.

Taylor has had a long association with Canada's premier urban native theatre company, NATIVE EARTH PERFORMING ARTS Inc (Toronto), serving as playwright-in-residence from 1988 to 1989 and as artistic director from 1994 to 1997. His plays have been widely produced in Canada, the United States, Germany and Italy. They have received several awards, notably, in 1989, the Chalmers Award for Toronto at Dreamer's Rock and, in 1996, the Dora Mavor Moore Award for Only Drunks and Children Tell the Truth. He has published Fearless Warriors, a collection of short stories, and four collections of humorous writings under the running title Funny, You Don't Look Like One. He has travelled widely throughout North America and overseas, lecturing on native theatre in Canada at conferences, running workshops, and reading from his work at authors' festivals. Since 1997 he has organized the Whetung Storytellers Festival and the Whetung Music Festival at the Curve Lake First Nation.

Taylor's writings are a significant part of the native cultural renaissance that has been gathering momentum since the 1980s. In 2004 he was appointed by the Ministry of Culture of the Government of Ontario to the Minister's Advisory Council for Arts and Culture.

Author ROBERT NUNN

Links to Other Sites
Drew Hayden Taylor
The website for award-winning writer Drew Hayden Taylor. Click the links at the bottom of the page for his biography, list of awards, and more.

Playing tricks
A CBC review of Drew Hayden Taylor's fascinating novel "Motorcycles & Sweetgrass."

Drew Hayden Taylor
A profile of multitalented writer Drew Hayden Taylor. See also a synopsis of his novel "Motorcycles & Sweetgrass." From RandomHouse.ca.

Drew Hayden Taylor, The Berlin Blues opening scenes, Words Aloud 2009
View a video clip of Drew Hayden Taylor reading excerpts from his play, "Berlin Blues" at Words Aloud 2009. From YouTube.