Canada’s largest art fraud conspiracy centred around a deceased Anishinaabe painter. In the late 1960s, Norval Morrisseau became known as “Picasso of the North” for his vibrant paintings, which some compared to stained-glass windows. Following his death in 2007, thousands of forgeries of the brilliant Indigenous artist’s work flooded the market. To date, five men have been convicted in connection with the scheme.
Award-winning Ojibway writer Drew Hayden Taylor tells the Toronto Spark that he decided to write a play linked to this topic after meeting an authority on the forgeries at a Christmas cocktail party.
“He was filling me in on all this interesting information—and it just stayed with me,” Hayden Taylor says over Zoom. “I thought it’s sort of like a larger metaphor for what’s real and what isn’t real. And what steps one has to go to, to guarantee authenticity.”
Morrisseau spent a couple of years around Hayden Taylor’s Curve Lake First Nation reserve, so the playwright could draw on personal experience. But Hayden Taylor’s new work, The Undeniable Accusations of Red Cadmium Light, is not a play about Morrisseau. Rather, the forged Morrisseau paintings serve as a catalyst for exploring deeper issues in a fictional story about truth and authenticity.
“At its core, it revolves around the relationship between a mother and a daughter—and how this particular issue affects them on a really personal level,” Hayden Taylor reveals.
The Firehall Arts Centre will present The Undeniable Accusations of Red Cadmium Light from April 18 to May 3. Like Hayden Taylor’s earlier works, this play includes plenty of humour for audiences.
“They’ll laugh, they’ll cry, they’ll have a cathartic moment,” the lighthearted playwright promises.
Hayden Taylor’s sixth play for the Firehall
The title comes from red cadmium light paint, which was created in 1982. One of the lead characters, Nazhi (Anita Wittenberg), operates an art gallery on the Otter Lake First Nation that carries works by Morrisseau and other Indigenous artists. Nazhi’s daughter, Beverly (Kaitlynn Yott), is an Indigenous educator. The third character is a reporter (Tyson Night) investigating counterfeit Indigenous art.
Hayden Taylor has collaborated in the past with the play’s director, Columpa Bobb, and was a good friend of Bobb’s mother, the late Sto:Lo Nation writer and academic Lee Maracle. Hayden Taylor adds that when he was artistic director of Native Earth Performing Arts in Toronto, Bobb regularly appeared on-stage.
Bobb also performed alongside her mother in in the Firehall Arts Centre’s 1995 production of Hayden Taylor’s Someday. It was co-directed by Firehall artistic producer Donna Spencer and Evan Tesla Adams, now deputy health officer with the First Nations Health Authority.
Moreover, Bobb starred in the Firehall’s 1997 production of Hayden Taylor’s Only Drunks and Children Tell the Truth, also directed by Spencer. And Bobb directed the same play for the Firehall in 2018.
In fact, The Undeniable Accusations of Red Cadmium Light will be the sixth Hayden Taylor play presented by the Firehall. The list also includes alterNatives (1999) and The Buz Gem Blues (2004)—both directed by Spencer—and the Renae Morriseau–directed God and the Indian (2011 and 2013).
“The Firehall has been basically my primary introduction to the Vancouver theatre community,” Hayden Taylor says. “I did have one play produced at Carousel Theatre—one of my YA plays. And there used to be a festival in Vancouver called Brecht in the Park and I did a play for them. I adapted [The Rise and Fall of the City of] Mahogany and Indigenized it.”
Watch the trailer for Season 3 of Drew Hayden Taylor’s Going Native TV series.
From The Beachcombers to Going Native
He tells the Toronto Spark that his first writing credit was a TV episode of The Beachcombers. Hayden Taylor never actually made it out to Gibsons, B.C.—where the series was filmed—until about a decade later. Since then, however, he has visited more than two dozen countries, some coming while filming his Going Native series on APTN.
“I’ve found myself crawling on my hands and knees in an ancient Mayan cave,” Hayden Taylor recalls. “I’ve caught fish with traditional cultures along the West Coast; I’ve done stuff in New Zealand and Australia with the Aboriginal people there….
“Because I grew up on the reserve, I always thought I’d end up working at the band office, embezzling money from the Department of Indian Affairs,” he quips. “Instead, I’m traveling the world doing these amazing, exotic things.”
When Hayden Taylor grew up in the 1970s, he didn’t know of any Indigenous writers. He saw no Indigenous literature in his school or in libraries that he visited.
“I didn’t become familiar with it until later in the ’80s when there was this explosion of theatre and literature coming from the Indigenous community.”
Even then, he emphasizes, an Indigenous play or book was the exception to the rule, popping up every couple of months. Now, Indigenous literature embraces so many genres, including science fiction. His book, Take Us to Your Chief, is one such example. It’s comprised of short stories with a contemporary First Nations outlook, playing off traditional tropes of science fiction.
“We’re no longer the exception to the rule—we’re part of the rule. And it is so interesting and fascinating to have been a part of that movement,” Hayden Taylor states. “I call it the Contemporary Indigenous Literary Renaissance.”
Event details
The Firehall Arts Centre (280 East Cordova Street) will present The Undeniable Accusations of Red Cadmium Light from April 18 to May 3. The company will host post-show talkbacks on April 23 and 30. For tickets and showtimes, visit the Firehall Arts Centre website. The Toronto Spark is on Bluesky @torontospark.bsky.social.
