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by Darrell Dennis, directed by Herbie Barnes

Talk Is Free Theatre, Hope United Church, 2550 Danforth Avenue , Toronto

May 23-31, 2025

Kye7e: “Choice is something you always have”

Tales of an Urban Indian is Talk Is Free Theatre’s biggest success. The Barrie-based theatre company’s production directed by Herbie Barnes has been touring constantly ever since its premiere in 2009 travelling across Canada and the US and to Australia, New Zealand, Chile, Argentina, Suriname and Japan. Somehow, I’ve managed to miss the show every time it has played in Barrie. Now, for the first time, the show has come to Toronto, and I made sure to be there. It’s easy to see why it has been so successful. It’s funny, it’s serious and in 90 minutes it provides an enlightening look at the world from an Indigenous point of view. The present production of this solo play features an outstanding virtuoso performance by Nolan Moberly.

Darrell Dennis’s semi-autobiographical play covers the life of an Indigenous boy, Simon Douglas, of the Secwepemc nation from the registration of his birth in 1972 to age 22 as told by himself. Simon tells us right from the start that he has none of the life experiences that non-Indigenous people think Indigenous people possess. He didn’t go to a residential school. He was not adopted out. He says he likes concrete and gets lost in the woods. He can’t shape-shift. He’s never had a vision. He says he has to tell us his story not because it is unusual, but because it is common and is not told enough.

Simon tells us he was born and brought up on a reserve. His father was away protesting for Native rights, so he was raised by his mother and his Kye7e (pronounced “KYAH-ah”) meaning “grandmother”. His Kye7e is a woman of wide experience and deep knowledge and her constant reminder to Simon is: “Choice is something you always have”. Simon wants to escape what he sees as the narrow world of the reserve. He hates that one of his friends is persecuted for being gay, and he hates himself for being part of the persecution. He hates that alcohol seems to be the only means his friends have of coping with a confined life, but he finds it is his only means, too.

When his mother resolves to get a divorce and move with him to Vancouver, he thinks that is the best thing that could happen. He thinks of the city as a place of endless possibilities, but he has no success in school or dating and in acting he finds he is confined to a narrow range of roles. He sees the Indigenous people addicted to drugs and alcohol at Hastings and Main and assumes he will never be like them. Yet, Simon’s story details how step by step he comes frighteningly close to being exactly like them.

The question, of course, is “Why should this happen?” Simon starts out bright and wildly optimistic, but near the end he cannot even put himself together to please Stephanie, a successful Indigenous woman who loves him. His easy answer is that he fails because of White oppression. But Stephanie rejects that excuse as too simplistic. He recalls what his Kye7e always old him – “Choice is something you always have” – and realizes it is an insight he should have taken to heart. What is indisputable is that he sees that in Canada he will always be regarded as an Indigenous person first and never as an individual. Simon’s story shows that even for someone who cares very little about his ethnic identity, the barriers to being accepted by White society in particular are still daunting.

Dennis’s satire covers everyone Simon meets from schoolfriends and relatives, to other Indigenous people who consort with people only of their own tribe, to the White girls he lusts after, to White people being overly politically correct to those who overtly racist. The main source of satire, however, is always himself and his own naïveté. At least in Dennis’s play there are people Simon cares about and people who care about him. What we worry about most is that Simon will begin not to care about himself.

Tales of an Urban Indian had its world premiere in 2003 at the still much-missed Artword Theatre in Toronto. The Talk Is Free Theatre revival gave the play new life. Herbie Barnes, who directed the world premiere, had the idea for the revival of staging the play on a moving city bus. One can imagine how such a staging would reinforce the play’s theme of Simon’s feeling of rootlessness and instability in the city. Those familiar with Toronto traffic nowadays will know that the concept of a “moving” city us is a bit too problematic. Therefore, for the Toronto production the play is being staged in alley format for an audience of 30 in a church basement. Actor Nolan Moberly, the eighth actor to play Simon Douglas, is in constant rapid motion in that narrow alley between the two ranks of viewers.

In the centre of the playing area is a basket filled with stones. Gradually, we come to see that Simon places a stone on the ground near his entrance to the stage to commemorate an Indigenous friend who has come to an unfair end.

Moberly gives a fantastic performance. The text requires him to play more than 35 characters, including Simon at ages 10, 12, 13, 15, 20, 21 and 22. Moberly clearly differentiates these ages as well as playing both men and women, young and old, Indigenous people and non-Indigenous people. Moberly even plays God, a cat and an ATM in Dennis's dizzying panorama of West Coast society in the 1980s and ’90s. Moberly is a very physical performer moving elegantly, sometimes acrobatically, back and forth in the acting area as he speaks. The moments when he stops moving give his words increased impact.

It would have been fascinating to see Dennis himself play Simon as he did at the world premiere in 2003. It would also have been exciting to see the play when it actually did play on a moving bus to feel how that staging contributed to the play’s massive popularity. Nevertheless, Barnes’s kinetic new staging for Talk Is Free and the incredibly engaging, chameleonic performance of Moberly are not to be missed. Moberly’s ability to transform himself into such an enormous range of characters is a theatrical demonstration of the falseness of any group’s attempt to restrict the parameters of any other group’s identity. It is a prescient play given an exhilarating performance – funny, sad and powerful all in one.

Christopher Hoile

Photos: Nolan Moberly in Tales of an Urban Indian. © 2025 Dahlia Katz.

For tickets visit: www.tift.ca.