Academic literature on the topic 'Ryga, George. Ecstasy of Rita Joe'

This paper traces the intercultural journey of a young Aboriginal girl into the hegemonic white society. Rita Joe crossed the imaginary border that separates her reserve from the other Canadian society living in the urban developed city. Through this play, George Ryga aims at achieving liberation and social equality for the Aboriginals who are considered a colonized minority in their land. The research illustrates how Ryga represented his personal version of the colonial Aboriginal history to provide an empowering body narrative that supports their identity in the present and resists the erosion of their culture and tradition. The play makes very strong statements to preserve the family, history and local heritage against this forced assimilation. It tells the truth as its playwright saw it. The play is about the trail of Rita Joe after she moved from her reserve in pursuit of the illusion of the city where she thought she would find freedom and social equality. In fact the audience and the readers are all on trial. Ryga is pointing fingers at everyone who is responsible for the plights of the Aboriginals as it is clear in the play. He questions the Whites’ stereotypical stand against the Aboriginals. The play is a direct criticism of the political, social and cultural systems in Canada. The paper reveals Aboriginals' acts of opposition to racism, assimilation and colonization as represented in The Ecstasy of Rita Joe.

The aim of this paper is to illustrate how George Ryga in his play The Ecstasy of Rita Joe (1976), tries to make use of stage directions to enhance the themes expressed in the text. Thus,  he  uses stage directions extensively in order to express, illustrate and present his themes. Like Bernard Shaw who distrusts the readers apprehension to grasp his ideas and motifs, we see that Ryga, to a great extent he presents us a play which the stage directions run parallel to his intended themes and thus enforcing his purpose, not only for the readers only, but also for the actors and directors of his play.Â

This article considers ways in which solidarity across social locations might play a role in fostering resistance to vulnerability. My case study consists of the interplay between writer George Ryga’s 1967 play The Ecstasy of Rita Joe, and Okanagan Syilx writer and scholar Jeannette Armstrong’s 1985 novel Slash. While these important and compelling texts have received considerable critical attention, the relationship between them is less known. I am interested in the ways in which these works both hail and offer critique to one another. In the contemporary moment, in which questions of appropriation of voice have gained renewed urgency within Indigenous literary circles in Canada and beyond, the relationship between these texts speaks to a historical instance of appropriation, but also of complicated processes of alliance-building. These texts demonstrate how agency resides across multiple locations. I read Ryga’s Ecstasy in the context of Jeannette Armstrong’s engagement with the play within her novel Slash in order to witness the ways in which Ryga’s text, in the first instance, appropriates Indigenous voices into an anti-capitalist critique. In the second instance, I read these works in order to witness how they might simultaneously provide a compelling analysis of the vulnerability of the people who are the subject of both works. I compare the interplay between Armstrong and Ryga’s texts to contemporary debates around appropriation in order to argue for the historical and ongoing importance of these two works as precursors to the crucial interventions made by contemporary Indigenous critics and writers.

Practically since its celebrated premiere in 1967, George Ryga's drama about urban Native Canadians, The Ecstasy of Rita Joe, has enjoyed canonical status in Canada. Yet the same three decades that have seen over 200 productions of Rita Joe have also witnessed radical transformations in the ways First Nations' peoples are represented, heard and perceived in Canada. How has a play written about Natives by a non-Native man in 1967 managed such a long production history on such contentious and unstable ground? How do identity politics influence this piece of theatre, and how does the theatre shape identity politics? As popular notions about Native identities have changed and as Native people continue to represent themselves in and put of court, and on and off the stage, this play about Native people in Canada has been performed and re-performed. But the directors, the venues, the actors, the costumes and sets, the language itself and (most significantly) the resulting characterizations have changed over the years — in subtle and rather dramatic ways. While the words and the fundamental plot of Rita Joe have remained the same, its messages about Native identity has evolved since 1967, in relation to social, political, economic, and cultural changes. Indeed, historical developments impact the particular ways an "Indian" is represented in a particular time; what makes a "real Indian" tends to shift with the political and social needs of the moment. This paper examines the way Native identity is represented in eight productions of Rita Joe mounted between 1967 and 1992, creating a production history that focuses on the relationship between representations of identity and particular moments in time and space and, ultimately, discerns a complex and symbiotic relationship between the aesthetic, creative world and the historio-political world. Perhaps most remarkably, the play stretches to accommodate diverse cultural narratives, gathering meaning from the identity politics of its particular performance place and time.