Native Expressions: An Evening with Tomson Highway May 1, 2009

In collaboration with the Smithsonian Museum of the Native American we are offering a special evening of cabaret, Canadian playwright and novelist Tomson Highway (Cree) is joined onstage by Canadian-Peruvian singer and actress Patricia Cano and D.C.-based saxophone player Leigh Pilzer.
The performance features 14 songs from two of Highway’s shows: Rose, a musical about gender and race identity, and Mary Jane Mosquito, a one-woman show that tells the life story of a young mosquito from northern Manitoba who happens to be the only mosquito in the history of the world born without wings. But can she sing!
Highway is author of the plays The Rez Sisters and Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing, and the novel Kiss of the Fur Queen. He ran Toronto’s Native Earth Performing Arts for several years.
The multilingual Cano is the assistant musical director and sound designer of the Paris-based Theatre du Soleil. Pilzer performs regularly with the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra and the National Symphony Orchestra.

Mitsitam Café will be open for light fare before the show.

Official Website: http://www.nmai.si.edu/