Firehall Arts Centre to May 3, 2026
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Posted April 24, 2026
There are about 1500 fake paintings by legendary Anishinaabe artist Norval Morrisseau (1932-2007) out there. As the first indigenous artist to have a major solo exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada, Morrisseau is a hot item in the art world, so not only is this serious cultural appropriation but big money is involved. Kevin Hearn, of the Bare Naked Ladies, successfully sued a Toronto gallery for $60,000 for selling him a fake Morrisseau. More lawsuits are bound to follow as more and more paintings are put under the microscope.
The pigment – red cadmium light – was created in 1982 so any painting attributed to Morrisseau prior to 1982 but containing that pigment – a trademark of his – is a fake.
But artistic theft is not the primary territory award-winning Ojibway playwright, author, journalist and filmmaker Drew Hayden Taylor explores in his new play The Undeniable Accusations of Red Cadmium Light. As director Columpa Bobb writes in her program notes, First Nations people are “the only “ethnic group” in Canada that has been marked to provide evidence and prove our ethnicity to the colonial construct.” Now there are ‘pretendians’, the ultimate theft.
In the play, sixty-five-year-old Nazhi Nigig (Anita Wittenberg) lives and runs a gallery on the Otter Lake First Nation reserve where she exhibits a large number of the paintings of Morrisseau as well as other First Nations artists, including her now deceased Anishinaabe husband. A recognized expert in the field of counterfeit recognition, she is confident, passionate and highly successful. Beverly (Kaitlyn Yott), her stepdaughter, is a thirty-something, single, well-educated indigenous educator up for a major promotion; attending a conference in the city, she’s briefly visiting Nazhi whom she calls “mom”.
When Martine Marten, a young Cayuga arts journalist, turns up in Otter Lake to interview Nazhi (wearing long beaded earrings, a sort of black-on-black ribbon skirt and beaded moccasins by Starlynn Chen, costume designer), she flirts with him outrageously and waxes on about art and offers him mint tea and Campbell’s soup. A little evasive about her past, she says her father was Cree but she grew up in the city. She talks about colonizers taking fur, the land and now “our art.”
But something is off. We know it. Marten senses it. After an hour-long first act, Hayden Taylor gets down to business.
All is not as it has seemed to be and the play breaks wide open. Marten returns, a rift opens up between Nazhi and Beverly; both of their careers are on the line. More than that, their very self-definition is suddenly shaken.
Strangely, Act 2 – despite the loud and bitter harangue by Beverly – got a lot of laughs on opening night as Nazhi struggles to defend herself. The more she protests, the louder the guffaws and snorts of derision from the audience. I wasn’t laughing but neither was I sympathetic to Nazhi nor Beverly who is vicious in her attack, tossing out the crude comment about “indigenous by ejaculation”. Somehow, I was just missing the funny boat. Was it just that First Nation’s sense of humour?
Under Columpa Bobb’s direction, I found none of the characters particularly sympathetic: Wittenberg’s performance makes Nazhi too brash then too whiny; Yott’s performance makes Beverly a petulant tyrant. Tyson Night does the best he can with Marten but the character takes far too much self-righteous pleasure in his accusations.
Charlie Beaver’s set – a large broken frame setting the parameters of the action – is handsome, appropriate and beautifully lit by Rebekah Johnson.
Playwright Drew Hayden Taylor always walks a very fine line between comedy and small ‘p’ political. This play is definitely darker than his others and there’s little doubt about how he feels about ‘pretendians’. I share that outrage. But the final image of The Undeniable Accusations of Red Cadmium Light is bewildering. Is the playwright cutting Nazhi some slack? Or is he hoping that, given some more rope, she’ll hang herself? Figuratively speaking, of course.