Running February 8 to 27, the Belfry Theatre is premiering an irreverent comedy about power, land claims and procreation: Little Red Warrior & His Lawyer.
Written and directed by Kevin Loring, Little Red Warrior & His Lawyer stars Sam Bob (Little Red Warrior), Luisa Jojic (Desdemona), Kevin McNulty (Floyd), Shekhar Paleja (Larry) and Nick Miami Benz (Lizzy).
Little Red Warrior & His Lawyer is a joint production with Savage Society (based in Vancouver) in association with NAC Indigenous Theatre (Ottawa).
The show will be performed live at 50 per cent capacity, and will be live-streamed from February 15 to 20. Little Red Warrior & His Lawyer will then transfer to the York Theatre in Vancouver, where it runs from March 3 to 13.
“I saw a reading of this play—and loved it—at the 2019 Talking Stick Festival in Vancouver, says the Belfry’s Michael Shamata. “[We] started talking that night about premiering it at the Belfry. After a year-plus of COVID-19 postponements—here it is at last in all its edgy irreverence and hilarity.”
As the story goes, Little Red Warrior is the last remaining member of the Little Red Warrior First Nation. One day he discovers that the development company of Smith, Smyth and Goldsmithe has begun construction on his ancestral lands.
In a fit of rage, he attacks one of their engineers, gets arrested and is assigned to Larry, his court-appointed lawyer.
Things turn surprising—and farcical—when the displaced Little Red moves in with the lawyer and his wife, Desdemona. And sometimes—when you invite a coyote into the coop—he may just walk off with your chickens.
Playwright and director Kevin Loring won the 2009 Governor General’s Award for Drama for his play Where the Blood Mixes (produced at the Belfry in 2010) and was nominated for the same award in 2019 for Thanks for Giving. As an actor, Kevin starred in the Belfry’s verbatim play on homelessness, Home Is A Beautiful Word (Belfry 2014).
The creative team for this production includes: Kevin Loring, playwright/director; John Doucet, set designer; Jeff Harrison, lighting designer; Samantha McCue, costume designer; Troy Slocum, sound designer; Angela Beaulieu, stage manager; Becca Jorgensen, assistant stage manager; and Tai Amy Grauman, assistant director.