Thanks for Giving
Nan’s family is home for Thanksgiving, but some unsolicited truths are about to be dropped at the dinner table. Old wounds and new realities collide, and sibling rivalry is stoked, but the enduring spirit that guides this family charges on, ever fierce. Thanks for Giving offers plenty to chew on. This intimate and restorative new play from Governor General’s Literary Award winner Kevin Loring, the first ever Artistic Director of Indigenous Theatre at the National Arts Centre of Canada, is about legacy – the legacy of our personal and collective histories, and a family’s legacy as it moves into an age where the assumptions of the old ways surrender to new possibilities. But if the play’s main course is legacy, the dessert is pumpkin pie. Tuck in!
Kevin Loring is a member of the Nlaka’pamux (Thompson) First Nation in Lytton, British Columbia. As an actor he has performed in numerous plays across Canada, including Marie Clements’s Burning Vision and Copper Thunderbird, and in the National Arts Centre’s fortieth-anniversary production of George Ryga’s The Ecstasy of Rita Joe. He also starred in the 2007 feature film Pathfinder and co-produced and co-hosted the documentary Canyon War: The Untold Story about the 1858 Fraser Canyon War. He was the recipient of the 2005 City of Vancouver Mayor’s Arts Award for Emerging Theatre Artist, Artist-in-Residence at The Playhouse Theatre Company in 2006, and Playwright-in-Residence at the National Arts Centre in 2010. His first play, Where the Blood Mixes, won the Jessie Richardson Theatre Award for Outstanding Original Script; the Sydney J. Risk Prize for Outstanding Original Script by an Emerging Playwright; and the 2009 Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama.
Loring is also the founder and Artistic Director of Savage Society, a non-profit production company dedicated to telling Indigenous stories sourcing myths, traditions, and the contemporary Indigenous experience.
