Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing

Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing is a 1989 play by Canadian novelist and playwright Tomson Highway. Set in a fictional reserve in Northern Ontario called Wasaychigan Hill, it profiles seven eccentric men, exploring their relationships with their community. The play was first performed in Toronto at Theatre Passe-Muraille, starring prominent Canadian actors such as Billy Merasty, Gary Farmer, and Graham Greene. It was preceded by Highway’s work The Rez Sisters, also set in Wasaychigan Hill, which focused on seven women. The play is in part a criticism of misogyny and fragile masculinity exhibited by men in contemporary North America.

At the beginning of the play, Zachary awakens, nude, after sleeping with Gazelle Nataways, who is possessed by a magical and mischievous spirit called Nanabush who can change her physical form. Just before he passed out, Gazelle kissed him on his buttocks – a nonsensical act that adds comedic value to their sexual encounter. Zachary and Gazelle had sex in Big Joey’s house, despite the fact that Big Joey is in a closed relationship with Gazelle. Big Joey barges in on the scene and is both enraged and triumphant to catch the two in cahoots.

After fuming for a moment, Big Joey says he will consider forgetting the encounter if Zachary revokes his petition for help funding his bakery from the city council board. The board lacks funding to support both his bakery and Big Joey’s radio show; if Zachary drops out of the picture, the funding will go to Big Joey. Big Joey tells Zachary that he will tell his wife he cheated on her if he doesn’t comply. To prove that he is serious about his threat, he furnishes a photograph of Zachary and Gazelle, and a pair of his underwear. Zachary brushes off the threat and leaves to complete some paperwork for his bakery before a routine business meeting with his wife.



The play gives background on Gazelle: she was once married to another man on the reserve, Pierre St. Pierre. Now, she lives with Big Joey. Pierre St. Pierre, Zachary, and Big Joey learn that the reserve’s women are forming a hockey team, and have nominated Pierre St. Pierre as their referee. Meanwhile, Nanabush inhabits the bodies of several more women, including Patsy Pegahmagahbow and Black Lady Halked. Depriving the women of their autonomy, Nanabush enacts the stereotypes and fears the men of the play harbor about women.

The characters squabble, much credit due to the interference of Nanabush, until tensions culminate with the women’s first hockey game. Instead of cooperating, the women start a brawl on the icy field. Big Joey narrates the game, which is also looked on by the helpless radio broadcaster and the other men from the reserve. All of the men’s insecurities about women (which includes a resistance to them playing a “men’s sport”) play out in exaggerated form during the brawl. Then, Zachary wakes up. He realizes that the hockey game (and the rest of the events leading up to it) were all a dream. He never slept with Nanabush at all; he had merely fallen asleep at home on the sofa. His real-life wife, Hera, kisses him on the buttock and gives him their son to hold. A nude Zachary raises his son into the air. Thus, though the men’s stereotypes and insecurities about women were only a dream, the play raises questions as to whether they remain deeply embedded in the male subconscious.