WHAT'S SO FUNNY?

In the end, my Mom and I finally made one another laugh

- Drew Hayden Taylor

IN 1990, DURING a performance of my stage play The Bootlegger Blues at my reserve, Curve Lake First Nation in Ontario, I became fixated on one particular member of the audience. The play is a comedy about an older woman bootlegging beer to raise money for the church. While everybody else laughed, there she sat, staring at the floor, with her fingers in her ears. I'll never forget her look of complete discomfort.

That woman was my mother.

I wish I could say her reaction that evening was an isolated incident, but it was one of many I remember when I was first starting out as a playwright.

Despite the fact I'd established myself as a humorist, my mother never found me or my work particularly funny. We loved each other deeply, of course, but she was my hardest critic. “Is Drew really that funny? she'd ask family members.