Renowned Manitoban playwright, humorist and storyteller Ian ross died suddenly on Tuesday at teh age of 57.
Born in McCreary to a Saulteaux mother and Métis father, Ross – who was raised in the Métis community of Kinosota and in winnipeg – took the theater world by storm in 1997 when his first professional play, fareWel was awarded the Governor General’s Award for English Drama, making the 29-year-old Ross the first Indigenous person to receive the honor in Canadian history.
Ross began work on fareWel – a raw exploration of the financial realities of a fictional reserve called partridge Crop – as a student in novelist Carol Shields’ creative writing class at the University of Manitoba, later developing his characters during group residencies at the Banff Playwrights Colony and at Toronto’s Canadian Stage.
DANIEL CRUMP / FREE PRESS FILES
Manitoba playwright Ian Ross has died at 57.
“All of the writers in the group became fast friends and at our final session, we had a ‘silly’ gift exchange,” recalls playwright Dave Carley, who was then the editor of Winnipeg’s Scirocco Drama.
“With the excited approval of (Scirocco) owner Gordon Shillingford, I was honoured to give Ian a gift that was most definitely not silly – a publishing contract.
“It was the easiest decision we ever made. The play was tough and gentle, wise and very funny. just like Ian,” recalls Carley of Ross’s debut work, which premièred in 1996 at Prairie Theatre Exchange.
Before graduating in 1990 with a degree in film and theatre studies from the University of Manitoba, Ross was on a pre-med track, but made the pivotal switch to the arts after meeting with a guidance counsellor.
Ross felt at home in the world of screen and stage,including his time with the student-run Black Hole Theatre Company,though he soon realized he would have to carve his own path if he had hopes for lasting success.
“I believe in using the ‘tickle technique’… You have to make audiences laugh. hitting them with a bat is not the way to win them over.”
In 1997, after the fareWel hoopla, Ross, looking for steady creative work, contacted CBC Manitoba producer Tom Anniko to pitch a few concepts for radio segments.
Anniko liked one – commentary from an “average aboriginal man” – enough to book a recording session.
Ross wasn’t meant to be the voice on air, but on the first recording day, he told the Free Press in 2004, his friend no-showed, forcing the writer into the booth.”I was freaking out, pacing back and forth. I looked at the script. we hadn’t even come up with a name.”
He asked the CBC technician at the board for his name, and the man said Joe Dudych; thus was born Ross’s everyman raconteur, Joe From Winnipeg.
Debra Mosher photo Ross created the Joe From winnipeg character as an everyman raconteur.
At September’s Pimootayowin Festival,where artists share their work thru staged readings,ross performed in his daughter Julia Ross’s comedy The Ojib-Way to paradise as a velvet-voiced radio bingo caller.
“Ian chose the word Pimootayowin for the