Royal Alexandra & Princess of Wales Theatre Marquee Lights to Dim in Honor of Graham Greene

Graham Greene, who died in Stratford, ON, after a long illness on September 1, was a giant of the stage and screen in Canada and abroad. 

At the Royal Alexandra Theatre in 1991, he starred in Tomson Highway’s Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing, the first show written by an Indigenous author and performed by an all-Indigenous cast to play at the 118-year-old venerable venue. 

Greene starred as Pierre St. Pierre, a role he originated in the play’s 1989 premiere in a production by Native Earth Performing Arts and Theatre Passe Muraille. Greene won a Dora award for his work. Remounted by Mirvish and the National Arts Centre two years later, Dry Lips was a groundbreaking even, ushering into the mainstream the Indigenous theatre movement that had been percolating for many years in smaller venues across the country. 

Greene was a major member of the Indigenous theatre movement in those years, a movement that would also have a big impact on film and television. 

Greene was an Oneida born in Six Nations in 1952. After a peripatetic working life in various jobs, he found the theatre and began acting. He worked with many companies, but especially Native Earth Performing Arts, where Tomson Highway was the Artistic Director from 1986 to 1992. 

It was in the time between Dry Lips premiere production and its return at the Royal Alex, that Greene auditioned, booked and filmed the Academy Award-winning Dances with Wolves (1990). When Greene was nominated for an Oscar for his role, he was deep in rehearsals for Dry Lips. 

Greene performed for many more years on stage and built an illustrious career film and television, acting in dozens of major works, never leaving his home in Canada and staying true to his roots. 

It is therefore fitting that he be honoured with the traditional theatre marquee dimming on the same day that TIFF takes over the Royal Alex and Princess of Wales Theatres for its 50th anniversary festival. 

The marquees of both the Royal Alex and Princess of Wales Theatres on Thursday, September 4th at 9:30 pm, when both theatres will be screening TIFF films. 

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