Family
Family, in all its iterations, is a central theme in Highway's play. The sisters all have relationships that vary in complexity based on their past experiences with one another and the circumstances of life on the reserve. Highway puts all of the characters together in a single van chasing after the dream of a big payday from bingo, and in the confines of this van, new relationships are formed, while old ones are renewed and deepened.
The play looks at the nature of families, whether they are biological families or families that sprout up out of necessity and shared experience. This is shown in the title itself, Rez Sisters, which links all of the women together in sisterhood.
Trauma
Each of the women has gone through some kind of trauma. Pelajia lives far from her family members; Philomena lost a child and a lover in the big city; Zhaboonigan is mentally disabled, orphaned, and a survivor of rape; Emily lost her lover to suicide; Marie-Adele faces an unsure cancer diagnosis; and Annie had her lover stolen by her own sister. Furthermore, life on the reserve, in its economic precariousness and monotonousness, is its own kind of hardship.
These traumas haunt the characters and define how they interact with one another, as well as make them stronger in their lives, better able to meet the challenges that they now face. Thus, trauma—and its effect on a person—is a central theme in the play. Highway also looks, more indirectly, at the effects of cultural trauma, the ways that life on the reserve is hard, and many Indigenous people have been forced into poverty and driven to substance abuse that has arisen as a result of historic genocide and structural oppression.
Nanabush
Nanabush is a mythological character in the Native world that teaches people about the nature and meaning of existence on Earth. Nanabush is seen watching throughout most of the play and intercedes to dance for Zhaboonigan after her speech and with Marie-Adele when she is dying. He is a trickster that takes the form of a bird in the play, and can be seen as a connection between the Indigenous traditions of the past, and the contemporary situations that the characters find themselves in. He disrupts the world of the play and disorients reality, which keeps the characters in touch with the absurdities and inconsistencies of life, the chaotic twists and turns of events.
Outside or Inside
Another theme in the play is the question of whether the characters want to be on the reserve or out in the world. Each of the characters grapple with their respective relationships to this question. Pelajia and Philomena talk about it at the start of the play, with Pelajia dreaming of getting away to be with her husband and sons and Philomena discussing her own desire to stay on the reserve. Later, it comes out that Philomena lived in the big city at one point, and had a traumatic experience with a married man, which drove her back to the reserve. Other characters grapple with the world outside the reserve and whether they can handle it. Emily lived in San Francisco, but returned after seeing her lover commit suicide. Annie dreams of life as a musician in the big city.
THE BIGGEST BINGO IN THE WORLD represents all of the feelings shared by the women about the big city. It is something that they want to get to, in hopes that winning the bingo will bring them the means to improve reserve life, but it is also a big unknown—a potentially hostile environment. Thus we see that questions of staying on the reserve versus going into the outside world are central to the thematic fabric of the play.
Hope
The characters all have hope that they can have a better life. Much of this sense of hopefulness or possibility is wrapped up in an investment in THE BIGGEST BINGO IN THE WORLD, the winnings from which could change all of their lives for the better. Each of the women hopes for something that could change their lives. Philomena wants a new toilet, Annie wants a singing career, Marie-Adele wants a good diagnosis, and Veronique wants a stove. These material desires all represent the hope that the women have for improvements in their lives, their modest desires for a better life.
Death
Death comes up mostly indirectly in the beginning of the play. We hear about characters who have died or people who have lost loved ones. It is not until the women go to Toronto, and Marie-Adele abruptly dies of cervical cancer, that we are faced directly with the theme of death. It is staged in a larger-than-life and absurd way, a more spiritually complex representation of death than perhaps a more traditionally realistic play might stage. The bingo game is a kind of fever dream, and Marie-Adele ends up dancing in the arms of the man running the bingo, before he whispers "bingo" in her ear, prompting her death. This moment conflates bingo with death, and suggests that the desire to "win big" is analogous to some kind of expiration. The play does not address the question of death very explicitly, but Marie-Adele's untimely one is a centerpiece within the plot, an unexpected twist in the women's trip to Toronto.
Playfulness
The play is an incredibly playful story, tonally. Even when the women are beating each other up or facing great hardship, Highway stages the action with a playful wink. The sisters love to jostle one another and give each other a hard time, and even scenes that are heartfelt and dramatic are quickly diffused with a playful or humorous line. Both the writing itself and the characters are markedly playful, which serves as a way of celebrating them and the various forms of low-level chaos that break out in the plot.
