George Ryga Biography

Canadian dramatist, born in Alberta. He grew up on a homestead farm and received only an elementary schooling. Youthful communism gave way to a more loosely held socialist belief after 1956, when his disillusionment over the Hungarian uprising caused him to leave the party. Ryga's drama deals with social outsiders and is written in a vein of protest. His early plays, Indian (1964) and his best-known work The Ecstasy of Rita Joe (1967), focus on the isolation of Indians in white society. Other works include Grass and Wild Strawberries (1969); Captives of the Faceless Drummer (1971); Sunrise on Sarah (1973); Paracelsus (1974); Ploughman of the Glacier (1976); Seven Hours to Sundown (1977); and A Letter to My Son (1982), in which Ryga went back to his Ukrainian roots for a study of the older generation's isolation. Ryga's theatre employs a wide variety of dramatic modes, ranging from realism to the use of expressionist dream sequences. He also published the novels Hungry Hills (1963), Ballad of a Stonepicker (1966), and Night Desk (1976).