Little Red Warrior & His Lawyer makes Vancouver comeback, March 6 to 16

The production written and directed by Nlaka’pamux playwright Kevin Loring is a land-claims farce

Gordon Patrick White, *Little Red Warrior & His Lawyer*. Photo by Trudie Lee

The Cultch presents Little Red Warrior & His Lawyer from March 6 to 16 at the York Theatre

NLAKA’PAMUX PLAYWRIGHT KEVIN Loring’s Little Red Warrior & His Lawyer is back on The Cultch stage after a highly successful Vancouver debut in 2022. A hilarious and bold take on land claims, the 2025 iteration features Gordon Patrick White in the lead role.

The play, which Loring also directs, tells the story of Little Red, the last remaining member of his First Nation. After discovering that a land-development company has sent construction crews to his traditional and ancestral territory, he is arrested for attacking one of their engineers and gets assigned a court-appointed lawyer. Things get even more comical when Little Red is forced to move in with the lawyer and his wife—who finds herself strangely attracted to him.

In a 2022 interview with Stir, Loring explained that in writing the work, he drew cues from snk̓ y̓ép, or Coyote, the Trickster in the Nlaka’pamux stories he grew up with. Instead of a single character, however, he described the whole outrageous universe of the play as the Trickster.

“It was the intention of wanting everything to be tricky,” Loring explained. “There’s a lot of storytelling in it, and the narrator, Floyd, is himself a Trickster or a transformer. The other element is all the characters transform throughout the show.

“So aspects of duality are present throughout—one thing can be two things. I’m just having fun with that,” added Loring. “And I’m really playing on those stereotypes—the lawyer, the ‘Karen’, an Indigenous man, a homeless man—and twisting them upside down. Nobody gets away with anything.”

The play is a Savage Society and Belfry Theatre co-production in association with NAC Indigenous Theatre and Theatre Calgary.

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Gail Johnson

Gail Johnson is cofounder of Stir. She is a Vancouver-based journalist who has earned local and national nominations and awards for her work. She is a certified Gladue Report writer via Indigenous Perspectives Society in partnership with Royal Roads University and is a member of a judging panel for top Vancouver restaurants.

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