The Online Journal of The Public Theater's Native Theater Festival

An Introduction to the Online Journal by Festival Journalist Tom Pearson

2009-05-12T13:29:00.001-04:00

To summarize the activities of The Native Theater Festival this November at The Public Theater is a daunting prospect. Over the course of the three-day festival, November 12 through 15, there were seven field discussions, three readings, three post-performance discussions, one panel discussion, a writer’s roundtable, and a plethora of interviews with festival participants. I think it safest to borrow a sentiment from Eric Gansworth’s play Re-creation Story and start off by apologizing for every error I’m about to make.

It is a great honor for me to be invited by The Public Theater to conduct the interviews and gather my thoughts for The Native Theater Festival Journal, and I hope in some small way to honor all the voices and good words that were spoken. My goal has been, inasmuch as possible, to serve as a conductor and allow the voices to speak for themselves. Therefore, you’ll find meaty interviews with the playwrights and directors, as well as conversations with The Public Theater's Artistic Director Oskar Eustis, Betsy Theobald Richards from the Ford Foundation, and Native Theater Festival Consultant Sheila Tousey. I’ve also included a conversation with actor Cody Lightning and a special conversation with Spiderwoman Theater Artistic Director Muriel Miguel. I endeavored to edit as little as possible of these conversations so that the strong voices can come through in their own rhythm and time.

Likewise, I also offer a couple of audio podcasts which include my interview with Native soul singer Martha Redbone, who opened the festival with a concert at Joe’s Pub, and with the three playwrights presenting work at the festival. My coverage of the plays is included in the journal, and you’ll also find transcripts from all of the field discussions.

Within these panels, post-show discussions, and in my writer’s round table meeting, the usual concerns about identity, cultural sensitivity, responsibility, and the viability of Native work were discussed in great detail, but there were also moments where we reached lift-off beyond these issues and met, practitioner to practitioner, to really engage in conversations that were just about art making.

Click around, read the interviews, reviews and discussions, listen to the podcasts, and enjoy the wealth of information that the artists and practitioners from this year’s festival so warmly shared with me and with one another.

About Tales of an Urban Indian

2009-05-12T13:12:00.007-04:00

TALES OF AN URBAN INDIAN

By DARRELL DENNIS (Shuswap)
Directed by HERBIE BARNES (Ojibway)
Friday, February 20 - Sunday, March 15

Acclaimed Canadian writer and performer Darrell Dennis tells the semi-autobiographical tale of a young Indian man, Simon Douglas. From living life on the “Rez” to navigating the mean streets of Vancouver’s east side, Dennis weaves a funny and stirring story of identity, discovery, choice and self-respect. A hit from The Public’s inaugural Native Theater Festival, this one-man show returns to make its US premiere following a Canadian tour and two nominations for the Dora Mavor Award, the highest theatrical honor in Canada. A program of the Public Theater’s Native Theater Initiative.

Public LAB is an annual series of new plays that lets you see more of the work you love from The Public and LAByrinth Theater Company in stripped-down productions for ONLY $10. Public LAB allows us to support more artists and gives you immediate access to new plays.

TUESDAY NIGHT PUBLIC LAB SPEAKER SERIES:

The Public Lab Speaker Series consists of engaging conversations with the artists and notable panelists every Tuesday night following the show. Discussions following Tales of an Urban Indian were as follows:

February 24: Balancing Two Worlds: Native Artists in the City and on the Reservation
Panelists: Darrell Dennis (actor/playwright), Yvette Nolan (Artistic Director of Native Earth Performing Arts) Randy Reinholz (Artistic Director of Native Voices at the Autry) and Sheila Tousey (actor/director)

Click here for transcript.

March 3: Native Theater in New York City Today
Panelists: Murielle Borst (Editor in Chief of EastCoastNative.com), Steve Elm (Artistic Director of Amerinda Theater), Liz Frankel (Literary Associate at The Public Theater), John Haworth (Director of The Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian's Heye Center), Muriel Miguel (Artistic Director of Spiderwoman Theater), and Danielle Soames (Co-Artistic Director of Mixed Phoenix Theatre Group)

Click here for transcript.

March 10: The Rise of Native Theater in New York City in the 1960s and 70s
Panelists: Muriel Miguel (Artistic Director of Spiderwoman Theater), Soni Moreno (actor/producer), Suzan Shown Harjo (writer/advocate), and Betsy Theobald Richards (director/Ford Foundation).

Click here for transcript.

The Public Theater was proud to host NBC Universal's Native American Talent Outreach:

Multi-Network Industry Panel Discussion-FREE!
Mon Mar 9, 6:30-8:30pm
Learn how to gain access to the film and television industry as an actor, writer, or director.
MODERATOR: CHARISSE WILLIAMS, Talent Coordinator (NBC News)

PANELISTS: KAREN O'HARA, Director Original Movies (Sci-Fi Channel); KELLY EDWARDS, VP, Talent Development (NBC Universal); JENNIFER MCNAMARA, VP, Casting (NBC Universal); KENDRA CARTER, Director, Talent Diversity Initiatives (NBC Universal); JONATHAN STRAUSS, Casting Director (TV/Film)

NBC Universal Casting Call
Tues Mar 10, 9am-1pm
Talent representatives from NBC Universal will be meeting Native American actors for non-specific roles. This open call is designed to increase diversity in NBC Universal's expanding talent pool for film and television. Don't miss out on this exciting opportunity!

All events take place at The Public Theater.

For more information about NBC's events go to www.diversecitynbc.com.

Actors who were not able to attend the open call may mail their headshot and resume to:

Tracette Hillman, Coordinator

NBC Talent Diversity Initiatives

100 Universal City Plaz

Building 1320-Suite 1D

Universal City, CA 91608

The Public Theater's Native Theater Initiative is honored to partner with the following organizations:

AMERINDA
AMERICAN INDIAN COMMUNITY HOUSE
SMITHSONIAN NATIONAL MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN
HEMISPHERIC INSTITUTE
ALLIANCE FOR INCLUSION IN THE ARTS

Balancing Two Worlds: Native Life in the City and on the Reservation

2009-05-12T13:05:00.003-04:00

Moderator: Sheila Tousey (Actor/Director)
Panel: Darrell Dennis (actor/playwright), Yvette Nolan (Artistic Director of Native Earth Performing Arts) and Randy Reinholz (Artistic Director of Native Voices at the Autry)
February 22, 2009
This conversation was part of the Public Lab Speaker Series following a performance of Tales of an Urban Indian.

SHEILA TOUSEY: I would like to know if you see a certain theme that is particular to playwrights being from the reservation or from the city and maybe what some of those topics are. I’m curious about the percent from that certain… Their work is based on where they’re from, and I would like to know what you guys see. I mean, I know what I see sometimes, but I’d like to know what you see.

YVETTE NOLAN: It’s interesting because a lot of things that Darrell talks about in Tales of an Urban Indian, which is a piece that was developed at Native Earth and premiered at Native Earth, a lot of the things he talks about are exactly the things that drive young Native artists to the city because they can’t actually make a living. They are very isolated, in a way, in their own communities, on the rez or even rural communities, and so they come to the city. And then the first work they start writing, they find that they’re struggling with being an urban Aboriginal. Like having moved to the city and being disconnected from their communities. So, we see a lot of sort of those artists arriving at Native Earth, because they can’t work in their communities. And that’s very often the first writing that they do. And then I find that as more and more of them are coming into the city and going into training organizations, they start finding other things to talk about. But there’s always this sense of so much what Aboriginal work is about, we find, is it’s about connection to the land, the land that we’re on or the land that we come from. And so, yeah, it’s a theme that’s going to keep coming up in work over and over again, whether or not we’re urban Aboriginals or we’re writing from our communities. A lot of what Darrell talks about in the play is so true, like having to be shipped off the rez to finish your schooling, to go to high school; that it’s kind of antithetical to the creative process, being a reserve Indian.

RANDY REINHOLZ: You know it’s interesting. It’s hard to shift gears and have a conversation that’s not about the play. Cause I’m wanting to be with the play. And I’m thinking of parallels, and I think I see a lot of artists in that life of “wanting to go to the city.” You know, like country mouse and city mouse almost. And then as soon as they get to the city, there’s that “fish-out-of-water” thing happening. And so they often are going back to community to try to connect. You know we might hear film artists or film actors say “I’ll go back to the theater and charge my batteries” and I feel like a lot of Native artists go back to their communities to charge their batteries or get in touch with the same fear that drove them out in the first place. And then as far as the theme: in the plays you read, there a lot of issues about who’s an Indian. That’s a big, big question right now. And who gets to say who’s an Indian. Is it a federal thing? Is it a tribal thing? Is it a community thing? Is it something you just know? So, that’s a big set of issues that seems to come out of the community. I hear that a lot out of the community. Whereas, probably the urban writers, they’re all over the map. I mean, they’re writing about a bunch of different things. And, so, I don’t see the themes as connected with them as much as like elements. So the spirit world is always present in most Native plays. There’s always some spirit that’s part of the narrative. And so those are some things that I’m seeing a lot right now.

SHEILA TOUSEY: Do you see -- There seem to be a lot of identity issues. Do you find that there are more identity issues from artists from the city or from the reservation?

RANDY REINHOLZ: I think, you know, good artists are actually reflecting society often. And I think there are so many identity issues now, because of gaming and resources, being part of a thing worth fighting for it. So I think that the artists are reflecting that. And then that’s a great conflict to put in a show.

SHEILA TOUSEY: I’m actually going to ask Darrell a couple things. One: maybe you could share with us how your piece came to be. And two: You live in the city now, you’ve moved, right? In your perspective, has being there changed your work? Or -- But being, living in the city for a while, has that changed your perspective as you work on.

DARRELL DENNIS: Yes. [laughter] The play came about because of this woman right here [Yvette Nolan]. The very first production was because of that woman. For that the writing of it was -- It’s gone through a bunch of changes, in my life, some issues I was going through, [laughs] as you can see. And the way I know how to deal with changes in my life is by writing it down. So, I’ve always used writing as a way to purge, to get it out. So, I actually started writing this as a novel, and it quickly became clear that this is another one of those whiney little novels that nobody’s ever going to want to read. But since I’m more use to theater and to film/television, I decided to start writing it as a script. Because the characters I was writing were so huge, so big and I thought it would lend itself well to a play. I think, when I first wrote it, it was… how long? [to Yvette] Do you remember how long?

YVETTE NOLAN: Two-and-a-half hours.

DARRELL DENNIS: Two-and-a-half hours. It’s ridiculous. So there was a lot of cutting. There was a lot of purging that happened to get to that two-and-a-half hour play to about that much. Yea, so there was a lot of cutting back that I had to do. From that point, we came to Yvette and she worked her magic, gave the production a trial, and since then it’s gone across Canada, back and forth across Canada, early on it went to Minnesota, Wisconsin with another actor playing the role. It’s been translated into French and was performed in Quebec. It’s also been developed slightly as a cut-down, sort of, teen-piece, which was performed once. And I’m just finishing a TV pilot based on this. And there’s a feature film version in the works right now. So, this play’s been my bread and butter for quite a while. What was the second question?

SHEILA TOUSEY: You’ve been in the city now for a long time.

DARRELL DENNIS: Yeah, yep.

SHEILA TOUSEY: Has that changed your work? I mean, I know you’ve worked a lot as a writer; how does that change your perspective on your work?

DARRELL DENNIS: Well, I mean, I’m very fortunate that I’ve been able to work in a few cities. So, I have different perspectives from different cities. I’ve lived in Vancouver. I’ve lived in Toronto. I’ve lived in New York. And each city lends a different perspective. For example, Vancouver is a little smaller-town of a city. What I found was that maybe in the city there was still -- racism is still very prevalent towards Aboriginals. In fact it’s radically affected that portion of my work, my experiences in that city. Toronto is a lot more sort of multi-cultural, I found. And there isn’t as much racism; or at least that’s what I’ve experienced in Toronto. And then New York, where the Native community is very -- it goes unnoticed a lot, in this city, I find. People are very surprised to understand, to know that there is an American Indian House. And you know, that there’re these programs at the Smithsonian and stuff. So that’s also flavored my understanding of my work as well. From being on the reserve and from being in the city, most of the stuff I write now is urban. I don’t really touch on issues about the reserve as much any more because this has very much shaped who I am as an artist and as a writer. So, yeah, it has sort of changed my work in a way.

SHEILA TOUSEY: Does anyone have any questions?

Audience #1: There’s one thing that I have from watching and it bothered me a little bit. There’s a stereotype of Native peoples with substance abuse, whores, and things like that; and that was so much a part of this play. A part of me felt like it emphasized it so much that it almost was reinforcing the stereotype. And that bothered me.

RANDY REINHOLZ: You see a ton of abuse issues in Native plays and I think that’s because it is such a big part of our communities. And for a long time it was hidden, as though it couldn’t be talked about because if it were talked about that would somehow be exposing a weakness. And so there was a lot of Victorian kind of hiding everything away. So I think this generation of artist is actually looking at lot of those issues: how does that happen? What are the side-affects of abuse? And what effects do they have? And I think for a lot of young people its “how do you break that cycle?” If you come from three or four generations, how do you break that? And I think a lot of the art is exploring that. Not to speak for Darrell.

DARRELL DENNIS: No. I mean, yeah, absolutely. That is a huge stereotype in our community because it is such a huge problem. I think though what I really -- what I hope came across in the play was the element of choice, and the choice to choose to go down this path or the choice to live with a better thing. Whereas before so much of the stuff was about -- because especially when you live in Canada, you read so many scripts when everything is about “Oh, the white man did this to us, so I’m going to drink.” Or “I’m going to drink because I can’t control my alcohol.” And very rarely is the theme that Native people actually have a choice, they actually have the intellect, the willpower, to have a choice in the choices they make. So, yeah. It was really emphasized, but I hope that it was emphasized that Simon Douglas is not victim. He’s not a victim in this nor is he willingly doing this to hurt people. But I think that that’s a really important thing too. A lot of the stuff that comes out of the Native community is about victimization, as well, be it mental, physical, sexual abuse, stolen land. All these things. It’s very much about the victimization. What I try to do when I’m writing is look at Aboriginal people and say “Okay, yes, we are in a situation where substance abuse is such a huge part of our community. Let’s examine why and let’s also see what we as Native people are doing to contribute to that stereotype, and what we’re doing to fix and solve that.” As opposed to “white man made me this way” or “Daddy made me this way.” What I really want to focus on is: Yes, it’s an issue. Yes, we have a history. What are we as Native people doing to change it? So, hopefully that came out of it.

SHEILA TOUSEY: There are people on the reservation, I mean -- just to play the devil’s advocate -- you know sometimes I’ll tell friends of mine or when my parents were alive, I would say I was working on something, and often they’d say “God, do you have to do another movie about either you’re an alcoholic or your family’s falling apart?” There’s a sense, with our people, there’s a sense within Indian people themselves, that I think they’re looking for some art form to reflect perhaps how they want to be seen. I just wanted to add that.

RANDY REINHOLZ: No, I think you’re right about both. As you said, about the Indigenous or Aboriginal population in New York City, people are not aware that they are their next door neighbors. Certainly, if you’re not aware of the Native population, you can’t be aware of the Native problems that they may have. So, it’ll publicize the reasons behind drug abuse, without casting cause on victimization. If that is the situation, we’re not aware of it.

DARRELL DENNIS: Yeah, and there’s lots of cities across North America too where a lot of times you would go into an office building or a Starbucks and somebody will be behind the counter and they’ll be Native American. They’ll be that. But because they don’t have the long hair and the high cheekbones and dressed in buckskin, you wouldn’t know it. Or on the other hand, because they’re not, you know, with a substance abuse problem or begging on the street, then a lot of people won’t recognize them as Native either.

RANDY REINHOLZ: The waitress we had.

DARRELL DENNIS: Yeah, a waitress we had. We just walked in there -- so Native American people, and this is sort of what my newer work is focusing on, is the fact that Native people are beggars and lawyers and doctors and very successful or they’re serving coffee at Starbucks or the waitress at the end of the day. But because people have a certain idea of what Native people are, it’s very very -- you could be walking past them every single day when you walk around in New York City, but unless they fit into a certain category, it’s really hard for people to recognize them. Yeah, we just had a waitress the other day who just came from -- Randy and I came from this thing at the Smithsonian [National Museum of the American Indian], where the whole discussion’s about what does an Indian look like. And then we went to this restaurant and our waitress came up and we said “What nationality are you?” “Native American” But we didn’t even know that. We thought we had a nose for smelling our own.

Audience #2: I was wondering if you related to some kind of Native tradition of storytelling from your culture or from the reservation, when you were thinking about how you were going to tell your stories or thinking about form or structure of the play, if you thought consciously about whether you wanted to do it in a particular -- tell the story in a particular way that would connect with your heritage or whether you were more influenced by some other theatrical ways of storytelling?

DARRELL DENNIS: The choice to do this as a one-man show is very much reminiscent of the old storytellers of my people way back when. There’s amazing solo pieces you see and see footage of the West Coast people and their magnificent costumes; huge magnificent thing where they just tell a whole story through movement and dance and the whole history of people. I think this form lends itself the closest to the traditions of my people. But for the most part. I’m awful fond of -- that there was a discussion about that -- about how this is a Native form, that sort of thing, and how do we mold that into uniform.

[pause]

And a hush fell over them. Eh, my last statement must have hit hard.

[laugh]

Audience #3: How hard is it for you to identify yourself as a Native artist? Do you think that’s important, or do you just happen to identify yourself as such?

DARRELL DENNIS: Do you mean do I consider myself a Native playwright or a Native actor?

Audience #3: Yeah, I mean, is it hard for you to say “I’m Native” or whatever?

DARRELL DENNIS: I think the industry has sort of done that for me. I think all Native artists -- I’m very, very proud of being Native. So I absolutely have no issue with people calling me a Native playwright or a Native actor, because that is what I am. What gets to me is when people go “Wow he’s pretty good for a Native actor or a Native playwright.” That’s what kind of bothers me. But, I mean, we would all hope that no matter what we are, no matter what color you are, or what, I think we’d all love to just be considered the best at what we do, as opposed to the best at what we do within our own community. How important is it? It’s become just such a part of my career now that I don’t even think about it now. But I’m lucky in that, especially in acting, I’ve been able to branch off and play other things other than Native characters. Unfortunately, they’re usually an ethnic character.

RANDY REINHOLZ: I think it’s important for the young people to know “Oh I can do that.” Like they can see themselves and pictures themselves, particularly if they go see a play with one of their Native people onstage, and say “hey, that’s a story I can relate to, that I see myself in.” And I think -- I don’t know if that plays a role in Native theater.

YVETTE NOLAN: Yeah, I also think that there’s no way as Native people for us to not be Native. I think that when we come into the room to do work, whether it's writing or acting or whatever, Native artists bring all of our history with us; we bring our ancestors, we bring all of our stories with us into the room. And I think, certainly in our community, there’s an awareness that we are doing this for those who come after us. So, that may be true of every other community; I can only speak for what’s happening in my community and that is we bring all of this to the room. So it’s a very different experience in an Indian rehearsal hall because everyone brings all that, all our history from our people as long as we’ve known them, and that informs the work. So, it’s hard to -- and it gets us into trouble sometimes, in studios, where we may be the only Indian in the room and our experience is quite different from everybody else who just wants to be Hedda Gabler or whatever. We can’t put down being Indian. For the most part I can’t put down being Indian.

RANDY REINHOLZ: But don’t you think that touching on universal themes -- don’t you think that in the production you touch on universal themes? -- The theme of oppression of minorities, of race and that transcends being of any one particular group? Or, in another way, Philip Roth considers himself a Jewish writer, Norman Mailer considered himself a writer that happened to be Jewish. How does that fit in? Are you an Indian playwright, or a playwright that happens to be Indian?

YVETTE NOLAN: The brilliant Oskar Eustis [Artistic Director of The Public Theater] once told me once in a cab, and I think it says this again in the program, universal is specific, like we get universality from very, very specific circumstances. And I think the real specificity of this story and lots of stories that Native people are telling, the way it has resonance in the mainstream, in the larger and dominant culture, is because of how specific it is to our experience. That’s how we achieve that kind of resonance. I don’t think we can aim for that. I think we have to tell our stories as truly as we can to who we are and then hope that it lasts for -- certainly for our community in Toronto, there’s a lot of flow through between all of the communities that are not mainstream. So, the Asian-Canadian community, the African-Canadian community, and the queer community, and we’re very much a community of our own. We’re like a margin which is bigger than the mainstream. And we’re speaking to each other, and then the mainstream comes in and if it’s resonant for them, then great. But, I think that the only way to be universal is to be specific.

RANDY REINHOLZ: I would also say that having Native stories is part of a bigger conversation of what it means to be a person of this country. I think there are bigger conversations for us to have than we’ve been having, this social discourse for the last thirty/forty years. I think we’ve been having very small conversations so that people in power remain in power. And I think this is much bigger conversation that I’m interested in. And I like knowing more about what’s actually happening, what people’s real experiences are. So I think that the universal’s in there; but I think there’s also -- theater’s a great place for social discourse. And here we are and we’re part of that conversation. And that’s exciting and we’re happy to be invited. But, Darrell’s the representative.

Audience #3: I have a question. I was wondering where the God dream came from? That was so nice, that it was like that moment of transformation, but also it’s very funny.

DARRELL DENNIS: That’s the, the thing about God is the question I get the most. I get asked the most about the God sequence, “Where did that come from?” I’ve always sort of, I mean, I’ve been examining religion for years now, and you know, studying different types of religion. I find the subject fascinating. My own beliefs are my own traditional Native beliefs, that’s what I follow. But I just, I love the concept of how much human beings have warped really wonderful sort of scriptures, of all types, to warp it to their own human end. And so, it’s just something -- I think I was -- I was watching some of Jackie Mason’s stuff one day and just the stuff he said was laughable. I think that’s what God would be like, actually. Not this big ominous god that you go to church for and that sort of thing, that’s going to zap you down if you think a dirty thought. But yeah, I was just watching and I was giggling and I thought “That’s what I want God to be like.” It was just so, just such a funny thing. So, in my own belief, that’s what he was like.

Audience #4: Can you talk a little bit about how audiences in different parts of Canada or the US received the play? Could you tell the difference?

SHEILA TOUSEY: You did it on the reservation, right?

DARRELL DENNIS: Yeah, small communities.

YVETTE NOLAN: After Darrell toured, we took it across the country. We did an Ontario tour, just our province with another actor because Darrell said he was never going to do it again. [laughter] I’m just saying. And we went into really small communities, Native communities and reserves, and it plays completely different to an Indian audience. It’s hilarious; and everybody -- you can’t hear because everyone’s laughing so hard. And it’s a real, sort of -- when we play to young kids on the reserves, we play to young teenagers, and nobody doesn’t bring their kid, even though there’s lots of swearing in it and drug abuse and prostitution. We play to really young Aboriginal kids. For them, it so reflects their experience. So many of those kids are going to leave the reserve and come to the city, where the temptations are. Because it’s really easy to come to the city for school and be sucked in to how easy it is to not go to school. How easy it is to hang out at the mall. How easy it is to get drugs. Like the scene where is like everybody’s friendly, asking “do you have something?”, “do you need something?”, “do you want something?” It’s like that in the city and it’s so easy for our kids to be disconnected and become sucked into that. So, in Aboriginal communities, it plays like a raucous comedy and like a morality warning, really. That’s the smaller communities.

DARRELL DENNIS: Yeah, I mean, you’re talking about universality. It’s been really interesting doing the show in as many places as I have, but I’ve found when it’s usually a non-Native audience, people don’t know if their allowed to laugh. The audience is like “Ooh, he’s talking about some serious racial stuff.” And that makes people nervous. So, I found, if it’s mostly non-Native, there’s less laughter. If there’re Native people in the audience, they’re just like “[laughter] That’s my cousin Ricky!” So, yeah, it has to differ. But one thing that I’ve really, really enjoyed about doing this play is there have been everybody from incredibly poor Native people to incredibly rich non-Native people who have all come up to me at one point and said “That’s my story, as well” too. We’ve been talking about the themes that are universal. It’s a play that I think a lot of people -- just because it’s about the Native experience does not mean that people haven’t gotten their heart broken or shunned by that girl they wanted to call up or, you know, lost someone that they loved. These are really universal themes, I think. And that has really reflected in what’s there.

SHEILA TOUSEY: Any other questions?

Audience #5: I think that the rocks really worked for me. I thought that was so --

DARRELL DENNIS: Thank you. That tells a story? That tells a story. That’s good, I love that. So, the Sunday matinee. A lot of people said that’s a very powerful moment for them. There was a woman on Sunday who was watching it and a friend of mine was in the audience and they were sitting behind them. And she just turns over, in a very New York accent, I’m going to try to do it, “What are the rocks for?” He goes “They represent death.” “Well, why doesn’t he just say it?” [laughter] So, we were rehearsing the rock stuff today, and as I was going for the rocks, as I was putting the rocks down, all that was going through my head was, “Why won’t I just say it?” [laughter]

Audience #6: Yeah, I think it’s clearly a personal story. And I wanted to ask you, does it feel very personal when you’re up speaking?

DARRELL DENNIS: You know, when this play was first done, I was still, sort of, I guess, dealing with a lot of those issues. You know, stuff about identity, what am I, where I came from, that sort of thing. Now, I’m finding, it’s interesting, because I am so not that person anymore, that now there’s other stuff that I find personal. I find this play -- I’m doing this play after taking a break, as Yvette said, I had to take a break, because it was killing me. Well, not literally killing me, but it’s just so exhausting for me and I was away from home for a while; but I took a bit of a break from it. And now I find that even though I am not that person any more and I don’t have those issues like I used to, I’m finding new stuff now that is personal for me. Like, this play is actually emotional for me in a different way when I do it now. So, yeah, it’s really interesting. I’m finding new things, and maybe it’s just, I don’t know, maybe it’s because I have a lot more hope now, in my life. So, I find the pain of that is so sad for me, as opposed to anger, which is what I was before, I think. I say in the play, Indian pride or anger, and is there a difference? Well, yeah. There is. There absolutely is. And I think I am now able to distance myself a bit more. So, it’s interesting.

SHEILA TOUSEY: So, thank you for staying and chatting with us. And, I suppose, we didn’t quite talk about what we were supposed to [laughter] but thank you for coming.

[applause]

Native Theater in New York City Today

2009-05-12T13:02:00.003-04:00

Moderator: Liz Frankel (Literary Associate at The Public Theater)
Panel: Murielle Borst (Editor in Chief of EastCoastNative.com), Steve Elm (Artistic Director of Amerinda Theater), John Haworth (Director of The Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian's Heye Center), Muriel Miguel (Artistic Director of Spiderwoman Theater), and Danielle Soames (Co-Artistic Director of Mixed Phoenix Theatre Group)
March 3, 2009
This conversation was part of the Public Lab Speaker Series following a performance of Tales of an Urban Indian.

LIZ FRANKEL: All right, so we will begin. Thank you so much for joining us. As I said before, my name is Liz Frankel, I am the Literary Associate here at The Public and our topic is Native Theater In New York City Today. And I am so honored to be here with all of our wonderful panelists. Since their bios are in the program and we’re going to talk a lot about what they do. I’ll just introduce them. So we have Muriel Miguel, Murielle Borst, John Haworth, Steve Elm and Danielle Soames. The production you just saw tonight of “Tales of an Urban Indian” is part of the Native Theater Initiative, which is a relatively new initiative here at The Public. This is our first full production. Before this we had a festival this past December which featured readings, field discussions and post-show discussions, and we had a similar festival to that the year before…but Native theater has been going on well before us. It’s a really rich community in New York we wanted to celebrate and talk about tonight. The Public Theater is really just building on what’s already been happening and we’re so honored to be joining the Native Theater community, many members of which are represented here. So what I’d love to do is to have each of you introduce yourselves and talk about what projects and shows you are working on at present. Let’s start with you.

MURIEL MIGUEL: It’s very nice to see Native people in the audience. Hello and good evening. I’m Muriel Miguel and I am director of Spiderwoman Theater which is a Native feminist theater group. It is thirty-one years old. It’s the longest ongoing feminist theater group in the world, I think. It started in New York City. We started out as a multi-racial group of women, and then we became an all Native theater group. Now, my aim as director is to pass this on. I’m getting older. And what I see in the future is the next generation of Native women and what they will do with this organization. So I’ll still continue the show, I’ll be doing it at LaMaMa; it’s called “Red Mother” and it’s loosely based on Brecht’s “Mother Courage.” It’s about one woman, literally, empowered by war and what we do as women and what we’re like now. (Beat.) Go ahead. Talk.

MURIEL BORST: I’m the director of the piece. My name is Muriel Borst. I’m a writer/director/actress/ producer. Right now, I am working with United Nations Indigenous Forum where I’m working on the death of Indigenous people. I’m trying to get the arts involved with that. I’m a special assistant to the representative…I believe that storytelling is part of what we do as Native people. I believe that storytelling is what teaches us and what heals us. I believe the thread has been cut internationally. We have to fight for that. We have to fight for our rights. Part of the Indigenous forum and part of the declaration means that we have the sovereign right to fight as Native and Indigenous people for our art socially and in literature. It’s human rights issue, really. And that’s what I’m working on. I’m also the editor-in-chief of East Coast Native. It’s an electronic magazine that focuses on Native people who live on the East Coast, who are connected to the East Coast, who have something to say. Right now, we’re not taking any form but we are…

Anyway, the next thing I’m working on, and that’s what I do, I’m also working with my husband. He hires me as his artistic director. We’ve collaborated on many different things. I grew up here in New York City. My husband grew up in New York City. My daughters grew up in New York City. I know my tribe. I know my culture, I know my language. And I think those are very important. I think the other most important thing is that we as Native people who live here in these cities, that our own identification is what we’re always fighting for. We’re always fighting for those issues. We’re always fighting to be heard. We have a special voice. We have a voice that needs to be heard. Everyone has a different voice. I thought this was a wonderful piece and that this piece really talked about different themes that go on in different Native cultures. We all have different voices and we all have different places to get to that one goal. I’m also the director of my mother’s piece, “Red Mother,” and that’s what we’re doing right now. The next thing we’re doing is a benefit for Flying Eagle Woman Fund produced by Spiderwoman Theater at the Public Theater. That’s it.

JOHN HAWORTH: My name is John Haworth and I’m the director of The George Gustave Heye Center which is part of National Museum of the American Indian. I’m honored to be here at the Public Theater. I’ll tell you a little bit about the convergence of themes and your question…see on the desk, our catalogue for an exhibit called “New Tribe, New York.” You’ll see that like this piece, it really tells the truth and deals with some very complicated issues. One of the things in “New Tribe, New York,” which celebrated and honored Spiderwoman, was Mohawk artist Alan Michelson who has been selected for a major public art piece on the Canadian-U.S. border at the border station this year. You’ll find that is incredibly significant both as an achievement and cultural expression. I agree with something said earlier which is inspiring in that statement… It is quite important while we’re talking about urban Indianness that we are living in a city with an American Indian population. I believe that population by the U.S. census account does not necessarily include what I’ll call transnational people from Central or South America. I think that the museums and institutions are a great storage of reflection. The real heart of what we do is…expression. We’ve dedicated an art gallery to Native art. In terms of theater work in particular, we have a lot of performing arts programs and…an incredible music series mostly in the summer but also in other seasons. We have a Native American film and video festival which is coming out later this month on March 26th. I think that this year, I was thinking about this earlier, this year is quite significant for lots of reasons. This is the 400^th anniversary of the Henry Hudson Fulton Champlain Quadricentennial and I think this is a moment that all of us can think about, that point of contact and what it means from a Native perspective… I think this is a remarkable year because in part of what the Public Theater is doing is putting a production expression in terms of creative artists who are themselves…I think it’s a really important point. I think that this is the year that we saw Frozen River and with a very complicated story…the mainstream recognition is no small matter. The fact that Sherman Alexie won the National Book Award, the fact that even though we saw in the first moments of the piece…we saw stereotypical images and there were references that are…commercial images and all that, I’m reminded that this is also a season for […] mainstream opera at the Metropolitan Opera. There was a beautifully drawn Native character, it’s not played it’s not sung by a Native singer. However, it’s not lost that an opera basically about a weapon of mass destruction on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera with a truthful Native character is something very important. And a Native character on Broadway in the play “August: Osage County,” is the most powerful role in the play.

STEVE ELM: My name is Steve Elm and I’m the Artistic Director of Amerinda Theater. Before I continue, again, I’d like to say I’m very honored to be on this panel, specifically because Muriel Miguel who is not only an elder in the Indian sense but also an elder in the creative sense. So I’m very honored to be here. And also, just a little anecdote about Muriel…I trained overseas in the UK I don’t know if there are any Shakespearean actors here who… Muriel Miguel was known over in the U.K. in the eighties with Spiderwoman Theater. And I’d never even knew there was Indian theater at that time, that there were real Indian playwrights…I went to interview another theater person, a man named…of a company, Blue Lips. He went, “What are you?” and I said, “Well I’m Indian. American Indian.” “You know Muriel Miguel?” and that was how I first heard of Muriel Miguel. I’m also the editor of Talking Stick Native Arts Quarterly. Talking Stick is published by Amerinda which is part of an umbrella company. I’ve been in New York since 1991. I came here to work as an actor and educator. And I found out the…piece very challenging …specifically much of the material about being an actor and the culture of references that go along with it. Consequently I pulled out of legit theater because I wasn’t prepared emotionally to deal with those things. I was very lucky to find a home in Native theater in different ways. Talking Stick, that’s part of Amerinda, our mission is to promote Native artists, explore Native artists, get it out in the open from a Native perspective. We had various meetings throughout the community in the last couple years and we always knew there were groups like Spiderwoman and Yaddo but there wasn’t really any thing happening. It was always us trying to get something going. …We’ve only been doing work for about a year and a half, very early at this stage. Our mission is to present emerging and new Native playwrights along with other Native artists. A long term goal, I’m going to do this all on the stage, is get Native theater out of archives, specifically and into legit theaters and into commercial theaters. That’s my long term goal. It might take a generation but that’s what we’re working towards.

DANIELLE SOAMES: Hello. My name is Danielle Soames. I’m thrilled to be here as part of this panel. I have to say that all of these people on the panel I’ve worked with and I respect very much. My theater company that I co-founded and am artistic co-director of is Mixed Phoenix Theater Group. My business partner, who is in the audience, is Ryan Victor Pierce. We have worked together for about eight years as actors, directors and now producers and company owners. We’re in the process of getting incorporated. We started our procedure about a little over a year ago now. We worked together on a project called “Carlisle, A Different Three Sisters” written by Myrton Running Wolf. It was an adaptation of “Three Sisters.” Took place at Carlisle Indian school. Upon that journey, we got in a discussion about “Hey, I’d like to start a theater company.” “Me too.” “What would you like the mission to be?” Well, our mission is that we have American Indian stories but our focus is to tell the American story through multi-ethnic, multicultural backgrounds breaking mainstream stereotypes. Part of that reason is because we’ve both fallen out of the loop of what is considered to be typecast as a Native actor. We both struggle with that. We thought if we can get the word out into the public and kind of help change what people see as a Native actor, maybe somehow it will start the steps to understanding that maybe Native people have evolved into these urban people who do all sorts of different activities and jobs and don’t just have the regular braids and turquoise. Even though, as I was saying that, I’m wearing a turquoise scarf but that was not planned. What’s coming up: May 13^th and 14^th, we’re working on a workshop production of an original piece that we’re developing based on a multi-ethnic cast. We’re developing our own stories through movement, identity and music. It’s going to be quite exciting. I feel that all of these people here have helped develop who I am as an artist living here in New York City for about twelve years. It’s very inspiring.…I’m hopeful. We’re going to actually perform here in the Rehearsal Hall. It’s invite only. You’re going to have to contact us specifically. Then it’s at the Community House on May 15^th. That’s open to the public. If you want more information, I can tell you after.

LIZ FRANKEL: So, before we go to questions from the audience, I just have one question that I’d love to throw out there to all of our panelists. Given that you are all living in New York and primarily working in New York, what do you feel that your relationship is to Native artists who aren’t in New York, who are living in other parts of the country or living on reservations, as well to youth, both here in New York as well as elsewhere.

MURIEL MIGUEL: Our relationships?

LIZ FRANKEL: Yeah, or connections. Is there a connection? I know you do a lot of youth outreach as well as tutoring.

MURIEL MIGUEL: Well, you know, Indian Country is first. And we find that out over and over again in these numerous performances. And yes, we’re in New York City. And yes, we’ll be working, yes, all of us, we’ll be working very hard in New York City. I think why I ended up in England and Germany and all of those places, was because there was no home gig at that time. And we went to Europe with one of our shows. And when we came back, one of the things that happened was there was a circle of elders and they’re the ones really that said “Well you know you should be doing a story about this and you should be doing a story…” And how we’re not here. And that’s why we really made that effort to be here and to work in New York City at the Community House, at La Mama, at the Theater for the New City, we worked all those places and I think now what I’m looking at is that we need the Indian community, the Native community, to support us, to support all this work. You know, that people should start calling us up and saying “you’re paying a due.” I think that’s really necessary now. And if it’s from across the country, great! You know, if it’s from Canada, great! If it’s from Central America, great! I want to see that. Because, to us, really, there are no, you know, all of these borders. Forget about that. They’re just used as excuses to keep us apart. And there’s also, the excuses, you know, that “Oh, that they’re from the Northwest; they’re from the Southwest; they’re from, you know, upstate.” We really have to start thinking about really supporting each other. And that’s my relationship. My relationship is that, you know, we’re all one. We’re all one, and if we want to tell our stories and keep our culture going, we have to start thinking. Not that we have to give up our nations, but that we have that sovereignty across the boarders.

MURIELLE BORST: I guess, my relationship, with the youth is with a teenage girl. And I, now I mix, here, I am having the same type of, now, it’s very interesting. …But, anyway, you know, when you’re the lone Native kid in a theater program… And that was very interesting, when he brought it into his piece, because I understood it. I never particularly went through that because I came from – I live in New York. But now that my daughter is going to a high school where she’s the only Indian kid, and the only thing you can see that is a reflection of you is Raisin in the Sun for that Native kid. Not that it’s not a good play, not that you can’t relate to that. But, what about Native plays that are being printed, that are being published? And we need to start making the effort as teachers to make that effort - college, high school, junior high- if you have that one Native kid, make that effort to buy those plays. You know, other than – some children– aren’t interested in Shakespeare. And you can lose a child through the cracks during that time. And I think that you have my own daughter read Shakespeare. I don’t say it, but I realize that, you know, she’s not getting “Romeo and Juliet,” because she thinks it’s a stupid story, and they are two stupid teenagers, and she would never do that. A teacher needs to turn around and say, “Well, I’m not going to use this thing. I need to find another way to educate.” And that’s where, I believe, I do believe this, that there are tons of different ways to teach. There are tons of different ways to tell a story. And if you can get to that child, somehow, and then there has to be a connection between the youth and the elders. Like right now, I’m in between. I remember when I was a youth. I’m not, you know – so, now I’m a bridge, because I have elders in my family. I have real elders, besides her … I have real elders in my family. You know, and how do we keep them occupied? How do we keep them in touch with us? In, especially, in New York City. I ask- you know- asking the elders in my family, “well, what do you need? Do you need - you know, your world is separated here. How do we help each other? How do we get together with socialism? And bringing the powwow back to what it was originally supposed to be.” How does the youth understand the elders? I mean, really understand. Not “old people.” I mean, they have a point. And I do believe that. I mean, there’s a difference between old people and there’s a difference between elders. And we know a lot of old people, but we need to bring back our elders. And I think that’s really, one of the works that, with my community, that I really want to talk about. And with our youth. Because without our elders, we don’t have community. Without our youth we don’t have a community. Both will disappoint each other. And that’s something, in New York City, that we have room to do. And, again, she’s right. We have to start helping each other, we have to start realizing, I believe, that what happens a lot of times is that we think that everything has to be a hundred-thousand dollar budget. But if you realize that storytelling is in a room and you can get five-hundred people, if you look at the academy awards, the way they brought that all down, that’s a Native concept, you know? How they honored each one of those actors, that’s an Indigenous concept. That’s nothing new. So, now, we’re being called upon to do it. Obama has an idea. We have to have a different way of thinking and a different way of thinking has come through words and how do we…if you’re used to doing something for five people in your backyard for five bucks, believe me, you can do a hell of a lot with fifty-thousand dollars. So, I think we really need to start thinking about that. And really that’s kind of my whole thinking.

MURIEL MIGUEL: I remember, there were two very traditional spoken people…and they talked to…and it was incredible to have these two people who believe deeply about the significance and cultural importance of repatriation. We also said some things that were so meaningful to me, and so connect to what I feel that the work’s meaning is. What it’s about is important. And that was basically, the lesson that they have gone back decades upon decades. And the belief was that their language was not something that someone learned, that they have something of a personal belief. And so, that experience made connection. I think that this evening is very special to consider this idea in mind… We can be a part of this verbal community… But I also believe that this connection with the whole range. I love what you said in your piece about the adjective of describing your reservation in you, you’re assimilated. And I think that this is complicated and very enormous in its discourse, this community, this ritual, history making. A friend of mine often gives me a hard time saying, “You know, this is – you’re working in an institution that – you know – this is America’s holocaust and you need to tell your visitors more directly about that.” I understand that we’re in need. And I understand that we can put out there what’s important, tell stories of sovereignty, the story of land, the story of western expansion, all of the complexity of the history of this country. But I also think it’s something to talk about the aspirations and achievements and not the awfuls done, but what we did. And I think that that’s the danger of the west. And I do think that the contact with communities, and I think that in a very important way, in New York, that we have a space that is for Native socials about three or four times a year, and I feel that it’s one of the most important …things that New York is doing and I’m very proud of that.

DANIELLE SOAMES: I was just going to say that one of the ways that I stay connected to my community up in Mohawk and my roots are from Kahnawake, which is right outside Quebec – actually it’s inside of Quebec, just outside of Montreal. But I didn’t grow up on the rez; my mom grew up on the rez. So, working at the museum, I work at the [National] museum [of the American Indian] Haudenosaunee discovery room, which is a room based on traditions for the Iroquois people, so all the Six Nations. I met a wonderful documentary film maker, Tracey Deer, and through that connection I was able to discuss what’s happening in New York City and what’s happening on the rez and turns out that her family bought the newspaper on the rez, which is called Eastern Door. So, I have a regular column, where I write “Mohawk Girl in New York City.” Kind of like a “Sex and the City” but from my point of view about being mixed. So, not so, you know, risqué, just about the arts and what’s happening here from my perspective. And that’s how I reach the community. And I also have family who live right on the rez, and they tell me about issues that are happening. And once I hear about those issues, I bring them into rehearsal and we talk about blood quantum and we talk about the land rights. We talk about all these issues that are happening currently and in the past and continuing. Trying to explore new ways of developing- I guess communicating – to the public. So, that it’s not so isolated. And I realize, you know, maybe some of the dialogue we found funny as Natives and non-Natives didn’t understand - but one thing that I have to say which was brilliant was the way, Darrell, that you acted like the Native girl. You went “Mmmm, yeah, you- I know- ” The way you did it was awesome and it really brought back some memories. So, anyway, so trying to bridge that gap between the rez and the urban community in a creative movement performance stuff.

STEVE ELM: Years ago – I’m going to make this very quick – years ago, I was in a play here and my character was called “The Indian.” And afterwards, I didn’t want to …do this thing, so I thought, I got some money and I funded American Indian Community House Youth Theater Project. And I really thought-- And a nominal objective, when I go to rehearsals, I’d say, “Let’s talk about identity. How do you feel about being Indian? You’re half black, half white – deh-deh-deh” and they were all like this [gestures] to me. “They say we’re Indians. That’s who we are.” And my issue, because I wasn’t in such a big question mark about it, simply through working in theater and being hired as “The Indian” I wanted to see where they were at with this. And I found a lot of what urban kids that had grown up in the community, the Shinnecock kids, the Mohawk kids, whatever kids that are grown up in this community and have been nurtured by, they had no problem. They were hip-hop, they were rap, they were reggae, they were hard-rock, they were Indians. And I found that when you go around the country you find out there are a lot people, the young people, secure in how they are growing up. And I feel it is very important that that is continued, and I worry that it’s not being continued as much as we could hope it to be. Also, quickly, in terms of relationships with other artists throughout the country, I’m poor. I am not really able to travel the country and meet lots of other artists, other Indian artists. And most Indian artists are poor, and their shows don’t normally come here. So it’s very rare when do get to all come to together. And I also want to thank the Public Theater for being very instrumental in having so many Indians in the theater recently, it’s been great.

LIZ FRANKEL: I think we’ve been running a bit long. I think we’ll have time for just one question from the audience. [laughter] Maybe two or three. Anyone have anything they’re dying to ask?

MURIEL MIGUEL: It’s so typical. A bunch of Indians onstage.

MURIELLE BORST: We have to get everything out.

MURIEL MIGUEL: We can continue talking in the lobby for hours and hours.

Audience #1: You were saying, what does it mean to be authentically Native?

MURIEL MIGUEL: What does that mean?

Audience #1: I mean, to be authentic as opposed to inauthentic. What does that mean? And what is your relationship to – what’s the relationship to past tradition 400 years back in relationship to the present and reality of who you are in the -

MURIEL MIGUEL: There’s no difference. I mean, did we use authentic?

MURIEL BORST: Authentic? I mean you’re saying how are we different from five hundred years ago to today?

Audience #1: I’m saying, what is the concept of being authentic?

MURIEL MIGUEL: What do you mean authentic?

HERBIE BARNES (Tales Of An Urban Indian’s director): Sorry, I think what he’s asking is, when you say, I played the role of “Indian” what the difference between playing that role and you’re trying to do. How are you breaking that rule of–

STEVE ELM: I’ll answer that really quickly, I think Darrell answers is in his show as well. Ah, you’re often asked – there’s a certain thing around Indians, especially when we’re put in a public situation or a theatrical situation, it’s whole buffalo speech thing. You’ve got to slow down, you’ve got to be spiritual, you’ve got to be stoic as Darrell said. If there’s any trace of being urban. A lot of non-Indian people, and some Indians, will question your, what we call, “authenticity.” And I think most Indians in the house would understand that. I hope that.

MURIEL MIGUEL: Is that what you meant?

MURIELLE BORST: …I agree. You know. I mean, no one sees it as racism. They don’t see it as racism. And that’s what really gets me, is that, you know, here you have Obama as president, we have men having babies, but talk about an Indian who walks into a casting director’s office and they can still say that you don’t look like an Indian, if a little person who was a midget walked in, you would never say he doesn’t look taller. But they’re still saying that to us. And no one is seeing that as racism. And you know. I guess that’s the whole thing. You know… I guess, you know, and you see that. A lot. That’s my thing.

MURIEL MIGUEL: I guess, authentic things, makes me crazy. That’s why I said, “Did we say authentic?” You know. It’s one of those words. You know. “Are you authentic?” So, ahhh- I forgot what I was going to say. [laughter] Next question.

LIZ FRANKEL: Alright, we’ll do one more question, and then we should give the theater back. Alright, we’ll go with you [to audience member].

Audience #2: Okay, I’m from New Mexico, and we have a lot of Native Americans in our state. And we’re being inundated with the gambling world around us. We have casinos all over the place. And I thought how wonderful it would be for you to connect with those people and tell your story. And tell the story that isn’t being told even to our own people, to understand why they feel the way they do, because of the discrimination and things that we feel. I also wanted you to know that I think we’re here, the eight people sitting here, bringing Indigenous people together from rural America to work together. And so, it’s really wonderful to see that this is happening and people are telling their story and how they feel in identifying themselves. I thought it was portrayed very well by the young man here and sometimes I got teared up over it, because it is so very true. You know with Indigenous people and how we feel and how we’re being discriminated against. I think it’s a wonderful way to tell their story. And I was very mixed up. A lot of other cultures that have told their stories and it’s very moving and it’s a very really real way to see. Because you’re telling it from your heart and how you feel, so, I applaud you for your work and what you’re doing and I encourage you to spread your wings and go to other places because we, as Native Americans as well, need to have someone tell us this story for us to really understand what’s in our hearts. Thank you.

LIZ FRANKEL: And thank you for that. I think we could probably go on talking for hours, but I know you can’t keep a theater open for hours. So I think we should end here. And we invite everyone to go to the lobby, and buy some books on this topic and keep talking as long as you’d like. Thank you, everyone.

The Rise of Native Theater in New York City in the 1960's and 70's

2009-05-12T12:55:00.004-04:00

Moderator: Betsy Theobald Richards (Director/Ford Foundation)
Panel: Muriel Miguel (Artistic Director of Spiderwoman Theater),
Soni Moreno (actor/producer), Suzan Shown Harjo (writer/advocate)
March 10, 2009
This conversation was part of the Public Lab Speaker Series following a performance of Tales of an Urban Indian.

BETSY RICHARDS: Hi all. Why don’t we let everybody come on in. Well, I just want to say aho and welcome. My name is Betsy Theobald Richards. I’m from the Ford Foundation. I’m a member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma and I’m also a theater director. But, tonight, we have the pleasure of having people who have dedicated themselves for years to the excellence of their work and lives to making things better for the Indian people in this country, and possibly for all indigenous peoples. They were also here in New York at a very particular time of social change and of people’s movements, in the late sixties, early seventies.

So first I want to introduced Muriel Miguel, who is [applause] a Founding Member and Artistic Director of Spiderwoman Theater, the longest running Native American womans’ theater company in North America. She was also an original member of Joe Chaikin’s Open Theater. Suzan Shown Harjo is a poet, a writer, a curator, a policy advocate, who has helped Native people recover more than one million acres of land and has developed laws to protect Native nations, arts, cultures, languages, religious freedom, sovereignty, and sacred places. [Applause] Soni Moreno is a co-founder of the internationally acclaimed Aboriginal women’s vocal group Ulali. She was a Hair cast member. She is now also a board member at the American Indian Community House here in New York City. And what we’re going to do is talk for a little bit [Applause].

Simon Douglas said tonight, in his story…he started off by saying this story is not told enough. And when I talked to Oskar [Eustis, Artistic Director of the Public Theater] about the importance of having this panel about placing some of these fantastic people to talk about fantastic things that were happening at the time, it really was first sparked, I know it was important from the beginning, but when I read Steven McElroy’s piece in the The New York Times—it was just a blurb where he was talking about the 2007 Native Festival, and he said “A dedicated New York theatergoer might be justified in thinking this town has played host to every kind of theater possible….But the Public Theater, which doggedly tends to uncover the new, is offering a festival next week featuring the work of American Indian artists from the United States and Canada.” And I read that and I said, “New? Hmmmm. We were here before you. And we’re “new?” There are some important stories to tell. So, the fact is that Native people have had a presence in performance in New York City for many, many years. And that could be the subject of volumes. But tonight we’re limited in our time and our scope; and these three women who are here have many stories to tell, so what I’m going to try to focus on is just one period, the late sixties and early seventies. A time when, to quote what Robert Allen Warrior and Paul Chaat Schmitt published in their book on the Indian movement “Like A Hurricane,”: “Indian people, for a brief and exhilarating time, staged a campaign of resistance and introspection unmatched in this century…It was for American Indians every bit as significant as the counterculture was for young whites or the civil rights movement was for blacks.”

So tonight, we’re going to do a kind of hitting on…a little Edward R. Murrow, you were there (Laughter), jumping back to two particular years. We’re going to be soft on the edges, we’re not going to be exact but back to 1968 and 1973. It will give a chance for you to know us. We’ll talk a little bit about places […] and to share with you perspectives.

The year is 1968. It’s Martin Luther King. John F. Kennedy has been assassinated. There’s violence and a convention. Nixon’s elected. “Green Tambourine.” The Graduate. And the tribal love-rock musical Hair is running at the Public Theater. As producer Michael Butler picked out on the poster and you can see it on your leaflet, “Guess this is a play about American Indians because that’s what’s on the poster.” It’s a tribal love-rock musical that has Indians. And he calls Joe Papp about producing it on Broadway. The American Indian movement is dominant in Minneapolis. The Native community in New York is preparing—they’re in their planning stages in founding the American Indian Community House. So to each of these panel members, that’s not true, I know it’s battle of ’69, I’m saying they’re preparing.

MURIEL MIGUEL: No. There was a distinct quote.

BETSY: Okay. I had the same conversation with Suzan beforehand. What was happening with you at the time?

MURIEL MIGUEL: What was happening with me at the time? There’s two stories of the conflicts in my mind. One was, Hair had auditions, there was a cattle call for Hair here and I had an uncle who worked across the street at Mann Refrigerator…still see the clock that says Mann Refrigerator. He was staring at all these people who were candidates; the line was around the corner. And I was working here, I was doing The Serpent here, so I came through all this crowd and everyone’s making fun of all these people and I came out and I ran across the street and said, “Uncle Charles!” He was so aghast. He had never…Oh My God. And then he went, “Yeah. Uh huh.” That was one of the things I remembered about working here and Hair. The other thing is that the American Indian Community House at that time, before that, that was before they hired Hines and she started with Community House on Broadway in one little room with Iola Boyle and one other member—I can’t remember her name. And they started and that was before the money came in that they started that. So there’s one story I can’t remember anymore.

BETSY: You were at The Serpent here at the Public Theater. Who directed that?

MURIEL MIGUEL: Joe Chaikin. And it was…I didn’t know who here…as a matter of fact, the first Spiderwoman benefit was done here and all those guys, Gerry Ragni and…Oh that was the other story. So they wanted to make an Indian play and Gerry Ragni, who was maybe God, calls my ex-husband, husband then, and he says, “Can you bring drums in for Galt MacDermot?” Galt was really upset because…my husband came in and sang for him. Gerry wanted an honoring song. He was with us, he came to my powwow when I got married. He really wanted that feeling. He wanted that death scene to have an honoring song in it. And Galt was really upset. Finally, Gerry said, “Well can you do this?” and Gerry leaps across the floor and Gregory [my husband] says, “No. You can’t do any of that on the [gestures] You don’t even [gestures]” and so that was the end of that. The end of that being a Native play… (Laughter)

SUZAN HARJO: I was sitting in a little room at a church that was the American Indian Community House and I was just answering phones, answering letters, lots of letters and got a call. A man who identified himself as a Black Panther was on the line and I said, “What are you calling here for?” He said, “Because I don’t know where else to turn.” Isn’t this extraordinary? So I called Shunatona Hines and others who were among the founders of the American Indian Community House and told them what an extraordinary thing and I said, “So this man is on his way over now and we have to give him some charity because he asked.” They didn’t know what to think about but they agreed and thought also that it was an extraordinary thing. So I thought it was just amazing that, well, it reminded me how our ancestors must have felt when pitiful people came here and we fed them. They didn’t know where else to turn. They looked to us to feed them. And to see them through the harsh winters. So we did that for him and then he went on his way. We gave him some money and you would recognize this man. So, he lived a long time, I’m glad to say.

During that period, I was in a lot of different things. I had moved to Greenwich Village near the bar where Dylan Thomas drank himself to death and because of that… (LAUGHTER) then moved to a loft above the bank at Sheridan Square and was right by the that wonderful […] we used to go to to hang out at the writer’s bar…where they had…well, anyway, I remember that my friend Vine Deloria Jr., who was our most prolific author, who was unknown at the time outside of Indian circles, introduced us all to that particular bar because he fell in love with Jessica Lange who was the waitress. (LAUGHTER.) It was that kind of time. I was doing theater all over the place with Classic Stage Company and WBAI radio. Joe Chaikin was a great mentor and friend and taught me a lot about how to use public places and how to use public forms for the common good. I’d call and ask him about something or for someone’s number and we would finish that and he would say well, hey, so and so wants to come over and do a reading about something, why don’t we do a reading of speeches by great chiefs and we’ll just gather some people. So we did that. Anyone in town… I guess this is another lesson I learned from Joe: everyone in New York who is in the theater is always out of work. So everyone’s anxious to do something…so you can always have the cream of the crop come over to your place and do something. So there were a lot of programs on WBAI where I produced first on a program called “Seeing Red” which everyone thought was a Commie program and then they would listen for another minute. It was a good program. Milton Hoffman, who went to WETA [Washington Educational Television Authority], was the director of the drama and literature department, hired me in his department and then promoted me to replace him when he left so I got to do great great things. Joe Chaikin threw me programs and I would throw him programs. He had a really wonderful mix […]

I don’t know if the young man [Darrell Dennis] we have been watching for an hour and a half can hear us but…I think he’s marvelous. Thank you so much. (Applause.)

SONI MORENO: In 1968, I was at […] I was going to high school…I went to continuing school. I left home when I was seventeen. I went to school during the day and got a job at UC-Berkeley in the drama department. Then, I too had no idea what I wanted to be but at the age of eight, I had decided somewhere that it was going to be […] (Laughter.) And so drama became a love for me. I grew up in a family that picked fruit during the summer. Every summer we worked in the fields and then I’d go live in Stockton, California. So I left all that, was living in Berkeley… During that time there was a lot going on in [Grizzly] Peak Park. Literally it was practically my backyard, handing out acid and people getting together and artists. The people took over that park and that’s when the National Guard came. So all during this time in 1968 there was a lot going on.

I had heard about this play Hair that was being cast in New York when my science teacher, because I went to school half a day, all you had to do was sign in and get credit so I was pretty much the only one in class. So I was being tutored.My science teacher brought in this San Francisco paper saying there’s an open call audition for Hair. And he knew I was into theater and in the drama department. He says, “I know you’ll never get the nerve to audition. You wanna be in this but you’re not going to be in it.” […] I said, “Well watch me.” I used to get high with this teacher. (Laughter.) So, I went and I called up. They said, “You need three songs. Come on this day.” I’d never sung before. Spanish was my first language. I learned how to speak English by annotated songs on the radio. The very first song I sang was “Round and round, the Christmas tree and Christmas…” […] So I would imitate these singers. I came back to school and I said, “well, I have my appointment. I have these three songs.” “Well what songs are you going to sing?” “Um. […] I had to have a rock tune or upbeat, so I chose “The Weight” and another melancholy song so “Diamond Song.” I went in and was singing those songs over and over again, performed for myself, went to that audition. It was like magic. It was everything I expected it to be. Oh my god this is crazy. It was time for me to go, I was so nervous, my voice was shaking and I was singing (imitates herself in a falsetto voice). I finished that song. I was a junior at this time and so my science teacher —god bless his heart—was very very there for me. I got called into the office, two weeks later I was sick and out of school for two weeks, I was called in. Well, within those two weeks I got a call back, another call back, and I was waiting. They said, “In seven days you’ll know.” In those seven days, I was called in the office. “We have some news for you. You didn’t graduate from this class as you liked because you haven’t enough credits.” Two days later I got the call, I was cast in Hair.

That started the theater bug. While I was doing Hair in San Francisco, I was the only Native that was cast and during that time they took over Alcatraz. The takeover was really incredible because again there was a lot of stuff going on in Berkeley and in San Francisco. The show had opened really well and I’d gone to the producers and asked, “Would it be okay if I came out—because they have a tub that they would bathe Claude in, I don’t know if anyone saw Hair—if I could take the tub out and ask for donations at the close of the show.” “Oh that’s so cute, yeah, go ahead.” At the end of the show I would ask for donations. What happened was I was able to get two boats every Sunday […] I was able to take that first trip on a boat to Alcatraz and spend a couple hours there…I really felt that…what a cool thing. I’m getting paid for just being me and being able to stand up for what’s right and to be a Native…It’s really interesting I didn’t really know that many Native people in San Francisco at the time…and now a lot of my friends are there asking me […] That’s where I was 1968, 1969.

BETSY: Okay Edward R. Murrow, moving on to 1973. (Laughter.) Doesn’t have to be exactly ‘73. Just around the same time. U.S. is completing its withdrawal from Vietnam. […] World Trade Center has just been completed. Carly Simon is singing “You’re So Vain.” (Laughter.) […] There’s the deadly confrontation between American Indians and federal authorities in the town of Old Indian Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota. Marlon Brando turned down his Oscar in protest of the treatment of American Indians. […] Actor/writer/director Hanay Geiogamah founded the American Indian Theater Ensemble at La MaMa earlier that year with Ellen Stewart and was planning to take his company to tour Indian reservations across the country. Where were you?

MURIEL MIGUEL: […] I was sitting there. First of all I have my two children with me. Marlon Brando has this little tape recorder. It’s a small one. And he’s playing with it and talking into it […] and he says to my daughter, she’s like three and she’s looking at him, she asked him what it is. It’s a magic box. And “That’s right!” he says, “It’s a magic box. If you tell it a secret, it will tell you a secret back.” She said, “It’s a tape recorder.” (Laughter.) […] “Of course the kids know it, right?” And he’s sitting there, he doesn’t have shoes on and his belly’s showing. He has pot belly. And I keep looking at him thinking “I’m looking at Marlon Brando’s pot belly.” It was on 59^th street near the Russian Tea Room. Well that’s one thing that happened to us.

You know, I have to talk about Alcatraz for a moment because when Alcatraz was over, one of the people who came to town was a guy named Harjo. Harjo lived with me for about a year or more and stayed with me for a long time. I mean he lived with me—I had a husband, he lived with us. And the baby. And Uncle Joe…he lived with all of us. Then we went to a green corn dance in upstate New York and he met Suzan there. […]

SUZAN HARJO: From my dad’s home community Muskogee, Oconee and Okawaigi, Oklahoma. My dad’s Muskogee and my mom’s Cheyenne so I grew up on both sides of Oklahoma. A little town, really little. I came all the way to New York and went to Onandaga many many times because it’s the closest place to the ceremonies and so I would go up there regularly. I had to come all the way to New York, all the way just outside of Syracuse to meet someone from my dad’s home community that I could call home and say he’s a Harjo, probably...so that was quite wonderful.

So I captured him in fact and brought him to New York with me. And then we began producing, at WBAI and teaching lots of Native people how to edit tape in the days you edited tape. None of it was digitized. He was very involved in activism. One night we did a program. Bob Fass who is still at WBAI…I was in charge of a lot of personality programs. One night he got very sick so he gave me this program. We were doing these really interesting mixes of Muskogee stomp dances and Cheyenne social dances and jazz. We had our friend Jim Pepper mix the Indian tonal scale with jazz tonal scale. And Miles Davis gave him the credit for being the first person to ever do that. He was a wonderful saxophonist. We were doing all sorts of really interesting stuff with music and we got a call from a patrol man and one of the detectives said John Lennon’s on the phone for you. We were like “Yeah, right. We’ve already gone through that crap.” It was John Lennon. He came up and hung out with us a long time and we put a lot of things together and he was very devoted to Native activism. I asked him one time…He would go up to Onandaga because the state wanted to build an acceleration lane rerouted right through the reservation and everyone up and down the route wanted to turn them down. They didn’t even bother to ask the Onandaga nation. So he said, “Oh sure. I’ll go. What’s the worst that can happen?” So he went up to draw attention to what was happening and he did just that and did bring some attention but it didn’t deter the state. The state went on to build this acceleration lane. So we were all up there; everyone wanted to overturn their bulldozers. We didn’t have weapons because the Onandaga feels very strongly about their treaty of peace and friendship with the United States. We’re not going to break that by declaring war or carrying wars into the United States. In fact when the U.S. entered World War II, Onandaga and other people declared war on Germany and Japan and loaned their young men to fight in the war. So on the day of reckoning, everyone was ready and prepared for who knows what and no one came. State troopers did not show up. They didn’t show up and they didn’t show up. Slowly we began to hear what had happened. They had been diverted to Attica. There was some huge melee and mass killing of people there. And they never even showed up. And the state just dropped it after that and any aggression […] So those were the times we were in. Pretty extraordinary times. Everything was just sort of […] And then there was the Wounded Knee.

MURIEL MIGUEL: I remember the first time I heard about it. It was my Uncle Chuck. He said, “Hey, there are Indians at somebody’s ankle.” (Laughter.) At that point, no one knew what was going on. Then we started to get all the messages back and forth. […] What to do here? So I was […] I would come out every night and my ex would come and we would talk. We would just collect money from people in the audience and we sent all that money, even dimes and pennies, we sent everything to Wounded Knee. And then at the end of Wounded Knee there was this big cross section of people that came back […] all these different Indians that were in New York and Bobby Onco was one of them. Bobby Onco was the one of the ones that was identified with the Russian rifle […] he was living with me, again living with me, with my family. […] He was on parole which meant that we had to find some place in Brooklyn for him to go to report. So we went out to find a federal parole officer in downtown Brooklyn. We had to travel through all of the federal buildings looking for a federal agent that we could say, “Here is Bobby Onco and he is reporting to you.” And finally there was this one little room and we asked this guy if he was a federal agent and he says, “Yes.” (Laughter.) It was such a difference between coming in Brooklyn and what Bobby went through out in […] the small towns there because what happened there was […] the guy was like really you did this and that and shook his hand. That was his federal agent. And that’s how I remember Wounded Knee.

SONI MORENO: 1973. I was wearing platform boots.

MURIEL MIGUEL: So was I. (Laughter.)

SONI MORENO: I came to New York in 1972, on New Year’s Day to pursue my acting career. I came upon a few people, Hanay Geiogamah being one of them, and I had been to La MaMa in pursuing theater. I studied Shakespeare and I thought I would come to New York to do Shakespeare only to find they weren’t casting people of color. […] In awe of this, I came to La MaMa and found all this wonderful theater going on. Hanay Geiogamah was doing Native theater and was trying to convince me to go to Oklahoma to do theater. And I was like, “I just arrived in New York to do theater. What am I going to do in Oklahoma?” […] that was the whole process. He was going to go do a tour of Native country. Beyond that, I found not being able to do what I wanted which was Shakespeare […], I would work at La MaMa and various showcases. I did a show that produced Native theater, they were doing a series of young writers, experimental theater. Dennis Reardon had written a play called The Leaf People and it went to Broadway and lasted several days. But it was incredible because it was about the people in the rainforests. It was a rainforest where they were building a highway. And what they did to these indigenous people. Back then […] brown people. I was one of the green people. It all took place on the ceiling. There were ropes… […] Up in the sky. I thought it was brilliant because theater to me is an expression and what I liked about your piece tonight was that it was real. Part of what I learned in this […] music and theater for me…it’s so wonderful to be able to see different work being created but the seed, what’s inspiring, is their own. They’ve made it their own. Once I learned that you can take a piece but once you make it your own, then it lives. You learn from people. You can imitate as I imitated […] and became introduced to music but the theater, how you can take a piece, write a piece and just make it come to life. Some of the pieces that I’ve got to work in New York City, there’s one, Aladdin’s Lamp at La MaMa, these are my favorites that weren’t really popular but I really learned a lot because it introduced me to a lot of different actors from all over the world. That’s the beauty of theater—it’s the world. It’s not in one place it’s a universe of expression.

BETSY: We’re right to the point of my final question. We’re going through another great time, a great social change. The world is changing right in front of us. What words or thoughts or images do you want to share with us? Particularly those members of the theater community or those interested in supporting the Native community—don’t have to be, could be just what comes from your own experience?

MURIEL MIGUEL: I remember when Reagan came in. I was abroad most of that time. When I came back everything was cut, everything was slashed. There was nothing for the arts. All of us were hanging on by our fingernails. It was really a bad time. I remember thinking, “If I don’t survive this, Spiderwoman will not survive.” What we did was just take money out of our pockets and we started […] and we went to tell them and we went to Crystal and George and we spent it on a space and that’s how we survived that time. I expect to survive the same way now. I think that there may be more support out there than there was then. We had a hostile president. “Feed them ketchup—it’s a vegetable.” You know? I think my thoughts now as with Darrell, when Darrell talks about generations, I felt like as Native people it may seem like old hat sometimes that we talk about generations and we talk about going forward, we talk about this all the time and that you’re responsible…you’re responsible for... I remember John Oakwood saying he didn’t care if things were messed up between England and France with the tunnel going through. He’s not going to be here. My reaction to that was, “Yeah, you’re not going to be here but what about your generations? They’re going to be here.” I can’t think that way that I’m not going to be here. I’m responsible even though I’m not going to be here because that groundwork is what we have to think about. And that’s what Darrell…we get that at the end when he says, “It always gets me. There will be children that are not adults, there will be children that don’t know about that. There will be children who think of their culture as a joke.” And that to me is important. It’s important to keep this going. We pass this on, we pass this on, we pass this on. I think […] I’m seventy-one. […] I’m really thinking that what happens now in this change is that Spiderwoman changes and how to do that? How do we do this? I pass it on to my daughter. I pass it on to whoever she wants to work with. Does it change? Is it still a theater group in the same way? Is it a mentoring group? Is it working in film?What is it working in? So now I’m thinking the more we bring in playwrights, and that’s another thing—I was thinking about this with Darrell—I never thought of myself as a playwright or a writer. I had to live; the theater community wasn’t going to support me. So I had to do my thing and create this thing that I was going to do. So I never thought of myself as a playwright for a very long time. You do it because you have to do it because your curiosity is there. Do this piece and what it means to you and get that voice out. So I think all of this stuff is changing now. I think that Native theater now, we have to take it by its force. You know what I mean? We have to take it, grab a hold of it, we have to really lead it. No one else can tell us what to do about this. We have to lead it. And that is something every one of us in theater should really think about now, “We have to lead it. No one can tell us anymore.” It’s not…[…] and then told what to do. Now it’s move over.

SUZAN HARJO: That was inspiring. (Laughter.) I was thinking how different my life would have been if I stayed in New York and not left the year after your question.

MURIEL MIGUEL: I was heartbroken.

SUZAN HARJO: That was so sad. Muriel had selected two people to be Spiderwoman with her. I was one. Our dear friend Josie Terran who was Muriel’s childhood friend, was the other. I left New York for a variety of reasons, mainly because New York was killing my kids and my husband. So that’s why I left at the opportune moment. I had gotten a call from my old friend Richard [D. Bramante] …asking if I would take his job for the American Press Association in Washington D.C. which was a totally different planet. I would not have flourished there or stayed there long after had I not had theater there. I’d never been able to write a script, coach them in the ways what my son says “Indian moderne” had it not been for my theater and arts training here in New York and the grittiness of New York. So it broke my heart to have to not be Spiderwoman. And to leave my job at WBAI. You mentioned Joe Chaikin. This is how good it was there. He called me one day and said, “I have three plays that Samuel Beckett has written for the radio. Will you produce them and I’ll direct them and those will be the premieres of those three Beckett plays if your interested in.” Hold the phone. We could do anything we wanted during that time. Philip Glass on the radio. We were doing a lot of the equivalent of that in poetry and producing the radio version of William Burrough’s “Naked Lunch.” What a treat that was! It really was a treat working with him. Things like that. You look back and say this was quite a time. What Muriel was talking about…and what was so well-articulated also in the play is the talk about responsibility towards the seventh generation. Where you don’t just have responsibility just for your kids and their kids and their kids and their kids into the seventh generation and you have to base all your decisions on the seventh generation. In the Plains we have a little different take on that tradition but it’s the same concept. We talk about respect for the three generations past. […] Respecting your own time and your own place in the world. It’s the same seventh generation concept. You’re responsible for a long time. When I moved to Washington, […] I very quickly learned there were no Natives doing advocacy. I thought it’s going to be easier for me to learn the advocacy stuff than for the white guys who are making the Indian policy to learn the Indian stuff. So that’s what I did. I was the Indian on Carter’s campaign. People were saying “Jimmy who?” I was the Indian in transition who worked in the Carter administration. I felt the same way about Barack Obama. Hence my friend Margaret Sanderson’s great piece […] (Applause.)

BETSY RICHARDS: Do we have time for one or two questions in the audience? Do we have any questions?

Audience #1: It seems you all have wonderful things to say about what’s inspiring to your work, things that spring into your creative work. In working in Native American theater, [I wonder] whether you have thoughts about potential audiences that hindered you, confused you or inspired you in ways, performing for white people or performing for Native people? Are we just trying to do what we do and let the chips fall where they may?

MURIEL MIGUEL: Well…all that happened to me. One of them was that I started Spiderwoman as a feminist theater group and as we went along it became everything. At one point we were gay/straight, grandmothers/mothers, married/divorced/single. It was very exciting but awful. (Laughter.) We were mostly targeting women so we talked to woman, worked with women, we mentored women. Then it was obvious our community, the Native community really wanted us and things started to change. Then it was the Native community which was male and female. We were talking to them, all those things that were pertinent to them…but it was always theater. No matter what we did it was always theater. We may not have thought of ourselves as playwrights but we were writing like mad on anything—napkins, tablecloths. We have these archives with napkins and tablecloths. Yes. It was always theater. We always had theater people. They thought we were a little nuts at times. I think they didn’t understand us but it didn’t change. And now it’s everyone. It’s Native people, that’s our main goal always and women. And it’s theater.

BETSY RICHARDS: I’m being given that now it’s time. Thank you for coming.

(Applause.)

MURIEL MIGUEL: I agree with Darrell. I really think…I’m so glad you’re here. I’m so glad you’re doing this. And your director, Herbie.

(Applause.)

An Introduction to the Online Journal by Festival Journalist Tom Pearson

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About the Journalist

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Tom Pearson (Creek/Eastern Band Cherokee) is a writer and artist working in a variety of media that includes contemporary dance, site-specific performance, film, visual art, and large-scale installations. Pearson received his MA in Performance Studies from New York University/Tisch School of the Arts and is currently the Co-Artistic Director of Third Rail Projects, a collective of artists based in New York City. He is the recipient of a 2008 New York Dance and Performance (Bessie) Award for choreography and a Kingsbury Award for writing. Pearson's articles on Native dance and performance have been published in Time Out New York Kids, Dance Magazine, Dance Spirit, and several online publications. In addition to his work in the contemporary arts, Tom also participates in traditional American Indian events as a dancer and singer.

More information available at www.thirdrailprojects.com.

2008 Festival Schedule

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Wednesday, November 12 at 9:30pm
SPECIAL JOE'S PUB EVENT
Martha Redbone (Choctaw/Shawnee/Cherokee/Blackfeet)

Singer/soulwriter Martha Redbone's songs carry the torch for love from the romantic to the universal and are infused in an "ingenious aural tapestry" (Music Connection) that pays homage to her Native & African American heritage.

Thursday, November 13 from 9-10am
Opening Prayer & “Meet The Public” Panel

Thursday, November 13 from 10am-12pm
Field Discussion: Modern Approaches to Traditional Storytelling
Moderator: Jennifer Podemski (CEO and Executive Producer, Redcloud Studios)
Panelists: Doug Bedard (Hip Hop Artist), Tamara Podemski (performer), and Dianne Yeahquo Reyner (playwright).

Thursday, November 13 from 1-3pm
Field Discussion: Bringing Native Theater to a Wider Audience
Moderator: Randy Reinholz (Artistic Director of Native Voices at the Autry/Director of The School of Theatre, Television and Film at SDSU)
Panelists: Betsy Theobald Richards (Program Officer, Ford Foundation/director), and Charles Weldon (Artistic Director of The Negro Ensemble).

Thursday, November 13 from 4-6pm
Field Discussion: Cultivating the Artist
Moderator: Alanis King (Artistic Director, Saskatchewan Native Theatre Company)
Panelists: Terry Gomez (playwright), Christopher Hibma (Associate Director, Theatre Program, Sundance Institute), Randy Reinholz, and Rose Stella (Artistic Director, Centre for Indigenous Theatre).

Thursday, November 13 at 8pm
The Conversion of Ka'ahumanu
By Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl (Native Hawaiian /Samoan)
Directed by Marie Clements (Metis/Dene)

Set in Hawaii during the early 19th Century, this poignant piece explores the complex relationships amongst Christian missionaries and indigenous women forty years after the islands' first contact with the West. Honolulu-based writer Victoria Kneubuhl is a recipient of the prestigious Hawai`i Award for Literature.

Post-Show Discussion: Writing About Early Cultural Contact
Special Guests: Marie Clements (director), Diane Glancy (playwright), Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl (playwright), and Betsy Theobold Richards (Program Officer, Media, Arts & Culture at The Ford Foundation/director).

Friday, November 14 from 10am-12pm
Field Discussion: Staging the Sacred
Moderator: Daniel David Moses (playwright/poet)
Panelists: Eric Gansworth (playwright), Monique Mojica (performer), and Edward Wemytewa (Playwright/performer/visual artist).

Friday, November 14 from 1-3pm
Field Discussion: Native Plays and the Academic Community
Moderator: Terry Gomez
Panelists: Randy Reinholz, Dianne Yeahquo Reyner, Karmenlara Seidman (Professor of Drama, NYU), and William S. Yellow Robe, Jr.

Friday, November 14 from 4-6pm
Field Discussion: Talking With Native Artists
Moderator: Sheila Tousey (actor/director)
Panelists: Gary Farmer (Performer), Muriel Miguel (Spiderwoman Theatre), Tamara Podemski, Martha Redbone (singer/songwriter), and Chaske Spencer (performer).

Friday, November 14 at 8pm
Chasing Honey
By Laura Shamas (Chickasaw)
Directed by Alanis King (Odawa Nation)

With her loving father serving in Afghanistan and her drug-addicted mother coming back into her life, Sandy turns to Len, keeper of a struggling bee colony and new member of her college's Native American Studies Club. Chasing Honey has received workshops at Native Earth in Toronto and Native Voices at The Autry in Los Angeles.

Post-Show Discussion: Contemporary Native Playwriting
Special Guests: Native playwrights Eric Gansworth, Diane Glancy, Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl, Laura Shamas, and William S. Yellow Robe, Jr.

Saturday, November 15 from 10am-12pm
Field Discussion: Directing and Dramaturging Culturally Specific Work
Moderator: Randy Reinholz
Panelists: Oskar Eustis (Artistic Director of The Public Theater), Morgan Jenness (dramaturg/agent), Yvette Nolan (Artistic Director of Native Earth Performing Arts) and Betsy Theobald Richards.

Saturday, November 15 at 4pm
Panel Discussion: Politics and Performance

Moderated by Oskar Eustis (Artistic Director of The Public Theater) and Sheila Tousey (actor, director, and Native Theater Festival Consultant). Panelists include Terry Gomez (playwright, director, actor, and educator), Alanis King (Artistic Director, Saskatchewan Native Theatre Company), Yvette Nolan (Artistic Director, Native Earth Performing Arts), Jennifer Podemski (CEO and Executive Producer, Redcloud Studios), and Randy Reinholz (Artistic Director, Native Voices at the Autry and Director of the School of Theatre, Television and Film at SDSU).

Saturday, November 15 at 8pm
Re-Creation Story
By Eric Gansworth (Onondaga)
Directed by Leigh Silverman

Novelist, poet, essayist and visual artist Eric Gansworth, winner of the PEN Oakland-Josephine Miles National Literary Award for Fiction, brings us his personal exploration of the Haudenosaunee creation narrative. He playfully alters the oral tradition's fluid nature to reflect issues relevant to a contemporary Haudenosaunee life.

Post-Show Discussion: Bringing Oral Tradition to the Stage
Special Guests: Eric Gansworth (playwright), Daniel David Moses (playwright), Leigh Silverman (director), and Edward Wemytewa (playwright/performer).

Artist Bios

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MARIE CLEMENTS (Metis/Dene) is an award-winning performer, playwright, director, screenwriter, producer, and founding artistic director of urban ink productions and Fathom Labs Highway. Her twelve plays, including Copper Thunderbird, Burning Vision, and The Unnatural and Accidental Women, have been presented on some of the most prestigious stages for Canadian and international work including the Festival de Theatre des Ameriques (Urban Tattoo 2001, Burning Vision 2003) in Montreal, the National Arts Centre and The Magnetic North Festival (Burning Vision 2003, Copper Thunderbird 2007) in Ottawa. Her work has garnered numerous awards and publications including the 2004 Canada-Japan Literary Award and a shortlisted nomination for the 2003 Governor General's Literary Award.

ERIC GANSWORTH (Onondaga) is a professor of English and Lowery Writer-in-Residence at Canisius College in Buffalo, New York. His books include Mending Skins (PEN Oakland Award), and A Half-Life of Cardio-Pulmonary Function (National Book Critics Circle's "Good Reads" List). His work has appeared in The Kenyon Review, The Boston Review, Shenandoah, Cold Mountain Review, Poetry International, New York Quarterly, Yellow Medicine Review, American Indian Quarterly, Stone Canoe, UCLA American Indian Culture and Research Journal, Many Mountains Moving, and Studies in American Indian Literature, among other journals.

ALANIS KING (Odawa Nation). Her playwriting credits include: Bye Bye Beneshe, Song of Hiawatha: An Anishnaabec Adaptation, Order of Good Cheer, Gegwah, Lovechild, Artshow, Heartdwellers, Manitoulin Incident, Tommy Prince Story, When Jesus Met Nanabush, Storyteller and Step by Step. King was Playwright in Residence at the Centre for Indigenous Theatre in Toronto from 2005 to 2007 and at Nightwood Theatre. She was a past Artistic Director of her home theatre company - Debajehmujig Theatre Group and Native Earth Performing Arts. She has also produced, toured, directed and developed numerous plays on many First Nation communities; a highlight was Lupi the Great White Wolf for the children's tour to the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

VICTORIA NALANI KNEUBUHL (Native Hawaiian/Samoan) is a Honolulu playwright and author. Her many plays have been performed in Hawai`i and the continental United States and have toured to Britain, Asia, and the Pacific. An anthology of her work, Hawai`i Nei: Island Plays, is available from the University of Hawai`i Press. Ms. Kneubuhl's first mystery novel Murder Casts a Shadow, was recently published by the University of Hawaii Press. She is currently the writer and co-producer for the television series Biography Hawaii. In 1994, she was the recipient of the prestigious Hawai`i Award for Literature and in 2006 received the Eliot Cades Award for Literature.

MARTHA REDBONE (Choctaw/Shawnee/Cherokee/Blackfeet) is a leading voice in both soul and contemporary Native music. She has been recognized with awards for both of her albums - Skintalk and Home of the Brave, including the 2006 Independent Music Awards Best R&B album; Best Debut Artist at the 2002 Native American Music Awards; and two consecutive Indian Summer Music Awards for Best R&B Album of 2004 and 2005. Also in 2005, Martha received the National HIV/Aids Partnership Red Ribbon Award at the UN for her community work. Currently the Brooklyn native and daughter of a Choctaw/Shawnee/Cherokee/Blackfeet mother and African-American father is working on her third album.

LAURA SHAMAS (Chickasaw) Laura Shamas's plays have been produced by Golden Thread Productions, Victory Theater (L.A.), Philadelphia Theater Company, Denver Center Theater Company, Walnut Street Theater, Studio Arena, West Coast Ensemble and The Glines (NYC), among others. Her work has been read/developed/presented at many theaters, including Native Voices at the Autry (L.A., Festival of New Plays, ‘08); Native Earth Performing Arts (Toronto, "Weesageechak Learns to Dance XX," '07); "Playwrights Week at the Lark" (New York, ‘07); Soho Theatre (London, '06 & ‘07); Williamstown Theatre Festival (Guest Artist ‘06); The Old Globe; The Geva Theater; and The Utah Shakespearean Festival. Shamas has several published plays, including Re-Sourcing, Moliere In Love, Pistachio Stories, Up To Date, Lady-Like, Picnic at Hanging Rock, Portrait of a Nude, and The Other Shakespeare. She has been honored with a number of playwriting awards, including the 2008 Garrard Best Play Award from the Five Civilized Tribes Museum for her show Talking Leaves, a Fringe First Award for Outstanding New Drama (Edinburgh), a Drama-Logue Award, and a 2006-2007 Aurand Harris Fellowship from the Children's Theater Foundation of America.

LEIGH SILVERMAN (Director) Broadway: Lisa Kron's Well. Off-Broadway credits include: Liz Flahive's From Up Here (world premiere, Manhattan Theatre Club; Drama Desk Nomination); David Henry Hwang's Yellow Face (world premiere, co-production Center Theatre Group/The Public Theater); Beebo Brinker Chronicles (world premiere, Hourglass Group and 37 Arts); Brooke Berman's Hunting and Gathering (world premiere, Primary Stages); Well (world premiere, The Public Theater, The Huntington Theater and ACT, San Francisco); Danny and the Deep Blue Sea (Second Stage Theatre); Tanya Barfield's Blue Door (Playwrights Horizons and Seattle Repertory Theater); The Five Lesbian Brothers' Oedipus At Palm Springs (world premiere, New York Theatre Workshop); Eve Ensler's The Treatment (world premiere, The Culture Project); Neena Beber's Jump/Cut (world premiere, Woolly Mammoth Theatre/Theater J and Women's Project); and Big Times (world premiere, W.E.T.). West End: Wit (Vaudeville Theatre). Other recent regional productions include: Tanya Barfield's Of Equal Measure (world premiere, Center Theatre Group); Bad Dates (Cleveland Playhouse) and How I Learned to Drive (Actors Theatre of Louisville). Upcoming projects include the new musical Coraline with music by Stephin Merritt and book by David Greenspan at MCC and Five Questions by Lisa Kron.

Advisory Committee Bios

2009-01-26T20:26:00.001-05:00

The Public Theater worked closely with the Advisory Committee to plan the field discussion portion of the festival. Its members include:

SHEILA TOUSEY (Menominee and Stockbridge-Munsee/ Native Theater Festival Consultant) has acted in movies, television and in theater in NYC and regional theaters across the U.S. Some of the directors she has worked with include Joanne Akalaitis, Joe Chaiken, Linda Chapman, Kennetch Charlette, Liviu Ciulei, David Esbjornson, Ron Van Lieu, Hanay Geiogamah (American Indian Dance Theater), Lisa Peterson, Betsy Richards, Sam Shepard, Tony Taccone, Paul Walker and Robert Woodruff. In 2006 Sheila was Artist-in-Residence at the Public Theater. During this time she, along with Maria Vail and in collaboration with Sam Shepard, adapted Bottle House, a play based on the short stories and poetry of Sam Shepard. Sheila is also the 2008 recipient of the Lloyd Richards Fellowship for Acting Teachers of Color. She is spending the 2008 fall semester at the Yale School of Drama. Sheila is about to direct the world premiere of Salvage, a new play by Diane Glancy, which will run at Native Voices at the Autry in Los Angeles during the month of November.

HANAY GEIOGAMAH (Kiowa-Delaware/ Director of Native Studies, UCLA) is a professor of theater in the School of Theater, Film and Television at the University of California at Los Angeles. Geiogamah is also the director of the UCLA American Indian Studies Center and for the past 10 years has served as principal investigator for Project HOOP, the national initiative to promote development of Native American theater and performing arts. With an extensive background in the theater as a director, playwright and producer, he is actively involved in American Indian studies and research and serves as the founding artistic director of the internationally-acclaimed American Indian Dance Theater. Geiogamah is the author and editor of a number of books and articles on Native American theater and performing arts and serves as series editor for the Native American Theater Series of the UCLA American Indian Studies Center Press. His first collection of plays, New Native American Drama, is published by the University of Oklahoma Press and has been in print for 27 years.

TERRY GOMEZ (Comanche Nation-Numunu/ Playwright, Director, Actor and Educator) is a published and produced playwright, published writer, theatre director, actor, painter and educator. Her play Inter-tribal was produced as a staged reading at The Public Theater in New York City and published in the anthology Plays by Women of Color. Other plays produced in various New Mexico venues include Numunu Waiipunu: The Comanche Women, Inter-tribal, Reunion, The Antigone, A Day at the Night Hawk, Carbon Black, Rain Dance, Melanin, and The Woman with a Mustache. Tobacco Leaves, a collaboration with Red Eagle Soaring Theater Troupe, premiered and toured Seattle, Washington and the surrounding area. Gomez has been an adjunct faculty member teaching theater arts and dramatic writing classes at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and faculty for the I.A.I.A./ABC/Disney Summer Film Program. She has been artist in residence for the youth troupe Red Eagle Soaring and has given workshops at the International Workshop Festival in London, England. She is a recipient of the 2007-2008 American Indian College Fund/Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship. She recently directed a series of staged readings for the 2008 Two Worlds Native Theater Festival in Albuquerque.

ALANIS KING (Odawa Nation/ Artistic Director, Saskatchewan Native Theatre Company). Her playwriting credits include: Bye Bye Beneshe, Song of Hiawatha: An Anishnaabec Adaptation, Order of Good Cheer, Gegwah, Lovechild, Artshow, Heartdwellers, Manitoulin Incident, Tommy Prince Story, When Jesus Met Nanabush, Storyteller and Step by Step. King was Playwright in Residence at the Centre for Indigenous Theatre in Toronto from 2005 to 2007 and at Nightwood Theatre. She was a past Artistic Director of her home theatre company - Debajehmujig Theatre Group and Native Earth Performing Arts. She has also produced, toured, directed and developed numerous plays on many First Nation communities, a highlight was Lupi the Great White Wolf for the children's tour to the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

DANIEL DAVID MOSES (Delaware from the Six Nations Reserve/ Playwright and Poet) was born at Ohsweken on the Six Nations lands along the Grand River in southern Ontario, Canada. His plays include his first, Coyote City, a nominee for the 1991 Governor General's Literary Award for Drama, (in Necropolitei by Imago Press), Almighty Voice and His Wife (Playwrights Canada Press) and The Indian Medicine Shows (Exile Editions), which won the 1996 James Buller Memorial Award for Excellence in Aboriginal Theatre. He is also the author of Delicate Bodies, poems (Nightwood Editions) and Sixteen Jesuses, poems (Exile Editions), co-editor of An Anthology of Canadian Native Literature in English (Oxford University Press, third edition 2005), and Pursued by a Bear: Talks, Monologues and Tales, essays (Exile Editions). Exile has also just published his play Kyotopolis (October 2008).

YVETTE NOLAN (Algonquin from Kitiganzibi/ Artistic Director, Native Earth Performing Arts). Her plays include BLADE, Job's Wife, Video, Annie Mae's Movement, the libretto Hilda Blake and the radio play Owen. She is the editor of Beyond the Pale: Dramatic Writing from First Nations Writers and Writers of Colour. Directing credits include Death of a Chief, Tales of An Urban Indian, The Unnatural and Accidental Women, Annie Mae's Movement (Native Earth), The Only Good Indian..., The Triple Truth (Turtle Gals). As a dramaturg, she works across Canada, most recently as the Festival Dramaturg for Saskatchewan Playwrights Centre Spring Festival of New Plays (2006, 2007). She was the president of the Playwrights Union of Canada from 1998- 2001 and of Playwrights Canada Press from 2003-2005. She is currently the Artistic Director of Native Earth Performing Arts, and the President of the Indigenous Performing Arts Alliance. She was one of the National Arts Centre's Playwrights-In-Residence last season.

JENNIFER PODEMSKI (Saulteaux/ Israeli/ CEO and Executive Producer, Redcloud Studios) is recognized for her roles in Bruce McDonald's "Dance Me Outside," CBC's "The Rez," "Riverdale" and "Degrassi: The Next Generation." She is the co-founder of Big Soul Productions (1999 - 2003) and most recently Redcloud Studio's Inc., an independent film and television production company. She is the co- creator and executive producer of "Moccasin Flats," North America's first all aboriginal produced, written and performed dramatic television series, now in it's third season on The Aboriginal Peoples Television Network and Showcase Television. Podemski is currently producing the National Aboriginal Achievement Awards which will air nationally in Canada on Global Television and APTN. She can also be seen on the new Showcase comedy series "Moose TV", "Rabbit Fall" Season Two - SPACE channel and APTN, and The National Aboriginal Achievement Awards 2009, hosted by Adam Beach on March 6, 2009. She has done workshops with aboriginal youth in theatre, film and music throughout the year and produced the closing ceremonies of the North American Indigenous Games in British Columbia, August 2008.

RANDY REINHOLZ (Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma/ Artistic Director, Native Voices at the Autry, Director of the School of Theatre, Television and Film at SDSU) has directed close to 50 plays across the U.S. and Canada. He was the director and executive producer of Urban Tattoo and the critically acclaimed productions of Jump Kiss, The Buz'Gem Blues and Please Do Not Touch the Indians and was the executive producer of the 2005 world premiere of Kino & Teresa. In 2006, Reinholz produced and directed the world premieres and tours of Stone Heart and The Red Road and the staged reading of Wild Horses at The Kennedy Center's New Visions / New Voices. In 2007 his Native Voices at the Autry Equity production of The Berlin Blues premiered in Los Angeles. The last three Native Voices productions have been remounted at the National Museum of the American Indian in New York and Washington, D.C. Reinholz has co-sponsored showcases and Native American diversity workshops for ABC and NBC and is an annual guest artist for the FOX American Indian Summer Institute.

EDWARD WEMYTEWA (Zuni/ Playwright, Performer and Visual Artist) is a former Zuni Tribal Councilman, and his connection to his Zuni cultural heritage is through art and language. He is a founding director of Idiwanan An Chawe, a storytelling theater. He is a playwright, performer, and visual artist whose prize-winning paintings and sculpture have been exhibited in museums in Arizona and New Mexico.

Panelist Bios

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DOUG BEDARD/aka PLEX is an emcee, lyricist and producer and a founding member of Edmonton’s renowned hip-hop group Won 18. He is Ojibwa from the Peguis First Nation. Plex spent several years writing, performing and building the foundation for what would become New Leaf Entertainment, an entertainment company and record label focused on developing new talent and producing, promoting and managing already established local artists. Since inception, the group has performed to sold-out crowds in over 250 venues. They have toured first nations communities across Western Canada and have opened for some of the most notorious groups around, including Run DMC, Xzibit, Pharcyde, Ice T, Saukrates, Black Sheep, Redbone, The Guess Who, Choclair, Kardinal Offishal, K-Os, The Hieroglyphics, Total and Maestro. More recently Plex has joined Aboriginal Voices Radio as the host and producer of The Plex Show, Canada’s first Global Indigenous urban/hip-hop show. He also joined an exclusive group of songwriters to compose an original anthem for the National Aboriginal Achievement Foundation called “Sit By My Fire.” As CEO and President of New Leaf Entertainment, Plex is working with some of Canada’s hottest up-and-coming musical talent while producing his debut solo album, due out in the summer of 2008.

OSKAR EUSTIS is the Artistic Director of The Public Theater and has worked as a director, dramaturg, and artistic director for theaters around the country. From 1981 through 1986 he was resident director and dramaturg at the Eureka Theatre Company in San Francisco, and Artistic Director until 1989, when he moved to the L.A.’s Mark Taper Forum as Associate Artistic Director until 1994. Mr. Eustis then served as Artistic Director at Trinity Repertory Company in Providence, Rhode Island for eleven years. In 2005 he took the helm at New York’s Public Theater. Throughout his career, Mr. Eustis has been dedicated to the development of new plays as both a director and a producer. At The Public, he directed the New York premiere of Rinne Groff’s The Ruby Sunrise. At Trinity Rep, he directed the world premiere of Paula Vogel’s The Long Christmas Ride Home (Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Production); Homebody/Kabul (Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Production); the world premiere of Rinne Groff’s The Ruby Sunrise; Angels in America, Part I: Millennium Approaches (Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Director); Angels in America, Part II: Perestroika; as well as world premieres of plays by Philip Kan Gotanda, David Henry Hwang, Emily Mann, Suzan-Lori Parks, Ellen McLaughlin, and Eduardo Machado. He commissioned Tony Kushner’s Angels in America at the Eureka Theatre Company in San Francisco and directed its world premiere at the Mark Taper Forum. He was a professor of Theatre, Speech and Dance at Brown University, where he founded and chaired the Trinity Rep/Brown University Consortium for professional theater training. He received an honorary doctorate from Brown in 2001 and currently serves as Professor of Dramatic Writing and Arts and Public Policy at New York University.

GARY FARMER, part of the Cayuga First Nations Confederacy, has been an actor happily for 32 years. Gary can be seen weekly on TV series, Easy Money, Sunday nights at 9 pm on CW TV Network in the US and CITY TV Network in Canada. Gary teaches acting and directing at the Institute for American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico where he also currently resides. Gary also fronts his own blues band "Gary Farmer and the Troublemakers".

ERIC GANSWORTH, from the Onondaga Nation, is a professor of English and Lowery Writer-in-Residence at Canisius College in Buffalo, New York. His books include Mending Skins (PEN Oakland Award), and A Half-Life of Cardio-Pulmonary Function, (National Book Critics Circle’s “Good Reads” List). His work has appeared in The Kenyon Review, The Boston Review, Shenandoah, Cold Mountain Review, Poetry International, New York Quarterly, Yellow Medicine Review, American Indian Quarterly, Stone Canoe, UCLA American Indian Culture and Research Journal, Many Mountains Moving, and Studies in American Indian Literature, among other journals.

DIANE GLANCY (Cherokee) is a professor at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, where she teaches Native American Literature and Creative Writing. Glancy’s novels include Stone Heart: A Novel of Sacajawea and The Man Who. Her play Salvage, which received a reading in last year’s Native Theater Festival at The Public, was performed at the Autry National Center in Los Angeles, October 31-November 23, 2008.

TERRY GOMEZ, from the Comanche Nation-Numunu Nation, is a published and produced playwright and writer, theatre director, actor, painter and educator. Her play Inter-tribal was produced as a staged reading at The Public Theater in New York City and published in the anthology Plays by Women of Color. Other plays produced in various New Mexico venues include Numunu Waiipunu: The Comanche Women, Inter-tribal, Reunion, The Antigone, A Day at the Night Hawk, Carbon Black, Rain Dance, Melanin, and The Woman with a Mustache. Tobacco Leaves, a collaboration with Red Eagle Soaring Theater Troupe, premiered and toured Seattle, Washington and the surrounding area. Gomez has been an adjunct faculty member teaching theater arts and dramatic writing classes at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and faculty for the I.A.I.A./ABC/Disney Summer Film Program. She has been artist in residence for the youth troupe Red Eagle Soaring and has given workshops at the International Workshop Festival in London, England. She is a recipient of the 2007-2008 American Indian College Fund/Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship. She recently directed a series of staged readings for the 2008 Two Worlds Native Theater Festival in Albuquerque.

CHRISTOPHER HIBMA joined the Sundance Institute Theatre Program in 2005, and currently serves as its Associate Director working alongside Philip Himberg as his administrative/artistic partner. Since arriving, Christopher has produced Labs in Florida, Wyoming and Utah and helped to create programs in Chicago, New York and East Africa. He negotiated Sundance’s first Actors’ Equity contract and administered its new commissioning program. Before joining Sundance, he served as the first Managing Director for Theater Latté Da, a Minneapolis-based company committed to new musical theatre. He has produced a variety of events for other organizations such as the Minnesota Chorale and Youth Frontiers, Inc, a non-profit that teaches character education in schools. He has been on the directing staffs for Broadway’s The Lion King and numerous productions at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. As an assistant director at the Guthrie, he worked with Joe Dowling, Sari Ketter, Lisa Peterson, Ethan McSweeney, and Marcela Lorca on productions such as Six Degrees of Separation, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, A Christmas Carol, Blood Wedding and Julius Caesar. At the Virginia Opera, Christopher assisted Lillian Groag on Wagner’s Die Walküre. He has studied with Anne Bogart and Jean Guy Lucat of the Peter Brook Company. He has also worked as a graphic designer for Marinan Design, a boutique design firm in the Twin Cities. Most recently, Christopher created video projections for Maureen McGovern’s A Long and Winding Road at the Metropolitan Room in New York, and for Carol Burnett In Conversation and for Matt Gould’s Free Style both at UCLA’s Reprise!.

MORGAN JENNESS spent over a decade at the New York Shakespeare Festival/Public Theater, with both Joseph Papp and George C. Wolfe, in various capacities ranging from literary manager to Director of Play Development to Associate Producer. She was also Associate Artistic Director at the New York Theater Workshop and an Associate Director at the Los Angeles Theater Center in charge of new projects. She has worked as a dramaturg, workshop director, and/or artistic consultant at theaters and new play programs across the country, including the Young Playwrights Festival, the Mark Taper Forum, The Playwrights Center/Playlabs, The Bay Area Playwrights Festival, Double Image/New York Stage and Film, CSC, Victory Gardens, Hartford Stage, and Center Stage. She has participated as a visiting artist and adjunct in playwriting programs at the University of Iowa, Brown University, Breadloaf, Columbia and NYU and is currently on the adjunct faculty at Fordham University. She has served on peer panels for various funding institutions, including NYSCA and the NEA, with whom she served as a site evaluator for almost a decade. In 1998 Ms. Jenness joined Helen Merrill Ltd., an agency representing writers, directors, composers and designers, as Creative Director. She now holds a position in the Literary Department at Abrams Artists Agency. In 2003, Ms. Jenness was presented with an Obie Award Special Citation for Longtime Support of Playwrights.

ALANIS KING is from the Odawa Nation. Her playwriting credits include: Bye Bye Beneshe, Song of Hiawatha: An Anishnaabec Adaptation, Order of Good Cheer, Gegwah, Lovechild, Artshow, Heartdwellers, Manitoulin Incident, Tommy Prince Story, When Jesus Met Nanabush, Storyteller and Step by Step. King was Playwright in Residence at the Centre for Indigenous Theatre in Toronto from 2005 to 2007 and at Nightwood Theatre. She was a past Artistic Director of her home theatre company – Debajehmujig Theatre Group and Native Earth Performing Arts. She has also produced, toured, directed and developed numerous plays on many First Nation communities, a highlight was Lupi the Great White Wolf for the children’s tour to the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

MURIEL MIGUEL is Kuna/Rappahannock and a founding member and Artistic Director of Spiderwoman Theater, the longest running Native American women’s theater company in North America. Muriel has studied modern dance with Alwin Nickolai, Erick Hawkins and Jean Erdman. She was an original member of Joseph Chaikin's Open Theater where she performed in the groundbreaking plays: Terminal, The Serpent, Mere Ubu and Viet Rock. Recent choreography & directing credits: Throw Away Kids, She Knew She Was She, the original and touring productions of The Scrubbing Project with Turtle Gals Performance Ensemble, Evening in Paris with co-creator Michelle Olson. Stage credits include: Philomena Moosetail in The Rez Sister, Aunt Shadie in The Unnatural and Accidental Women, Martha in Buz’Gem Blues, Spirit Woman in BONES: An Aboriginal Dance Opera. She has created one woman shows Hot' N' Soft, Trail of the Otter and most recently Red Mother. Muriel has been an Assistant Professor of Drama at Bard College. She is an instructor of Indigenous Performance at the Centre for Indigenous Theatre full time program in Toronto and Program Director for their two summer programs. She was a Program Director for the Aboriginal Dance Program at The Banff Centre and an instructor there for seven years. She has developed four shows for The Minnesota Native American AIDS Task Force working with inner city native youth on HIV/AIDS issues. In 2005, The Smithsonian Institution’s Museum of the American Indian presented a retrospective exhibit honoring Spiderwoman Theater’s years of work. Muriel has been awarded an honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts from Miami University in Oxford, OH and has most recently been profiled in the book, American Women Stage Directors of the 20th Century.

MONIQUE MOJICA is an actor and playwright from the Kuna and Rappahannock Nations. Based in Toronto, she was spun directly from the web of New York’s Spiderwoman Theater. Her play Princess Pocahontas and the Blue Spots was produced in 1990. She is the co-editor, with Ric Knowles, of Staging Coyote’s Dream (An Anthology of First Nations Drama) in English, volumes I & II. She appeared as Grandma Builds-the-Fire in Sherman Alexie’s film Smoke Signals, and was a co-founder of Turtle Gals Performance Ensemble. Monique was last seen as Caesar in Death of a Chief, Native Earth’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. A long-time collaborator in Native Performance Culture research, she was the Artist in Residence for American Indian Studies at the University of Illinois in Spring ’08. Currently she’s creating Chocolate Woman Dreams the Milky Way, with Floyd Favel, Oswaldo De León Kantule, Erika Iserhoff & Gloria Miguel. She continues to explore theatre as healing, as an act of reclaiming historical/cultural memory and as an act of resistance.

DANIEL DAVID MOSES (moderator) was born at Ohsweken on the Six Nations lands along the Grand River in southern Ontario, Canada. His plays include his first, Coyote City, a nominee for the 1991 Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama, (in Necropolitei by Imago Press), Almighty Voice and His Wife (Playwrights Canada Press) and The Indian Medicine Shows (Exile Editions), which won the 1996 James Buller Memorial Award for Excellence in Aboriginal Theatre. He is also the author of Delicate Bodies, poems (Nightwood Editions) and Sixteen Jesuses, poems (Exile Editions), co-editor of An Anthology of Canadian Native Literature in English (Oxford University Press, third edition 2005), and Pursued by a Bear: Talks, Monologues and Tales, essays (Exile Editions). Exile has also just published his play Kyotopolis (October 2008).

YVETTE NOLAN is Algonquin from Kitiganzibi Nation. Her plays include BLADE, Job’s Wife, Video, Annie Mae’s Movement, the libretto Hilda Blake and the radio play Owen. She is the editor of Beyond the Pale: Dramatic Writing from First Nations Writers and Writers of Colour. Directing credits include Death of a Chief, Tales of An Urban Indian, The Unnatural and Accidental Women, Annie Mae’s Movement (Native Earth), The Only Good Indian..., The Triple Truth (Turtle Gals). As a dramaturg, she works across Canada, most recently as the Festival Dramaturg for Saskatchewan Playwrights Centre Spring Festival of New Plays (2006, 2007). She was the president of the Playwrights Union of Canada from 1998- 2001 and of Playwrights Canada Press from 2003-2005. She is currently the Artistic Director of Native Earth Performing Arts, and the President of the Indigenous Performing Arts Alliance. She was one of the National Arts Centre’s Playwrights-In-Residence last season.

JENNIFER PODEMSKI, from the Salteaux Nation and part Israeli, is recognized for her roles in Bruce McDonald’s “Dance Me Outside,” CBC’s “The Rez,” “Riverdale” and “Degrassi: The Next Generation.” She is the co-founder of Big Soul Productions (1999 – 2003) and most recently Redcloud Studio’s Inc., an independent film and television production company. She is the co- creator and executive producer of “Moccasin Flats,” North America’s first all aboriginal produced, written and performed dramatic television series, now in it’s third season on The Aboriginal Peoples Television Network and Showcase Television. Podemski is currently producing the National Aboriginal Achievement Awards which will air nationally in Canada on Global Television and APTN. She can also be seen on the new Showcase comedy series “Moose TV,” “Rabbit Fall” Season Two - SPACE channel and APTN, and The National Aboriginal Achievement Awards 2009, hosted by Adam Beach on March 6, 2009. She has done workshops with aboriginal youth in theatre, film and music throughout the year and produced the closing ceremonies of the North American Indigenous Games in British Columbia, August 2008.

TAMARA PODEMSKI is a multi-disciplinary artist born and raised in Toronto, Canada. She is a graduate of the Claude Watson School for the Performing Arts in Toronto, where she studied theatre, dance and music throughout its 10-year program. Her acting has spanned across all mediums with credits such as Dance Me Outside, The Rez, Ready or Not, North of Sixty, Moose TV, Rabbit Fall and New Amsterdam. She has acted in several theatre productions, most notably as a member of the Original Canadian Cast of Rent, as well as starring as Maureen in the Broadway Company of Rent. Although she has premiered three films at the Sundance Film Festival, she left her biggest mark this past year, making history as the first Canadian actress, and first Native American actress, to win the Special Jury Prize for Acting. Playing the role of Miri Smallhill in Sterlin Harjo’s Four Sheets To The Wind, Tamara’s performance also garnered her a Best Supporting Actress Nomination for the IFC’s 2008 Independent Spirit Awards. Tamara is currently starring in the World Premiere of Wild Dogs in Toronto, produced by Nightwood Theatre, in association with The Canadian Stage Company.

MARTHA REDBONE, part Choctaw/Shawnee/Cherokee/Blackfeet, is a leading voice in both soul and contemporary Native music. She has been recognized with awards for both of her albums – Skintalk and Home of the Brave, including the 2006 Independent Music Awards Best R&B album; Best Debut Artist at the 2002 Native American Music Awards; and two consecutive Indian Summer Music Awards for Best R&B Album of 2004 and 2005. Also in 2005, Martha received the National HIV/Aids Partnership Red Ribbon Award at the UN for her community work. Currently the Brooklyn native and daughter of a Choctaw/Shawnee/Cherokee/Blackfeet mother and African-American father is working on her third album.

RANDY REINHOLZ, from the Choctaw Nation in Oklahoma, has directed close to 50 plays across the U.S. and Canada. He was the director and executive producer of Urban Tattoo and the critically acclaimed productions of Jump Kiss, The Buz'Gem Blues and Please Do Not Touch the Indians and was the executive producer of the 2005 world premiere of Kino & Teresa. In 2006, Reinholz produced and directed the world premieres and tours of Stone Heart and The Red Road and the staged reading of Wild Horses at The Kennedy Center's New Visions / New Voices. In 2007 his Native Voices at the Autry Equity production of The Berlin Blues premiered in Los Angeles. The last three Native Voices productions have been remounted at the National Museum of the American Indian in New York and Washington, D.C. Reinholz has co-sponsored showcases and Native American diversity workshops for ABC and NBC and is an annual guest artist for the FOX American Indian Summer Institute.

DIANNE YEAHQUO REYNER, an enrolled member of the Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma, is a playwright, performer, director, and founding member of both the American Indian Repertory Theatre (AIRT) in 2006, based in Lawrence, Kansas, and Thunderbird Theatre in 1974, based out of Haskell Indian Nations University. Working with Ping Chong, she assisted in the development and presentation of Native Voices – Secret History. She also served as community cultural liaison for the Lied Center of Kansas and panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts. Recently developing and directing the original production of ReGenerations: a celebration of our journey and transformation at the Lawrence Arts Center, she continues to present works that blends the traditional with contemporary storytelling.

BETSY THEOBALD RICHARDS joined the Ford Foundation’s Knowledge, Creativity and Freedom Program in 2003 as a Program Officer in arts and culture. Her portfolio on Indigenous Knowledge and Expressive Culture focuses on strengthening the field of American Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian arts and culture in the U.S. She also serves as a chairperson of Ford’s worldwide Committee on Indigenous Peoples, is member of the Foundation’s Philanthropy Learning Group and serves as an advisor to Ford’s global Intellectual Property Initiative. Prior to joining the Foundation, Betsy worked for over fifteen years in a variety of leadership roles for non-profit arts and culture organizations. Most recently, she served as the Director of Public Programs for the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center in Connecticut, the largest tribal museum and library in the United States. Her professional experience also includes managing a New York City-based arts-in-education organization and an Obie Award-winning experimental theater company. In addition to her work in arts administration, she has also worked as a theater director and dramaturge, developing scripts by Native American writers throughout the country and in Canada. She has successfully brokered artistic connections between Native artists, mainstream theater companies and other ethnic/racial groups. Betsy’s articles on Indigenous arts and cultures are published in several anthologies and journals including The Drama Review: Journal of Performance Studies; Aboriginal Voices Magazine; TCG’s Seventh Generation Anthology among others. In addition, she has presented on Indigenous issues at venues such as Yale University, United Nations’ Permanent Forum on Indigenous Peoples, and at the International Funders on Indigenous Peoples Conference. A citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, Betsy is proud to serve as the first Native American Program Officer at the Ford Foundation. She holds a bachelor’s degree from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and Master of Fine Arts degree from Yale University’s School of Drama.

KARMENLARA SEIDMAN, PhD, developed the first full-length course on Native Drama and Performance for the Tisch Drama Department three years ago. Her teaching inquires into the range of intimate relationships that develop in performance between artist, spectator and community, as well as the critical role of memory, dreams and pleasure in the creation of art. Research areas focus on the integration of physical, transformative performance practices with diverse ethical philosophies, emphasizing the role of performance as a complex response to post-colonial situations and community or personal trauma. Karmenlara’s dissertation, Mas' is Desire, reflects 6 years of ethnographic study of dreaming, ecstatic/erotic dance and the grotesque in masquerade traditions in Trinidad and Tobago Carnival, as a dancer and costumer. She has an interdisciplinary arts background in costume design, contemporary dance and music performance which she has taught to both children and adults, and has performed herself extensively throughout the Midwest, East coast and in the West Indies. Karmenlara is currently collaborating on developing new community theater projects with Muriel Miguel of Spiderwoman Theater. In addition, she teaches an ongoing workshop on performance and ethics with acting students at the National Theater Academy in Norway. Her published work appears in Jeffrey Chock's Trinidad Carnival, in Women in Performance and Performance Research. Karmenlara is also a millinery designer in New York's east village where she is a collaborator with Barbara Feinman, and their headpieces and couture hats have appeared recently in high fashion editorials.

CHASKE SPENCER, from the Lakota-Sioux Fort Peck Indian Reservation, has appeared in TNT’s Into the West, ABC’s Dreamkeeper, and the motion picture Skins. He is currently working on the play Idol Worship.

ROSE C. STELLA is Tarahumara First Nation and Sicilian, and originally from Arizona. She is an actor and singer with a strong background in dance and physical theatre. Her favorite roles include: the title role in Annie Mae's Movement by Yvette Nolan (Native Earth Production); Annie Cook and Veronique St. Pierre (Prairie Theatre Exchange and Persephone Theatre) of Tomson Highway's The Rez Sisters. Rose has toured and performed with Daystar Dance Company in the U.S., Cascade Theatre in Canada and West Six Theatre Company in England. Rose has performed in many of Native Earth's Weesageechak Festivals and Trickster Cabarets. In 2003, her first play White Buffalo Calf Woman, a clown show, was work-shopped in the Weesageechak Festival, and subsequently invited to Harbourfront's World's Fare Festival. White Buffalo Calf Woman has since been invited to University of Toronto, and was staged at NOZHEM Theatre at Trent University. Rose has been Artistic Director and Principal of The Centre for Indigenous Theatre since July 2003. In the spring of 2008, Rose directed The Rez Sisters for CIT’s year-end production.

SHEILA TOUSEY from the Menominee and Stockbridge-Munsee Nation, has acted in movies, television and in theater in NYC and regional theaters across the U.S. Some of the directors she has worked with include Joanne Akalaitis, Joe Chaiken, Linda Chapman, Kennetch Charlette, Liviu Ciulei, David Esbjornson, Ron Van Lieu, Hanay Geiogamah (American Indian Dance Theater), Lisa Peterson, Betsy Richards, Sam Shepard, Tony Taccone, Paul Walker and Robert Woodruff. In 2006 Sheila was Artist-in-Residence at the Public Theater. During this time she, along with Maria Vail and in collaboration with Sam Shepard, adapted Bottle House, a play based on the short stories and poetry of Sam Shepard. Sheila is also the 2008 recipient of the Lloyd Richards Fellowship for Acting Teachers of Color. She is spending the 2008 fall semester at the Yale School of Drama. Sheila just directed the world premiere of Salvage, a new play by Diane Glancy, which is running at Native Voices at the Autry in Los Angeles during the month of November.

CHARLES WELDON is a veteran actor of stage, film, and television and has performed professionally since 1968. He began his career as lead singer with the singing group, The Paradons, writing and recording the number one smash hit “Diamonds and Pearls.” Charles went on to perform in the original San Francisco cast of Hair, he came to New York with the Broadway musical Big Time Buck White with Mohammed Ali and, in 1970, joined the Negro Ensemble Company, performing in the classics The Great MacDaddy, The Offering, The Brownsville Raid, A Soldier’s Play, and the Company’s Broadway production of The River Niger. His film career includes Stir Crazy, Serpico, A Woman Called Moses, The River Niger and, more recently, Malcolm X, Drop Squad and The Wishing Tree for Showtime with Alfre Woodard and Blair Underwood. Television credits include Roots: The Next Generation and appearances on the new series Law and Order/Trial by Jury, Police Story, New York Undercover and Law and Order. Charles has recently appeared at the Denver Center for Performing arts in The Madwoman, A Selfish Sacrifice, A Streetcar Named Desire, King Hedley II, Jitney, Coming of the Hurricane, and August Wilson’s Two Trains Running. He is the new Artistic Director for the Negro Ensemble Company, a director, and is the co-founder of the Alumni of the Negro Ensemble Company. He directed Colored People’s Time for New York Public Schools and The Offering at the Rip Rap Studio Theater in Los Angeles. Charles recently starred with S. Epatha Merkerson in the award-winning play Birdy Blue at the Second Stage Theatre in New York City. He also won the “HENRY” for best supporting actor in Gem of the Ocean by August Wilson, this award is given to excellence in regional theater. This year in New York City he was awarded best supporting actor by the Audelco’s for August Wilson’s play Seven Guitars at Signature Theatre.

EDWARD WEMYTEWA is a former Zuni Tribal Councilman, and his connection to his Zuni cultural heritage is through art and language. He is a founding director of Idiwanan An Chawe, a storytelling theater. He is a playwright, performer, and visual artist whose prize-winning paintings and sculpture have been exhibited in museums in Arizona and New Mexico.

WILLIAM S. YELLOW ROBE, JR. is an enrolled member of the Assiniboine Tribe of the Fort Peck Tribes located on the Fort Peck Indian reservation in northeastern Montana. He is the first Native American playwright to receive the First Book Award for Drama from the "Returning the Gift" gathering in Norman, Oklahoma. William is a member of the Ensemble Studio Theater Company, New York, NY, and the Penumbra Theater Company, St. Paul, Minn. He serves on the Advisory Board of Red Eagle Soaring Theater Company in Seattle, Washington. He was the Playwright in Residence at Trinity Repertory Company and a Guest Lecturer/Visiting Professor at Brown University, in Providence, RI. He is presently an Adjunct Faculty member in the English Department at the University of Maine, in Orono, Maine and a Faculty Affiliate in the Creative Writing department at the University of Montana, in Missoula. His works include the full-lengths play, A Stray Dog, which was presented in the first Native Theater Festival at The Public, Grandchildren of the Buffalo Soldiers, which received a national tour by the Penumbra Theater Company and Trinity Repertory Company, and The Independence of Eddie Rose. Where the Pavement Ends is a published collection of his one-act works. William is honored to be here at this year’s festival.

Books Sold at the Festival

2009-01-26T20:24:00.000-05:00

Books Sold at the Native Theater Festival 2008

American Gypsy: Six Native American Plays (American Indian Literature and Critical Studies, Series Vol. 45)
by Diane Glancy and Gerald Vizenor
(University of Oklahoma Press Norman, Oklahoma ISBN: 0-8061-3456-9)

Annie Mae’s Movement
by Yvette Nolan
(Playwrights Canada Press, ISBN: 978-0-88754-904-5)

Copper Thunderbird
by Marie Clements
(Talonbooks, ISBN-10: 0889225680)

Genocide of the Mind: New Native American Writing
edited by Marijo Moore
(Nation Books, ISBN-13: 978-1560255116)

A Half-Life of Cardio-Pulmonary Function: Poems and Paintings (Iroquois and Their Neighbors)
by Eric Gansworth
(Syracuse University Press, ISBN: 978-0815609001)

Hawaii Nei: Island Plays
by Victoria Kneubuhl
(Contemporary Pacific Literature, ISBN-13: 978-0824825393)

Journeys Home: Revealing a Zuni-Appalachian Collaboration
edited by Dudley Cocke, Donna Porterfield and Edward Wemytewa
(Zuni A:shiwi Publishing, ISBN-13: 978-0964140141)

Kyotopolis
by Daniel David Moses
(Exile Editions, ISBN-13: 978-1550961164)

Re-Sourcing
by Laura Shamas
(Broadway Play Publishing, ISBN-13: 978-0881453973)

Seventh Generation: An Anthology of Native American Plays
edited by Mimi D’Aponte
(Theatre Communications Group, ISBN-13: 978-1559361477)

Sovereign Bones: New Native American Writing
edited by Eric Gansworth
(Nation Books, ISBN-13: 978-1568583570)

Stories of Our Way: An Anthology of American Indian Plays
edited by Hanay Geigamah
(University of California, American Indian Studies, ISBN-13: 978-0935626490)

Where the Pavement Ends: Five Native American Plays (American Indian Literature and Critical Studies Series)
by William S. Yellow Robe
(University of Oklahoma Press, ISBN-13: 978-0806132655)

Additional Books Sold at the Native Theater Festival in 2007

How We Became Human: New and Selected Poems
by Joy Harjo
(Norton, ISBN-13: 978-0393325348)

In A World Created By A Drunken God
by Drew Hayden Taylor
(Talonbooks, ISBN-13: 978-0889225374)

The Indian Medicine Shows: Two One-Act Plays
by Daniel David Moses
(Exile Editions, ISBN: 1-55096-036-9)

Two Plays: Tales of an Urban Indian/The Trickster of Third Avenue East
by Darrell Dennis
(Canada Playwrights Press, ISBN-13: 978-0887547720)

About the 2007 Native Theater Festival

2009-01-26T20:23:00.000-05:00

Wednesday, December 5 at 7 PM
In A World Created by a Drunken God
By Drew Hayden Taylor (Ojibway)
Directed by Kennetch Charlette (Cree)

While Jason packs up his Toronto apartment, looking forward to starting a new life by moving home to his family’s reserve, he is interrupted by an unannounced visitor who drags him into the past he had long forgotten. A finalist for the prestigious Canada Council for the Arts Governor General’s Literary Award.

Post-Show Discussion featuring Drew Hayden Taylor, Kennetch Charlette, Terry Gomez, Jennifer Podemski and Randy Reinholz; moderated by Oskar Eustis.

Wednesday, December 5 at 9:30 PM
Joy Harjo and the Arrow Dynamics Band
Poetry-rock-jazz-reggae gone native at Joe’s Pub, featuring Larry Mitchell, Keith Golden, Alex Alexander and Robert Muller.

Thursday, December 6 at 8 PM
Salvage
By Diane Glancy (Cherokee)
Directed by Sheila Tousey (Menominee and Stockbridge-Munsee)

This dark drama, about lives colliding in the aftermath of a car accident, is also part of the Fall 2007 Festival of New Plays at Los Angeles’ Native Voices at the Autry, where it premiered the following year.

Post-Show Discussion featuring Diane Glancy, Sheila Tousey, Daniel David Moses and Randy Reinholz; moderated by Mandy Hackett.

Friday, December 7 at 8 PM
A Stray Dog
By William S. Yellow Robe, Jr. (Assiniboine)
Directed by Peter DuBois

Alec returns home to his home on the reservation and has to fight the ongoing struggle of Tribal recognition with his family, like a stray dog returning to its pack. William S. Robe, Jr. is one of the leading Native playwrights in the United States.

Post-Show Discussion featuring William S. Yellow Robe, Jr.,
Peter DuBois, Hanay Geiogamah, Terry Gomez and Yvette Nolan; moderated by Oskar Eustis.

Saturday, December 8 at 6 PM
Wings of Night Sky, Wings of Morning Light
By Joy Harjo (Mvskoke/Creek)
Directed by Lisa Peterson

Join us for a sneak-peek at the first piece written for the theater by internationally known poet, performer, writer and musician Joy Harjo, who has performed on “Def Poetry Jam” on HBO, is the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers Circle of the Americas, and has recently received the First Nations Composers Initiative Composers Grant.

Post-Show Discussion featuring Joy Harjo, Lisa Peterson, Hanay Geiogamah and Daniel David Moses; moderated by Mandy Hackett.

Sunday, December 9 at 8 PM
Tales of an Urban Indian
A Staged Presentation
Written and performed by Darrell Dennis (Secwepemc)

Darrell Dennis tells the tale of Simon Douglas, an Indian born on a reservation and named by the U.S. government, who tries to find his way in the big city.

Post-Show Discussion featuring Darrell Dennis, Hanay Geiogamah and Yvette Nolan; moderated by Mandy Hackett.

Performance Coverage: Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl's THE CONVERSION OF KA'AHUMANU

2009-01-26T20:22:00.007-05:00

Negotiating Contact

Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl’s The Conversion of Ka’ahumanu, November 13, 8pm
Cast: Felicity Jones, Elisabeth Waterston, Jacquelyn Pualani Johnson, Pili Nathaniel, Kim Rosen, Mel Gionson

By Tom Pearson

In her body of work, playwright Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl renders the power and complexity of women and speaks directly to the concerns of her Native heritage. Her play, The Conversion of Ka’ahumanu, which was read at The Public Theater on November 13, 2008, rendered the story of a well-known and highly controversial historical figure for the Hawaiian people, Queen Ka’ahumanu, a pivotal leader who brought about great assimilation between her traditional culture and Christianity during a period of early contact.

The reading, directed by Marie Clements, was stunningly beautiful. While leaving the theater, I overheard several audience members expressing their delight that the reading felt so much like a full production. Wearing simple white muumuus, the Native actors, Jacquelyn Pualani Johnson as Ka’ahumanu, Pili Nathaniel as Hannah, and Kim Rosen as Pali, split center stage among rocking chairs. Meanwhile, the two Westerners of the play, Felicity Jones as Sybil and Elisabeth Waterston as Lucy, book-ended the front of the stage behind music stands. At the very beginning, Mel Gionson, who read stage directions, walked to the front of the stage, turned his back to the audience, and wrote the name of the play on the floor in chalk. This simple act of rendering the queen’s name and the word “conversion” so pointedly, served as a reminder throughout the play of where we had come from and where we were going. As the lines between tradition and assimilation blurred within the trajectory of the performance, so did the chalky names underneath the bare feet of the actors.

The play itself charts the course of the Hawaiian people under the leadership of Ka’ahumanu, a powerful member of the ali'i, or chiefly class, whose rule spanned a period of time during early contact and gunboat diplomacy with the west, as well as an internal overthrow of the established religious taboos, and an incremental inclusion of Christian values and beliefs into the existing system. Motivated by a desire for equality and stability for her people, Ka’ahumanu, rendered with great compassion by Kneubuhl, is easily interpreted through a strong feminist lens. Her breaking of the taboos and her strength in confronting and questioning the missionaries tells a tale not often heard in history classes of the intelligence and diplomacy of the Native Hawaiian women during a time of great turmoil.

Throughout, Johnson’s portrayal of Ka’ahumanu was rich and multi-layered, informed by her study of chant and her use of the Native language, which was spoken in tandem with the English text in the script.

Ka’ahumanu’s incorporations of Christian values, which take place incrementally throughout the story, are shown as nuanced psychological negotiations which cause her to place value on what she witnesses in the missionary women: permission to teach writing, to talk about their god, to sit at the table with their husbands to eat. Yet, the discrepancies are not lost upon her, and she is well aware of the hypocrisies that allow the women to speak of their god, but not give religious counsel. In Act II, scene 7, she admits to Sybil that she sees the good in some of their ways but that her heart still holds back, remembering how the old gods ruled over her in ways she did not like, “So, when I saw a chance, I took them down.” She expresses her fears about how strongly the Christian god holds their hearts saying, “I would never be able to change the beliefs of the people once this god took hold.”

The play is itself a negotiation, seeking reconciliation with what is known of the actions of Ka’ahumanu and what can never be known of her internal struggle to do what was right for her people. In the final monologue of the play, she states, “To think too long on the ways of the past is to ignore the hungry sharks that swim among us.”

* * *

The reading of The Conversion of Ka’ahumanu was followed by a post-performance discussion with playwrights Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl, the reading’s director Marie Clements, playwright Diane Glancy and director Betsy Theobald Richards, and centered on the concerns of writing about early cultural contact.

Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl began by explaining the genesis of the play, her relationship to history, and the women writers that influenced her. Betsy Theobald Richards and the panelists then discussed history written not only from a woman’s perspective but also from the point of view of the colonized and the power in reclaiming those stories and giving them a more three-dimensional treatment. Read the full transcript of the discussion here.

Performance Coverage: Laura Shamas's CHASING HONEY

2009-01-26T20:21:00.005-05:00

Colony Collapse and a Defense of the Maternal

Laura Shamas’s Chasing Honey, November 14, 8pm
Cast: Cara Gee, Sheila Tousey, James Fall, Chaske Spencer, Tamara Podemski, Cody Lightning, Gary Farmer, Ryan Victor Pierce

By Tom Pearson

The layers upon layers of analogy and metaphor in Laura Shamas’s play Chasing Honey, read at The Public Theater on November 14, 2008, could, in the hands of a less adept writer, become an overwhelmingly muddy mess. But Shamas is, thankfully, a writer of great delicacy and depth. Her characters speak with youthful slang and colloquial carelessness to the point that we are often surprised when the full, weighty impact of a scene falls upon our heads.

The play commenced with a dreamy sequence as the character of Kai, played by Sheila Tousey, appeared to her daughter, Sandy (actress Cara Gee), and we were immediately confronted with the complex breakdown of the mother/child relationship that becomes an overarching metaphor for the work. Tousey’s reading of Kai was a fluid dance between the wise spirit mother and the unraveling junkie determined to self-destruct. Gee, likewise, treated her reading of Sandy with equal parts youthful naiveté and the resulting wisdom of someone who is forced into responsibility too soon. Sandy’s father Andrew, actor James Fall, is a stabilizing force in her life, but only momentarily, before he is lost to a tour of duty with the Shadow Wolves in Afghanistan.

Another familial relationship in the play reunites actors Gary Farmer and Cody Lighting as Jimmy and his son Len, two migrant beekeepers who set out to solve the problem of Colony Collapse Disorder within their hives. Farmer and Lightning’s relationship as father and son was so warm and complex and immediately believable that it was evident that they share a great rapport with one another that is both fluid and readily available. In fact, the entire cast felt like a who’s who among Native performers, and the incredible synergy between them was palpable, lending the reading a great deal of energy and clarity.

The two main characters of the play, Sandy and Len, meet through a university Native American Studies club, which represents an alternate community for them and the other youth in the play which includes Mack, played by Chaske Spencer and Heather, played by Tamara Podemski. Within this group, Shamas gives us all the politics of identity and reclamation that face the individual characters, but also Indian youth at large. Within the group and in their efforts to save the bees, Sandy and Len try to tease out meaning from their family units-in-crisis, the complicated relationships and imminent loss of their fathers, and the absence of their mothers. At the same time, they find themselves being drawn together by their shared experiences of loss, which eventually allows them to find solace in each other.

The concept of Colony Collapse Disorder for the bees becomes synonymous with the disintegrating mental and physical stability of Sandy’s mother and the breakdown of her family unit. And while Len’s family unit parallels this, it also turns the metaphor back onto Mother Earth, illustrating the circular and interconnected relationship of the two and what this crisis reflects of larger environmental issues. Shamas shows us that when the pressure is on the maternal, the circle cannot hold: our mothers lose control and vanish; the queens abandon their hive and the bees die; Mother Earth revolts. And somehow the play, under the direction of Alanis King, never feels too heavy. It remains haunting and sad, especially because the issues of family and community are not repaired. Worse, Colony Collapse Disorder is still an issue in our own world when we leave the theater. Yet, we are left with a kernel of hope that with love and some attentive care we can relieve the pressure on the maternal and perhaps find some answers to help us repair the circle.

Chasing Honey also featured the talents of Ryan Victor Pierce on stage directions.

* * *

Chasing Honey was followed by a post-performance discussion featuring Native playwrights Eric Gansworth, Diane Glancy, Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl, Laura Shamas, and William S. Yellow Robe, Jr.

In the discussion following the reading, each of the playwrights discussed their different approaches to playwriting. First, Laura Shamas discussed her mandate to write plays that provide opportunities for the greatest number of Native actors. Later she explicated her use of metaphor and defense of the maternal. Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl answered questions with regard to contemporary work. Diane Glancy spoke about her role as a playwright and educator and to the issue of student expectations from Native work. She discussed the disappointment students feel when they read Silko, Momaday, Welch, and Erdrich and find not a spiritual enlightenment that they seek, but the harsh realities of contemporary American Indian life in all its disappointment and effort to recreate meaning from nothing.

William S. Yellow Robe, Jr. furthered this line of thought by raising questions about audience and privilege. In an eloquent moment, he proclaimed: “We want men of peace, but every man of peace, we’ve assassinated,” and then he goes on to speak about how the days of sending a message to the “Great White Father in the East” are over. Still giddy from the presidential election results of a few weeks earlier, you could feel the electricity in the audience at this proclamation. Like my assessment of the play above, it seemed true here as well, that whatever rigorous debate and critical discourse occurred throughout the festival, an undercurrent of unified hope frequently bubbled to the surface.

Read the entire transcript from the post-show discussion.

Performance Coverage: Eric Gansworth's RE-CREATION STORY

2009-01-26T20:20:00.003-05:00

Circuitry and Storytelling

Eric Gansworth’s Re-Creation Story, November 15, 8pm
Cast: Billy Merasty, Dylan Carusona, Joe Cross, Michelle St. John, Monique Mojica, Kim Rosen, Avia Bushyhead

By Tom Pearson

When an accomplished contemporary artist like Eric Gansworth, fluent in the languages of poetry, prose, and visual art, decides that his latest endeavor is a dramatic work, the results are rightfully pastiche, a post-modern amalgamation of his writing, painting, and performative aspects all woven into a complex tapestry. Or better yet, a circuit board of disparate, yet connecting impulses. Gansworth’s play, Re-Creation Story had its reading on November 15, 2008 at The Public Theater.

The subject matter immediately presents the playwright with a conundrum of sorts, how to render himself autobiographically as the title character of the work while recreating an actual event in his life where he endeavors to re-tell the Creation Story of Haudenosaunee. There’s a lot of “Re’s.” Then, there’s a consideration of cultural sensitivity and ownership which is most often addressed as an advance apology for all that the writer does not know, and with a heavy dose of the self-referential.

The company consisted of Billy Merasty reading the part of Eric Gansworth and supported by a cast of characters representing various ages and occupations as they relate to him, including: Dylan Carusona, Joe Cross, Michelle St. John, Monique Mojica, Kim Rosen, and Avia Bushyhead on stage directions. Additionally, slide projections behind the podium where Merasty speaks often support his postulations by incorporating Gansworth paintings. More frequently though, the slides layer an additional voice onto the narrative with written comments becoming a kind of two dimensional character that speaks sassily back to the character of Eric and the audience.

The fragmented narrative begins with an effort to tell the Creation Story of the Haudenosaunee and is quickly complicated by the enormity of the task and the self-realization on the author’s part that he is not a storyteller. A misstep, involving an inadvertent reply to an email list-serv, suddenly elicits a multitude of advice from the wider population and quickly shows us the complications of ownership and variation within the telling of this tale. Mojica’s elder adult female character advises, “Bring some tobacco with you and hope for the best.” An adult male, played by Cross, offers, “Apologize for every error you’re about to make. That’s the traditional way.”

But what starts as a story about the telling of a story suddenly becomes a story about family, community, loss, and a personal relationship between a mother and son. And while Gansworth’s voice is front and center, the textures of all the other voices buoy it along, and not just within the cast, but also through pop references and invocations of Joanne Shenandoah (singing the women’s shuffle song at the beginning of the reading), Laurie Anderson, and Tears for Fears.

Luckily, director Leigh Silverman is no stranger to autobiographical, meta-theatrical work. In fact, she revels in the challenge that they present. Her deft handling of the material is like that of a careful weaver, surveying the threads and beginning to pattern them in a way that brings about the larger effect. Or, again, maybe a technician soldering each piece within the circuitry, making sure the connections are ready to fire.

Re-Creation Story stands as an example of a work that deals with Native issues in the present tense, issues about preservation but also issues that center on readying tradition for the future, all filtered through the individual experience of the telling of the stories. Somehow, through the meeting of the author’s complex writing, the director’s careful touch, and a cast that brings a great deal of weight and experience to the reading, we feel the circuitry complete. We feel the energy and see the results, even if we don’t understand the mechanics involved or are unable to track just how we got there. That’s the magic of circuitry, and of theater at its most complex. And when the play finishes, no matter how circuitous the journey may have been, we do finally see the tapestry: simple, beautiful, interconnected, and complete.

* * *

The post-performance discussion following the reading of Re-Creation Story featured playwrights Eric Gansworth, Daniel David Moses, Edward Wemytewa, and director Leigh Silverman discussing issues in bringing oral tradition to the stage. Read the full transcript of that discussion here.

Meet the Public Panel: Field Discussion Transcript

2009-01-26T20:19:00.003-05:00

Field Discussion
Meet The Public
November 13, 2008, 9am
Staff: Liz Frankel (Literary Associate, The Public Theater), Mandy Hackett (Associate Artistic Director, The Public Theater), Jordan Thaler (Casting Director)

(NB: The first little bit was cut off)
Liz Frankel: I mean the first thing that I want to say in front of everybody, I mean for me it’s such a pleasure to get to know so many Native writers, because obviously that’s what I do in the literary office is focus on writers and read scripts, so while we were only able to do three at this moment in time, we read so many scripts that were so wonderful, so I now feel like my knowledge and The Public’s knowledge of Native writers has greatly expanded. And I just sort of wanted to do my plug, as I keep saying every time I meet any playwright, is keep sending me your scripts, because we are going to—it’s not like it ends here, we definitely want to want to do more Native work in the future. So I just wanted to put out there then, if you have a play that we haven’t read please send it to me, or if you see anything or know of anyone else who’s written a play that we should read, anything like that, we are just completely open and are extremely interested in Native work. So I just thought I’d put that out there, and I think meeting people and getting to know the work and meeting you all here as really been a pleasure for me. So that’s what I would like to say about the festival.

Jordan Thaler: And I would like to just tag quickly onto that. Casting five spaces, here in the building, the Delacorte and any extended programming we do outside the building, is kind of an awesome responsibility and I always sort of say, you know, to give myself the ability to sleep at night, that I can’t find everybody, that somebody has to find me. So to that end also this has also just been an incredible experience of meeting new actors. And so, additionally, as well, that everybody who’s in the sound of all of our collective voices, as this festival builds, it’s been great for us to meet knew artists, and if there are people who we haven’t me yet, that you all know, that I don’t, I’m here and it would be great if we all just sort of sharing information and saying, hey this is something, you know, to make sure the Public knows who you are and that you’re here. And so, I was just going to second the same thing for actors as well as writers, directors. I just would add to that, I mean, part of what’s so exciting about working at this theater, and I was just joking a little bit before with Randy [Reinholz]—about being older…you know I think other people can say the same thing, you know, in all of our jobs I think you get to a place where you say "gee, everyday do I teach more than I learn." And when you get to that place, I’ll say personally it’s a big drag when you recognize that you teach more than you learn. And so this festival, for the past two years, has been a great opportunity for me to have time during the year when I learn much more than I am able to teach, and I thought about that a lot as you were, as a non-Native artist, you know, during the prayer, that it’s been a great great learning opportunity and I’m very thankful for that, because they are few and far between, as you can imagine, as you get up in years, and that’s just been a great gift. I just wanted to share that.

Mandy Hackett: Thank you Jordan.

Sheila Tousey: And I just wanted to welcome every body back. The new faces, you people that are here, Alanis, great to have all of these wonderful minds and talented people here. That’s all I have to say.

Mandy Hackett: Yes.

Tamara Podemski: I’m new here, and I’m just curious how it all started?

Mandy: I think in the biggest picture, I said this last night and you know people may hear me say this again. I mean, this building is built on the idea of giving voice to people whose voices aren’t heard, I mean I think that is the legacy that Joe Papp built this building on, and I think you can look at it in a lot of different kinds of writing that have come to this building, and you know supporting writers of color, supporting disenfranchised voices, giving the stage over to people who’s voices are not necessarily worked into our mainstream culture and society yet—just cuts to the absolute core of what this building is about and certainly informs all the work we do here at the Public. So I think that that is the biggest picture. And then the specifics of this is Oskar, who you guys will get to see over the course of the festival, Oskar Eustis is the Artistic Director of The Public, is deeply, personally invested in Native theater. And as some of you may know, and he, before coming to the Public he was the Artistic Director of Trinity Rep, and he started an initiative at Trinity, to be supporting the work of Native artists, and I think that’s how he met Bill. Bill, is he here? He might still be outside. And did a tour of one of Bill’s plays across the country. So I think when he came to the Public, you know I think if Oskar were here he would say this, I think one of the things that made him the most sad to leave his job at Trinity was to kind of leave the initiative that he had started, in Providence Rhode Island, about and for Native artists. And so I think it was extremely important to him to bring that initiative to The Public Theater and so that’s kind of how we’re here. And then, of course, through Betsy Richards at the Ford Foundation. I mean you can have all the ideas that you want, but you need the leadership and the inspiration of a funder like Betsy and the Ford Foundation to be able to really make it happen. So that’s why we’re here, that’s how we got here.

Sheila Tousey: I think Bill was actually the playwright in residence at Trinity.

Mandy: Yes, that’s exactly right.

Voice: It goes back to like 2003, or something, when we did the first season of the festival at Trinity and one of Bill’s plays, and then I did the second season as well, and that was when he was invited, after that first season, to be a playwright in residence and teaching at Brown, and all of that stuff. But it was exciting right from the start. And I’m so glad that Oskar’s keeping it going down here.

Mandy: Yeah, we are too. Other thoughts, or questions, or things to talk about?

Alanis King: Would you mind sharing how next year the plan is to actually produce a play?

Mandy: Yeah, I mean, I think in the biggest picture, for the Native Theater Initiative to really succeed at the Public, is to really integrate it into the ongoing programming that we do, irrespective of doing a Native Theater Festival. So we’re looking very seriously at ways to bring the work of Native artists into our regular programming. Whether it’s through commissioning, producing—last year, I was saying to the advisory committee, we launched a lot of programs last year, and it’s a miracle that we’re all still standing –and I had my baby.

Jordan: That’s why we’re sitting.

Mandy: But we launched the Native Theater Initiative, we launched our Emerging Writers Group, which brings together unrepresented young writers who don’t have agents, who are really new to the field, creates a writers group around those writers, and we launched the Public Lab. The Public Lab is a series of stripped down, bare bones productions, that rehearse for two and a half weeks, and last year ran for two and a half weeks, and last year ran for two and a half weeks, but this year we’re extending the run to three and a half weeks. And the goal is to produce really raw, immediate, socially relevant work quickly. Fast, immediate theater for ten dollar tickets in the Shiva Theater, which as a side note, I think today at three o’clock Liz is doing a tour of the whole building. So if you’re interested in seeing all the different spaces, we have five spaces in the building, so if you want to get a sense of what the building is like, I would love everybody to go on the tour. So anyways, the Public Lab happens in the Shiva, and we’re, you know, I think the goal is to identify plays that can go into Public Lab. You know, the main stage is a more complicated conversation because we’re literary booked out two or three years in advance, but I think, whatever the specifics are, I think the goal 100% is to look for a Native play for Public Lab, look for a Native writer to commission, look for Native writers to be in the Emerging Writers Group, to really let the work that’s happening in the festival infiltrate at the ongoing current programming that makes up of what the Public Theater is doing. I think sustainability is a word that we use all the time, and I think that in order to truly sustain and succeed the goal is full integration and meshing. So if we were to do the play in Public Lab, all the apparatus, that goes into making the Native Theater Festival, would then happen around the show in the Public Lab. So instead of being a stand alone festival, the field discussions and panel work can happen around the show and Public Lab, and hopefully, down the road, in full production.

Jordan: And the thing that’s really exciting about these guys that imagined Public Lab, that’s different, is that there’s all of this work that’s kind of lived—a lot of the time we do readings, we do workshops, we do a lot of developmental work, and it’s all very sheltered and sort of kept away from the public, and the missing equation is like, oh the audience-- but what happens is, is that they have these truncated rehearsal process, and then they get up in front of people but actually rehearse until it closes, so they never stop rehearsing. So rehearsal goes all the way through the entire run, there’s like a defacto kind of rehearsal period, and then the audience is invited in to launch it, but then the rehearsal kind of continues, so that no audience truly ever sees the same thing. And by the end, you know, it’s not done; there sort of working on the work. So it’s been an incredibly—and we’ve done it both with one-person shows, as well as full cast shows, and it’s an amazing process. And the audiences were—I mean from day one, you know, nobody knew how it was going to work because it was a new thing, and you know, whether it was just people rolling for the ten dollar ticket day of kind of thing, but it was crazy, I mean everyday it was really packed, and the audiences were really responsive and the work was some of the most exciting work that we did last year…we’re giving this away. But, it was really great.

Mandy: I mean I feel like sometimes when you take the roof off, almost, and you take the pressure off of doing a main stage show, and they’re so expensive, and it kind of becomes so formal in a way, that Public Lab can almost have a much deeper, looser, free way of finding the work, finding what the show is, and you feel the electricity in a way that sometimes you don’t feel in other venues. And the best thing about Public Lab too is it’s a new way for our audiences to engage in the work. It’s not part of the subscription series, you can see one show, you can see two shows, it’s ten dollars, the work is in progress, it’s a way for our audiences to really feel apart of the process of finding new work. Not just seeing a reading, but actually seeing something on its feet, fully staged, fully designed, you know but new pages every night and kind of what that process is about.—We just got the two minute warning, so we’ll take one last question. Yes?

Ryan Victor Peirce: Just about what Jordan said earlier, about learning things over the course of the festival, do you mind sharing, any of you, maybe one thing that you’ve learned over the process?

Mandy: That’s a hard one; let me think of one thing. I think for me, what was most meaningful last year, and I hope this doesn’t sound controversial, is how powerful creating a safe space can be, to talk about issues that are facing the Native community and Native artists, and I think it has to do with geography, I think that so many Native artists are spread out. You know, in New York it’s so centralized for main stream artists, and there’s an apparatus that exists for more mainstream artists and what I learned is, how much work is already happening, because we don’t, in any way, undermine the work that’s happening, but how much more we can do to help to bring the work of more Native artists into the apparatus that exists in New York or exists in this theater, and how powerful it is to create a safe space where people can come together and, you know, talk honestly and openly about questions and challenges and hurdles and dreams and ambitions and goals, you know, for where we want Native Theater to be and, you know, for the Public to be able to be apart of that is genuinely a privilege and you really feel like you’re apart of something really important.

Jordan: I mean I can sort of tag onto that, and I know this will be hard one to give within the two minute warning and then out the door but—it may or may not be, I mean I don’t think it’s going to be revelational, but it was just for me, I think that every time I’ve sort of started something, that I don’t know what I’m doing, there’s just an enormous amount of fear. And, you know, I felt like theater is such a hard thing to be careful, but everybody was just a little on the edge of how people were saying things, and I—I mean I hope this is a funny story and not a controversial story—but I was emailing with Kennetch and Darrell and I was having to explain last year that one of the reasons why there was going to be this delay, because the timing of it was actually that we were going to be out of the office for Thanks Giving, and all of a sudden I just realized, wow that’s like bad! This politically hideous, like horrible thing to celebrate, this disgusting holiday, you know hundreds of years of repression, and suddenly I was like, “Hey, we’re going to be away for the Thanksgiving Holiday.” And as I was in the email, I was like…so it was, I mean I realized, in a funny way, but I recognize how much people—fear gets in the way of people just kind of communicating freely. And it was like, just go ahead, just bomb, you know, go ahead and somebody else will go, “you, get your ducks in the row,” and how to say what, and how to-- and that was, people were unbelievably generous, but I would say that’s been the – Learning to be less careful, I would say, has been a helpful thing. Because I would be extremely careful, and people were like, you know, he’s so careful—because it was impeding that communication.

Mandy: I think that’s great.

Modern Approaches to Traditional Storytelling: Field Discussion Transcript

2009-01-26T20:18:00.004-05:00

Field Discussion
Modern Approaches To Traditional Storytelling
November 13, 2008, 10am
Moderator: Jennifer Podemski
Panel: Doug Bedard, Tamara Podemski, and Dianne Yeahquo Reyner

Jennifer: The title of the panel basically came-- was discovered through several discussions over the year. In the summer we met on the phone on a conference call and discussed all of the different kinds of perspectives we wanted to bring to the festival this year, and some of the things we felt that need to be discussed is we wanted to open up to discussion with audience like yourself. I’d like to suggest that we will maybe not focus too much on the word traditional specifically, because I just--in the title itself it has a few other back allies that we can take a stroll down. Let’s discuss some other, maybe meanings and I’d like to specifically say community as well—modern community—from a Native perspective. So our panel today is really quite diverse, we have Tamara Podemski, actor, singer, dancer, producer. Doug Bedard, hip hop artist, producer, has a national Aboriginal radio show in Canada. Both great artists and very much in the mainstream. Dianne Reyner, who I’m just meeting for the first time, we think, from Haskell University, and is directing an original project called Re-Generations: A Celebration of our Journey and Transformation; which is pretty much what this panel is about. So I’m really happy to have everyone here. I’m going to read out their bios before we get really here we go: (please see bios on on-line journal). Please give a warm round of applause to our panelists this morning. All right, so obviously this panel is meant to encourage discussion, so everyone on this panel knows that this is about engaging with you and perhaps creating some dialogue and perhaps coming up with some brilliant ideas that will lead us into the future, and possibly lead to another panel next year. But to start off, I would like to ask our panelists what this specific title means to them and how you’re able to bring traditional or aboriginal first Nations community perspectives to your work in, obviously, the mainstream. So the title of the panel is, once again, Modern Approaches to Traditional Story Telling. So what’s your opinion on it and how do you bring it to your work. Let’s start with Dianne.

Dianne Reyner: So, my name is Dianne Yeahquo Reyner and I’ve been working in Native theater since 1974, when I became a student at Haskell Indian Nations University, which is one of two governing universities, but it is one of two that you have to be a card carrying member to attend the university. And we started that particular university theater program when there really wasn’t another one in the country. There was one starting at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, there were other small companies that were happening across the country, but there really wasn’t another one that was a cooperative program; we were also doing it alone, and out there and doing it for our communities. Now Haskell is unique in that is has, in its student population, anywhere from 140 to 150 different tribal entities at the same time at the school. So one of the first things that happened was getting to know one another and getting to know that our issues were global. Things that were affecting a South East tribe were affecting a North East tribe, things that were affecting an East Coast tribe was also affecting a Southern tribe, and I think that coming together created a huge explosion because we found out that often, for the first time, that we weren’t alone. And we found out that our particular Nation, and mine was the Kiowa of Oklahoma, wasn’t the only Indigenous culture out there because we’re so isolated when we grow up and we learn about our culture, and we know that other people are out there but you don’t—in 1974 you didn’t read about 'em, you didn’t hear about ‘em. I think there were a couple of pages in my history text books when I was attending public school that referred to Native Americans, and it was only that they were in the way when people were moving from the East Coast to the West Coast. So things have changed. We began presenting raven stories, coyote stories and things that incorporated stories, songs and dance. And in its development we began creating our own works and writing our own plays and presenting them to our own communities. Now since that time there has been a Native American explosion in the Theatrical community, if you can call it that, maybe it’s still a bubble and I think we are largely doing that because I think we are isolated and we continue to be isolated. And I am mentioning this because things like The Public Theater are so important because they are bringing us together and help us realize that we aren’t working out there in isolation. Going back to traditional storytelling, the, and I also, when I left Haskell, and I’m no longer at Haskell-- I’m with the American Indian Repertory in Kansas, and we’d been producing work for the last two years and when we left Haskell there was a group of us that started a theater, so if you want to submit work to us that’s great, and we want to use Native actors and we have big dreams.

Jennifer: I have a question actually for you. Is there something you need to focus on? Maybe while you’re choosing? Are you looking to speak to a Native audience? Are you looking to speak to a Non-Native audience? Are you looking for something that has a mainstream approach? Are you looking for something that comes from a more traditional storytelling? Or is it all of the above and you’re trying to satisfy every appetite?

Dianne: Well it’s all of the above. Lawrence is a very diverse community, it’s a university town so there’s a lot of experimental theater that goes on, so the appetites within that particular community can embrace everything. We are looking to present works that...I think when we do Native Plays we have to look at how it expresses us as Native people, because that’s where it comes from, that’s where the art comes from and if we’re true to that than I think it continues and flows to our audience members, and our audience members in Lawrence where we’re building different plays, are receptive to any presentation. And I love it when they come out of a particular play and it was not what they were expecting. People continue to expect that we are going to do traditional stories, that we are going to do raven stories, and we’re going to do coyote stories, and we’re going to have a drum on stage, and we’re going to have a fancy dancer on stage. So when they come and we’re going to do a Native presentation, a Native viewpoint that comes from that particular artist, from that particular playwright’s experienced, I think it’s probably the most tremendous gift that they can give to our audience and they’re community. It has to speak to Native people, because its Native artists—like it or not, that’s who we represent. And when one of us stands up front and says I’m a Native artist and I am a representative of my Nation, than we have an enormous responsibility to tell it accurately, and to have it be recognized to our communities and to other Native people and if it’s not recognized to other communities and other Native people than we’ll know that we’ve really done our job and can call ourselves a Native artist.

Jennifer: Thank you for that. I think last you, some of you were here, I think we discussed trying to define Native theater and I think it took five days to figure out that we really couldn’t agree on one thing. There were so many great ideas that came out of it, concepts and perspectives, and I think what you just said sort of encapsulated the experience last year; that’s kind of it in a nutshell.

Now I suppose my question, going back to traditional, is that you’re saying to present a piece from a Native perspective, as a writer, as a performer, as an actor, as a dancer, the medium is: we have a responsibility to our communities to reflect accurately what that community is experiencing. A traditional story or a modern day event or circumstance. Now both of you guys (Tamara and Doug) work closely with Modern day situations. Whether it’s training youth, and the long term effects of residential schools, or the loss of a culture, the loss of language, using theater and music as perhaps the platform to address some of these issues. So, maybe I’ll ask you first Tamara, what do you find is the biggest challenge. Obviously there’s a gap, in telling these stories, so who is your audience and how do you bridge that gap and how do you make it …to everybody, so that everybody learns something.

Tamara Podemski: I never go into it trying to make it relevant to everybody because I don’t know if I can satisfy that. I interpret on a modern approach, I interpreted the title actually as a Modern approach of a traditional story telling. I know that we come from a people and we grew up and we learned about ourselves—we’re sisters by the way, that’s why I’m saying that—but we did that from hearing the stories from our grandparents and our parents and passed down to us, so that’s just something that’s taught me to tell my own stories. The modern approach that I bring to that is the responsibility of reflecting what the modern reality is. I know that if one project comes that it’s going to teach kids dance in a really remote community and it’s under the umbrella of the government of Canada, under the health money that we get, I have to bring art and dance to that, but the modern approach I feel is that I look at those kids, I have to know that the only music they listen to is hip-hop, and how can I—it would be impossible for me to go in there and teach them fancy dancing. They’re just six to twelve, they don’t care, I want to be able to walk in there and affect them. And I find that the homework and the research and the responsibility as an artist to find out how to tap them into some place of empowerment, that they can get something from it and yet still have it be unique to what their Native experience is. So that changes with every group that I work with. I use the hip-hop one because that was the one that threw me into: yes, you might be an expert on this style of dance, and yes you may have studied here, but when you walk into a group of Cree speaking students they don’t give a shit. They need to see that they’re looking to you, to open up the world, it’s a flying community and they’ve never gone beyond that. It’s also my responsibility to bring them the things that might empower them, so I use hip-hop when necessary—I use hip-hop when necessary!—to lure them in. But once I get them, once I’ve kind of proven myself as cool and on their level, that’s when I can talk about dance, and how it was the first thing that we did when we came out, and how we hear the rhythm, and how you hear that hip-hop beat, and I can do some choreography as hip-hop and then I go right into fancy dance, to show that this beat is pulsing in us and that’s what our body knows, and it sounds like a different kind of drum—Doug and I were talking about this the other day because we work together with our music—but we both kind of like a hundred beats per minute, when we write music, because it resembles a powwow drum and it’s the easiest thing to fancy dance to. So I kind of manipulate the situation by bringing music in that I can easily—exactly what Martha Redbone did last night with that hand drum song and the segue into when the band kicked in—I love that subliminal “you don’t even know what’s going on, you’re getting the culture, and then you’re getting to see how it can thrive and actually complement what’s going on. So I find that I’ve had to, instead of try to go in with the intention of cultural accuracy and that heavy responsibility of instilling pride and accuracy into these kids, I have to kind of flip it around and ask—where are they at, what is there experience, and then find a way to get to it from there. And I think that’s what I also had to do as an actress, because when I got into acting, it was generally the time that, I don’t know if you guys use it down here, but the Red Renaissance? In film and television it was like the early nineties where it was really cool to be Indian, where you could get a job somewhere, in some hall mark movie, by putting on some buckskin—or some good films as well, but the problem was, when you go it with light skin, even though you can’t book the non-Native roles because they see your eyes, and they see that something’s different about you so we couldn’t really every dress up in the buckskin because we were half breeds, and okay so where do we go? And so I find that I always go back to Turtle Gals’ performance, with Monique Mojica and Michelle St. John, and—and I can’t even remember the name.

Monique Mojica: Scrubbing Project.

Tamara: Scrubbing Project! So it was this amazing piece of theater, I don’t even know how long ago it was.

Monique: 2002 and 2005.

Tamara: Okay, so that was probably when I saw it first. And that was the first time I understood that the only way to tell this story and understand my place in the world is to WRITE IT MYSELF. And to speak my experience. I could never represent what the 500 nations that we’re responsible to represent in Canada, and that was kind of the kick in the ass that I needed, and I consider that a modern approach. The understanding that we have to deal with the reality today, and I think the only reason why my art has continued to thrive is because I’m constantly dealing with, or seeing,what the state of things are today. And I think at that time, I think right after my first album came out and I wrote a half-breed anthem, and it was in Hebrew and Ojibwa and English, and that to me was, represented to me, my attempt at understanding my place in the world and understanding that no one would understand that, and then all of a sudden half breeds are writing in from everywhere around the world —my god I’m a Jewish Indian too, or I’m a Ukrainian this, and then there was a power, when you realize that you’re not the only one and that it’s okay to, I guess when you own up to what you are and stop trying to fit in, that’s kind of been my best force or attack to get through things.

Jennifer: Thank you. You mentioned something that actually provides me with a good segue Doug, which is almost moving backwards from taking the platform and seeing where those kids are at. Because I think that so many of us—so many of us—I think all of us take training very seriously, and working with youth very seriously to help encourage them to bring that voice forward to encourage these people to bring that voice forward or encourage them give us employment when we’re no longer around. So I think the important thing to understand is that hip-hop, for example, and a lot of these discussions around this particular panel came about because there is a really strong desire, and a personal desire with a lot of other people to get a big show on Broadway. Like an In the Heights show, and originally I thought it would be great to have someone from In the Heights to talk about how they got this show up there and that it’s relevant to a mainstream audience, and it’s in a language that youth understand. It’s culturally relevant and really profound and educational. It’s like a hip-hop spoken word musical that’s on Broadway right now. So in terms of bringing the, bridging the gap between the platforms, on which you teach young people, on teaching hip hop, and brings the way in. That brings me to an introduction to Doug. I mean, you work with pretty much every Native hip-hop artist, around the world, on your show, the PLEX show. And what I’d like to talk about is how do you see that community, young Aboriginal, First Nation Indigenous hip-hop artists expressing their culture, their community perspective through hip hop, and how have you seen it grow in the past 10 years? That’s a lot of questions.

Doug Bedard: I only speak Canadian so bare with me. I find, on a personal basis I’ve been writing for over a decade and I find that, like I’m indirectly affected by residential schools. So there is a lot of pain, there’s a million other Canadians that deal with it as well and over the years I spoke about my pains and a lot of Aboriginal youth related to it, but it never really elevated into a mainstream thing until I started to speak of how I dealt with those pains. You know, before it was I’d be complaining of a lot of stuff, and now I’ve elevated it to a point where—

Jennifer: It’s like empowerment music that you do.

Doug: Yeah, it’s more empowerment like how do I deal with it. Like, even with the theme of my label, New Leaf, you know it’s about coming from a less privileged background.

Jennifer: A ruff (SIC)

Doug: A ruff. And kind of bringing out the positive side of it. And I feel like there’s a thin line between heart and art and like, some of the more talented artists who can appeal to the main stream their music really doesn’t have a lot of substance, but they can write those catchy tunes and then the ones who really put their emotions into it fail to get heard because people really aren’t as interested in—as much. But lately I find that people are bridging that gap and it’s easier for me these days than it would have been 10 years ago hosting an Aboriginal radio show because now there is that bridge and people are relating to those issues in song and also kind of bobbing their head to it at the same time; that really works for me. Can you…

Jennifer: There was another question, but I’m onto something else now because you’re inspiring me to think about…is that how I’m supposed to be moderating?

Sheila Tousey: Yeah, you go with the flow.

Jennifer: Thank you Doug. And, what you said I think brought up an interesting point and that is the question that I would like to give to the audience. I guess heart and art—is there a way for our stories to get to the main stream and do you think it’s even important. Because I think that is something that we all deal with…is, like, it’s really good, and what you saying is culturally responsible and culturally relevant and your imagery that you’re using—like something we saw on the performance the other night, on the Canadian Aboriginal Music Awards, was a hip-hop tune to a drum. A lot of heart—personally I think, on a bigger level, just didn’t work; but the heart was there. But bring that to a mainstream audience and it just wouldn’t fly. It looked like patchwork; someone trying to get all those elements together. But valiant effort! You just wanted to praise the guy for doing it and trying to bring that to the forefront. But is it possible, can we do it, is it important and does it even matter? That’s my question. Did you have anything else to say?

Doug: No.

Jennifer: Okay. Can we open that out to the audience and start a little bit of a discussion. And the rules of discussion, I guess, is let’s try and do a back and forth.

Rose Stella: I think the important thing about heard and art is not that heart is art, is that art must have heart for it to be meaningful. Art that, art is relative, for someone who has heart might now be what I think is art. But for me, no matter what it is it demands it has to have heart in it. It has to have, for that artist, a heart felt meaning for them because it has to touch people.

Jennifer: So on that, Rose, that is important so you say touch people—so how do you ensure that there is an audience.

Rose: I believe, that whether I like the art or not, but if the artist created his art for love and heart—it will touch people. Whether it’s not me—I might not like it but it’s touched me—although, oh I don’t like that, I thought how to respond. But other people will respond to it different than me. What I’m saying is if it’s not created with heart it isn’t anything. And it’s the same with someone going up and doing a stage performance, who just goes up and does the actions, but they haven’t invested in any heart in the work—it’s across the board whether it’s a piece of sculpture, a piece of poetry, hip-hop, it doesn’t matter what it is—if it isn’t created with heart it doesn’t matter to me. And I think that’s the trick with any kind of art. If it isn’t created with a sense of emotional and heartfelt ways, than it isn’t going to mean anything. And there’s a lot of art that is created without heart, it’s created with dollar signs around it, music, some theater, it’s like it’s an ambition, it’s a dollar sign, it’s this it’s that, and people come away thinking: what the hell was that? And people will do that across the board, it’s like- "Woo—what was that?" And it just makes people a little confused because they don’t know—because it lacks the heart—what their trying to say.

Doug: I agree with a lot of what you’re saying too. And it wasn’t even evident to me that the whole heart issue really, until I started seeing that, in the creation of my album, I had a lot of different artists, and I always feel that I bring out the best in other artists. And you can really obviously tell, if you listen to it from start to finish, who is there and really writing from their experiences and their emotions, and who is really just there for the money grab. You know, “oh, so this guy is doing an album, oh 200 bucks, yeah sure I’ll feature on it!” And I’m not really too sure how theater and music are the same, and I think that there’s different variables involved, like you were saying, someone put out a solid performance, or put their heart into it. Sometimes there are other things that are factoring in it as well, because it’s more of a team effort in something like that. If somebody else wrote it, you know, this person did the most outstanding performance they’ve ever done, but they’ve also got to rely on a good story as well. You know with music, I find that I mean, it’s all up to me basically. I have the final say, and you know, a lot of it too is its recording. And it’s not the same as theater because a lot of it’s live, with my music, and I have the opportunity to fix my mistakes.

Jennifer: But I think what’s common, and I’ll go to you in a second—Rose is the Artistic Director for the Center for Indigenous Theater in Toronto, talking about how, you know, a lot of heart will touch people. And you mentioned, yeah this is great, but where’s the audience who’s going to listen to this. So I guess, I would like to know from your perspective, Rose, that’s great, but what are you teaching your students at CIT in terms of reaching an audience that is actually going to, or reaching a wider audience, and I don’t want touch on Randy’s panel.

Rose Stella: Reaching an audience is later on for us. I need to have them reach themselves. And this is what you guys are talking about. I mean how many years were you in the business already before you looked at this questions and went, wo---

Jennifer: A Long time.

Rose: The first step is to reach yourself and to know how meaningful you are to yourself. My experience is if you do something with heart, people are going to listen because they can’t help it. Because you have broken through a barrier that um—there are barriers everywhere because people are protecting themselves. And once you do something with an emotional viability, people go, that was brave. Or oh, I feel that way. People might not get that taking aback, but they’ll go away and think about it; whether they like it or not. I just think its really important to begin with what’s meaningful to an individual and I know that we’re talking about how do you get to Broadway, how do you get into the mainstream, but you really have to begin with your own story. What is it? Approaches to traditional, you know modern approaches, you have to begin there. It’s meaningful so that you can make it meaningful outside there. You will find a way. I mean scrubbing project found a way. And you’re finding your way, and you find your way, we’re all finding a way to make it meaningful out there, I think it’s to break in the mainstream, have heart, because most of it lacks heart. Then you have an explosion and you go who, and you walk out of that mainstream theater and go, well that was different. And I feel good walking out of there. I don’t feel like somebody has just tried to sell me a product, you know, and there’s so much of that going on. You want to go away feeling inspired. So, I think it really begins, you have to touch upon you. You know we have such amazing young people at the school, and some of them are pretty broken and you talk about, you know, having to deal with the residential school everyday and it’s a very important, trying to help those young people understand that they are valued. And that their story is valued. And they can tell that story, it’s valuable.

Jennifer: Thank you Rose. Sorry, just have one question.

Kim Snyder: Hi my name is Kim Snyder and I’m an actress first, and playwright, and I definitely think you have to have heart and art, or what are we doing! And I think the way we get to mainstream is to really have a universal message. If you’re dealing with art in an honest way, in an organic and honest manner, and that is where the development begins, you will reach people—you will. It is a given because it is honest. And that, everybody relates to on a universal level. So, how do we get to mainstream? We really have to break down all the walls, and..I want to say Chachkas—coming from the Jewish end here, and really get down to what’s important. What is the message, what are we saying? Where are we going with it? And who do I reach? And that is how we get to mainstream. With honesty and truth because, everyone will relate to that. The key is to work as an artist, and I’m from theater so I will speak it from a theatrical point of view, but in music as well, how do I get there? How do I get to that place of truth? Right? And what is really going on? That’s when they’ll respond, that’s when we’ll be in the forefront. I loved everything we’re hearing here from the panel. You’ve just opened so many doors in my head that I had questions too, as far as bringing traditional and contemporary together and that is so important. And you’re right . We have to talk to people, where they are now, and respect where we came from. And honor that. But it’s about today. And so where are we as artists today. What’s going on in the world? What’s going on in your neighborhood? That’s what we have to write about. Not something that happened—and yes we can write about history, of course, and we honor it and respect it—but it’s now, it’s the present. And that’s how we reach people. That’s how we get to the mainstream. And that’s how they connect.

Dianne Reyner: I was just going to say, talking about that combination, and honoring. The production that we just did is something that we’re sort of experimenting with and moving in other directions and looking at how theater can be used. We have a large Native population in our schools, and we have a partnership with the Indian education department and program in our school district. And so, some of the projects that we’re developing, right now, are going into the school system and taking the stories of these students and using them to create their story and present it to their community. And along that same line, I’m going to be working with an in-patient treatment facility for teenagers. And one, they’re going to do my play, which is a play that I have which is based on alcoholism within a family and governmental policies and how the family has gotten to this place and how they have to overcome it, it a real nutshell, but there will be counselors there and that can assist. And they’re going to be presenting it to their families. And they’re going to be the actors and they’re going to say the words, so I will teach them how to do a stage reading. And so once that develops, and going back into that treatment center, and taking their stories, getting their trust, having them feel good, you know, how did they get to be in this place? And how has their culture helped them, hurt them, assisted them, do they want to be white, do they want to be black, do they want to be Native, and who are they as people. And so using theater in those contexts, to help people tell their own story—RE-Generations—we took traditional stories for an Athabascan actor. We began with traditional stories, which was his journey, his personal journey—basically a one man show—taking those personal journeys from his ancestors and moving them through his experience as a native person. As someone who’s half white, and grew up in New York City I believe, and then moved back to Alaska, and how did that affect him, how did he reclaim that memory of his culture, and how did it move him onward to where he became a Shakespearean actor. And it was very important to me when I was structuring this particular piece, for him to do some Shakespeare, and he did some Shakespeare in Clinket, and for the audience to see that—hey, we’re native people, we can do Shakespeare, we can do other things, we can do hip-hop, we can do reggae, we can do rock-and-roll, we can do all of these things---but as a personal artist we blend those with who we are and where we came from. Now, I’m never going to get rich in theater, because that’s not my goal, when I act, I do it because the piece requires it. Because we need another actor. You know, I started off playing hookers and now I’m playing grandmothers. So, that’s kind of how...

Jennifer: Life of a Native actor.

Dianne: Life of a Native actor has happened, you know, so I’m no longer the spinster, I’m grandmother spider, or whatever is required from that. And one of the things, as personal, as a Native artist, you know I’m coming from my own stories, I’m coming from my own history, I’m coming from everything that I grew up with. And I grew up at a time when my grandparents were living on the Plains, you know, my grandparents were shooting buffalo. And it’s their stories that I hear in my head every time that I write. And not particularly personal, but it’s the power and the strength and the rhythm and the strength of these stories, because with each generation we continue to add our own and so the stories that I write are my stories that I see and that I experience on a daily basis, whether it be painful or joyous, and often times it’s extremely painful, and then joyous. I’m tired of seeing stories where we’re suffering, I’m tired of seeing plays that somebody is finger wagging, I’m tired of seeing plays that say “look what you did to us, aren’t you awful, don’t you feel bad”. And so, I think when you open a door and you open a window for somebody to experience the world, as you see it, as you look out your eyes and you catch them in that, you catch that audience, and it’s like oh my god I’ve never seen this way before. You know, that’s the power of what we do. And it’s one reason I’m never going to get rich. Because if I have to do these plays, from a church basement, or if I’m going to do it in a classroom, or if I’m going to do it to a bunch of fifth graders, you know, I’m not going to make a lot of money. So you know, personally, as an artist, you have to define what is your goal? Is your goal to get published? I’d love to get published, but nobody is going to publish me, because my stuff does not fit in mainstream.

Suzan-Lori Parks: Don’t say that. I’m sorry…You don’t need to go there. You don’t need to go there.

Dianne: Well I am published, but…(laughter)

Suzan-Lori: Much better—thank you.

Dianne: But one of the things, the hurdle that you have to is, often times they don’t fit within the structure. But that’s one of the things we have to teach the students that we’re going to—they have to learn the structure. Audiences have to have some comfort zone, and that’s a definable structure that they are familiar with and once you give them that comfort zone, than you can break that comfort zone. I don’t know…it’s just the way I look at things.

Suzan-Lori: But the structure will also change.

Dianne: The structure does change. It changes from every story, every story is different.

Suzan-Lori: Exactly, so the structure is always changing, it’s alive, it’s a living thing. And we can profit from knowing that. That it’s not a set thing set in stone; it’s moving constantly.

Dianne: Agreed.

Tamara: and I also think that, somewhere we have to give ourselves permission to be able to be successful and sustainable and maybe even possibly make money from this.

Suzan-Lori: Yes! A lot of money from it.

Tamara: And I think because we hold on so much to the integrity and especially because your average artist is this valued principled, protective, valiant creative warrior, and then when you add the representation of their community, you know it becomes more of this I think, it has to be a struggle. And I’m so tired of it, that somewhere I learned from so many of the actors that I’ve grown up under, and that I’ve romanticized, you guys, heard you personal lives, watch your professional careers, and romanticize this struggle, and I don’t think it’s okay anymore. I don’t think that it has to be—or that it should be—and this thing that the only way that we have integrity and the only way that we can hold on and protect our art is that there is five people in the house, and if it’s in some avant-garde theater and that’s how we will always know that we’re doing the real art. We’re doing the real art with heart because it’s no mainstream. And maybe you just caught me in a week where I’m really pissed off about that, because, you have the moments when you’re looking at your bills and you’re wondering why. But the thing that is keeping you going is because you are fighting for something you believe in, but I don’t even want to…My friend Nicole, she’s here from Toronto, we’ve known each other for a very long time, we are both these artists with heart that wonder every time: why do we keep doing this. But I think we’re just entering our creative zone. Because when you become the creator than you can get your power back. But when you’re just the actors, it’s so fricken hard and your stripped from all your power and I think that’s why Scrubbing Project, I always go back to that, because that was the thing that showed me I can make something. And In the Heights, you know Jen and I went out on the curb after and we were like “what the fuck was that”? Excuse my language—but it blew our mind because, now it kind of affects the title: Modern Approaches to Telling our Stories. And somehow he managed to have a universal message for a diverse—he’s dealing with Latin people, like an umbrella of a huge people that are diverse, and he was able to get the Cuban Dominican, Columbian, Indian—all in one story. And that’s what Jen and I are always talking about because we always felt that the only way that we can move forward is to tell our specific story, because we can’t speak for the people, so all we can do is tell our unique story and we have to challenge our minds to: what is that bigger story and, I mean, we play around, we brainstorm these ideas but I have that same questions because, the power of seeing the little kids that went to the theater and them able to see all of those faces. And I remember when I was twelve and the first time I came to New York and I went to see A Chorus Line and Priscilla Lopez, who’s in—she’s like the Puerto Rican woman on stage—and I was like, that girl looks like me. And it was the first time I saw someone who didn’t look quite White, not totally white, but I didn’t know any Latin People, I’m from Toronto, we didn’t have really have…

Jennifer: --not quite White.

Tamara: Not quite White. And that changed my life. And the reason we keep going back to the community work, cause we haven’t found a way. It’s either community work or it’s our career work. And we haven’t found a way to reconcile the two, so that, I mean the ideal thing would be, that universal—and you know it’s not universal because there are a million different stories. That didn’t resolve anything, it just expressed my frustrations.

Jennifer: Mandy had a question a little while ago. Would you like to continue with that?

Mandy Hackett: I have another question for you Dianne, in terms of the other writers you are working with at the American Indian Repertory Theatre.

Dianne: The American Indian was a huge bone of contention but that was what we decided on.

Mandy: Oh really? That’s a whole other subject, which I would love to talk to you about, because we had similar issues around naming this festival, to a lesser degree. Anyways, the writers who are working for your theater, who do think that they’re writing for, and if you can talk specifically about the kinds of plays that you’re seeing. I mean you talked earlier about how they are not interested in writing the coyote stories and the raven stories anymore, and it made me wonder--

Dianne: No they are interested, in writing things that they need to write about, in a diverse way. I guess it’s the feathers and the beads that they’re not interested in writing. They’re not interested in doing a presentation of being Indian.

Randy: No more folklore.

Dianne: No more folklore. It’s like we can do more than that. So it’s not that they are not interested, in Re-Generations there were raven stories, there were "How Ravens Set the Stars and Moons,"but it moved the audience from that traditional Native story stereotype and it moved them from that into more contemporary stories. Like what is it like being a Native half-breed in a Native Arctic village, and what is it like being the other when you’re one place, and when you’re the other place you’re the other one. So what is that experience like? And what is it like to move within that—and we used one person to bring that audience into the future. And one of the things that was very heavy in it was the language, was the Athabascan language and the Tlingit language that was used in the process of that because it was very important to here the rhythms of that. To hear the rhythms of that speak and to hear something exotic you know, throughout that and experience what that’s like. And realize that, you know, they were seeing something—and it did move the audience. And one of the things that it really affected were the young people in the audience. We had a young Athabascan Junior high school student, who had never seen theater before, but he came specifically because this was an Athabascan actor and he was really excited to meet him, so he volunteered to usher, for a free ticket. And he jus waited and waited and waited, and it impacted him so much that we introduced him to the actor and to see that and still—it’s still the same story that it was when I was a kid. That impact of seeing someone like you who is successful, who is powerful, who is doing something that you are afraid of. And having that example was extremely impacting to the young people who came to see that story. So, I’m sorry, just—it’s not that the writers aren’t interested in that, it’s just telling it in a different way, telling it to a different audience.

Mandy Hackett: And who is your audience at your theater?

Dianne: Gosh, last audience we had anything from ten year olds to ninety year olds. So, I mean it’s a huge diverse audience. And what we’re using our theater for is to workshop a lot of pieces that hopefully will become part of a touring production. And what we’re going for is to be able to take these touring productions into Native Communities. So, developing something that can tour into Native communities, that can go up to Sisseton, that can go up to North Dakota, that can go up to…and be shared with these communities so that the reflective--- There’s a story, there’s a story that will probably get to—can I tell this story real quick? A Native writer I know, that I’ve worked with, told me a story when I met her, and I don’t even think she realized how impacting it was, she was just telling me the story about being tired and fed up and being irritated at her four children, so she took off and she went to where all mothers go to when they’re trying to get away from the kids: she went to Burger King; just to have a moment alone. Just to eat a hamburger and have a bag a fries and a coke. So she’s sitting there at Burger King being alone, wondering what the hell she’s doing with her life, and why does she keep writing this stuff. And she looks up and she sees, sitting a little farther away from her this absolutely gorgeous Native woman. And feeling the way she did, she thought, oh hell, of course, I look like a rag, I feel like crap, and this woman has to come in and sit at this particular moment, and make me worse about myself. So she sat there, and every so often she’d glance up at this woman and she thought: she is so pretty. So she’s getting angrier and angrier and more and more irritated, and as she gets up, she goes—I’m sick of this I’m leaving. So she gets up, she gets her tray, and she’s determined to walk by this Native woman and give her a dirty look because that’s how she feels. So she gets up and she walks by, and she realizes that she was looking in a mirror and she didn’t even recognize herself. So I think that says a lot of what we’re trying to accomplish at the American Indian Repertory Theatre. Is to be able to present something that we recognize. And I think, at least in my generation, I was taught to be proud of who I was, but nobody else is going to be able to see what I’m proud of, and I grew up being taught, you know, there are certain rules that you live by. If you’re ignored that means you better correct your behavior. And I tend to talk a lot and I tend to talk loudly now because if you’re presenting your stories and you’re presenting your stories to people who don’t know the rules, than they think that they can do whatever they want. So you have to stand up, stand loud, and be proud, and do what you do. And present what you present. In a way that makes you happy. So when I say I’m never going to get rich, that’s, you know, I’m not ever going to get rich, but I’m going to have a whole heck of a lot of heck of fun while I’m doing it. And I’m going to feel good about what I’m doing.

Rose: It’s a different type of richness.

Dianne: Yeah. Well, you know, my children take all my money. So…

Jennifer: Thank you. We have a couple of questions, we’ll take yours quickly, then Ed and then Monique.

Suzan-Lori: I was just going to suggest about breaking into the mainstream, I mean, it’s a totally valid thing to want to do, and you can come back to me because I’m a playwright that’s done it without trying—which I think is the main kind of thing. It’s like you have your goal, like a mountain and your steps that you can only focus on. So it’s not like we sit around thinking “how can I tell a story that everyone will want to see,” because that’s impossible. How can I tell the best story I can and somehow knowing that that’s your goal, but keeping both eyes on your steps at all times, is somehow it happens through grace. And also I think we talked about the separation between art and heart, which I don’t think there is a separation at all. I think that’s how we resolve it. Like they use to argue the difference between form and content, you know the poets used to talk about that a lot. And they recognized that there was no difference between what the thing was trying to say and how the think looked on the page or spoke into the air. There’s no difference. So once we realize that there is---and there’s also no difference between telling your true story and reaching the mainstream. I mean it’s sometimes you just have to know it’s your goal and let it go, and tell the best story you can. It’s almost as if the stream comes to you. When we did Topdog on Broadway, the stream came—it’s almost as if the stream turned and came to us. Also talking with artists who do it, and have done it, is a good—so we can do emails and stuff, because it’s good to be in a circle of people who have done it.

Doug: I still believe there’s a difference. I mean you put your heart into something and call it art, people look at you as: okay, yeah that’s art buddy (sarcastic)

Suzan-Lori: Well I just mean like that, at the core, when it is right, when it clicks, there is no separation.

Doug: I do want to back peddle a bit. I was going to say earlier. I think the one thing that hinders the ability to reach the masses is resentment. I think a lot of, especially in music and probably in theater as well, people are, a lot of writers are a little condescending in some of their work so that really pushes away a lot of audience that can’t really relate to what they are saying. I basically think that once we let go of that resentment than we actually have that ability to access the masses.

Jennifer: Actually that brings up one question, and I know that we have a few here, I just wanted to say in response to Suzan-Lori…from the Canadian perspective, or just my perspective in Canada, I think the reason why a topic like this even came up was that there is little support, to be recognized by your community or by Canadians, as a Native artist or a Native creator or producer is fantastic. But it’s also important to be supported in your endeavors, maybe it’s not everybody should go mainstream but, what happens if everybody were able to reach a certain level and able to take strands of cultural elements to the mainstream, it’s always seen as selling out. And there’s a big, sort of, controversy. I don’t personally supported, I feel unsupported by the Native community when I create something that I want to go in the mainstream. I am called a sell out.

Suzan-Lori: Yeah, here too. When you cross fourteenth street, I was called a sell out. I do a play above fourteenth street that was it! I was not real anymore.

Doug: The thing is it’s difficult to even reach Native people, because a lot of Native people aren’t really looking at Aboriginal content, they’re looking for other mainstream. So if you’re going to reach them, sometimes you have to go through the mainstream to reach them.

Jennifer: To reach your own community.

Doug: Yeah.

Jennifer: Well the youth especially.

Suzan-Lori: But that’s great, I mean I’m saying that’s great. I’m just saying that there are paths to get there. I think mainstream is great! There’s nothing selling out about it.

Jennifer: No I don’t think so either. I just think…

Doug: I think a lot of times the mainstream has stuff that lacks—

Jennifer: Heart?

Doug: Well quality, substance. So if you can bridge that gap and bring substance to the mainstream than you’re kind of setting the new trend, right?

Jennifer: We can talk about this…we should go for dinner! Ed…

Ed Bourgeois: I think the question of, what is of substance that deals with the mainstream, it’s obviously not the traditional story as a lot of people think of traditional storytelling. It’s not necessarily the raven story. But what is there? You know, what of the first things you talked about, going into the community, is approaching young people at where they are. But where they are isn’t…they want to get out of the community. You know in Alaska there’s a huge problem with the migration from rural communities to urban communities, to the point where, you know, in a place where there’s still a really strong identity..there are still communities where people still speak their languages, were raised by their grandparents and uncles, and that exists still. There’s a huge exodus to the extent that, you know, it’s like boarding school too. The break in cultural identity will be immense. And that’s what you’re dealing with when you go into community, you know, that you need to work with them where they are. But where they are is someone else’s culture. Someone else’s…you know hip-hop didn’t originate there. So it’s not, it’s a modern approach. But where’s the tradition? Where is what’s traditional that the world needs to hear. And I propose that what that is, in whatever story that you’re writing that’s your story, is what you have that’s unique, that’s traditional and that’s value. It’s whatever your story is, having those traditional values there. We had a theme—I work at a cultural center, so I’m aware what that is for the great community—our theme is changing lives, living values. It’s all about assimilation and how the world is changed and people adapt to the change, but what remains in your stories, in your values. That’s the traditional part. It’s, you don’t have to necessarily be telling a raven story, you know, for Allen to tell a raven story, but his unique story have to do with his values—

Dianne: Did I say his name?

Ed: No I just know that he did—he is a great actor.

Dianne: He is wonderful.

Ed: Is that’s what there is to give the world? And I think that’s what the greater community needs. You know they don’t need a story of pain and repressions, you know, obviously, that’s what you run into. You can talk about your pain, but what changes people is empowering. Is the value that’s there, underneath, in that story. And I think the world needs that, you know? It’s only a minority of performers that are worried about their identity, you know there’s not a Lithuanian-American actor out there saying “I’ve got to tell that Lithuanian story”.

Jennifer: Just watch! Just watch! I think what’s interesting about what you say. Because in Canada, recently, there have been some remarks made by John Ralsten Saul. There has been a lot of discussion about what why does Aboriginal count. In general terms. And the essence of the argument is that everyone, in Canada, comes from an Aboriginal experience. So, in relation to the raven story, the question is, how do we take that raven story that’s particular to that Nation or that community and bring it to the forefront in a way that everybody understands. Teaching values, not just from that community, but that everybody can relate to. But it specifically comes from that traditional story. So that someone can say, oh wow, I’m amazed that I’ve learned an incredible lesson from the creation story from this tribe or this nation or whatever, and to connect with that inherent Aboriginal experience that everybody has in North America, that everybody is apart of and that we share, that this is where we come from. And that these are the stories that are relevant to everybody. So how do we take those stories and bring them, not just to the mainstream, but to everybody, to all people, and to share it with the world and reflect our values on a cultural level without selling out. Without doing it, necessarily for money, but because it belongs to everybody and it’s everybody’s right to know these stories. And as artists it’s our responsibility to bring that to the masses. But I think we can do that with those specific stories or prophecies or teachings or languages. There’s nothing wrong with everybody learning how to speak Cree or Ojibwa or you know…

Ed: I don’t think it needs to be that traditional story to contain the traditional values.

Tamara: It’s kind of like the form and content. That the package..it’s also that we can speak truth without packaging it as a Native product.

Kim Snyder: That’s the universal message, right.

Tamara: And truth resonates. And it’s blind and it doesn’t look like anything.

Doug: I think there’s kind of a debate on what traditional is anyway, because for the past 200 years traditional becomes something else, right?

Jennifer: And I think that is something we should discuss too, just a little bit later. Monique…

Monique Mojica: I was trying to remember where I was. Somewhere there’s a huge gap between empowerment and knowing one’s self and telling our own stories and mainstream as it exists now. That loss of heart, that loss of power, when you go in the mainstream is a real thing. My experience with mainstream was not in Native mainstream theater, it was in African-Canadian mainstream theater where I was in a real grass roots project written by Djanet Sears, Adventures of a Black Girl in Search of God, from the workshop process over. We did the first the production and it was uplifting for all of us. And you’re like, it’s a very different scale in Toronto than it is in New York, but Mirvish picked it up, which is the equivalent of going Broadway right? So in Toronto when we talk about, well when we can do what we really want on stage, you say: well when we get our Mirvish production... it was a six month run of this production, and the cast… I mean we were dying and everyone kept saying: what happened, what happened? We loved this show the first time. The first production it was, you wanted to go work, it was so much heart. And the second time through it was deadly to perform it every night. The audience still came, we had very much more support, audience based support…and somehow, I don’t know what the answer is, but we don’t have theaters, we don’t have our theaters. We don’t have physical buildings where we’re putting out, we don’t have producers, hardly at all, mostly ones we have are producing music and film but not theater. Directors are coming, but there is a loss of power. So how to bring the heart up to a place where there is a power to realize that heart is still a real gulf. And that’s where I think the selling out comes in. Because in order to get it done at all, what you have to give up is that stuff like: you know, white audiences aren’t going to stand back, and that’s risky, and you can’t risk the bums in the seats, and all that. That’s why that dissonance exists. And I want to solve it.

Suzan-Lori: So? So white audiences aren’t going to understand it. So? It doesn’t have to be that way, that’s all I’m saying. You can just go so? And you tell the story exactly how it needs to be told. And I have people on Broadway going, "Jeez is there a glossary for the language that these people?"

Muriel Miguel: We did Rez Sisters here at New York Theatre Workshop. We got lambasted, really, in the newspapers. The critics. What I found out was that there was no, understanding of what Nanabush was. And the critics refused to recognize that there was a Nanabush, what this thing was. But they would accept Fiddler on the Roof, and a fiddler on a roof! You understand what I mean? So we gave it over to New York Theatre Workshop and what we found out was that we didn’t have the power, we had the heart, which we had to fight for constantly, to do this piece. We realized that they were thinking of us as rent. They wanted to go to Broadway with it, and we were interested in the community and downtown community and all the Native theater people that were in this production, and who we reach. So when we said, how come there isn’t an ad in the Village Voice, or how come there isn’t an ad, and they said, well we don’t have the money for The New York Times. So that’s where… So I left with a terrible feeling and I left with that feeling that I could never, I have to have a theater base here. And, as Monique was talking about, we have to have a high profile here. And it has to be our mainstream. You know? It can’t be other peoples, it has to be ours, and when you invite people to something, it isn’t that you have to do what they want you to do, you have to say move over! That’s where it has to be.

Dianne: Well that’s like when Hanay talks about the fry bread circut, there’s got to be a place to do performances that is recognizable. And then spread out.

Jennifer: I hope we’re recording all of this…is that thing still working?

Kate Josephson: Yes it’s taping.

Terry: Okay, going from the..I have two kind of different comments. First was I’m going to take the popular stance and say that we do need to hear stories with our history in it, even if it’s bad, because we have not, our stories have not been humanized. Our history has not been seen as humanized. And I don’t…when I write I don’t try to speak for everybody, but I can at least tell what I know from my relatives; tell our story in that way. And I think those stories are important because they are too many people that tried to shut us up. Too many. To many times. So I think we need…somebody else said: we’re tired of all this negative rhetoric. It’s not rhetoric, it’s our history. And it had all of these reverberations that are affecting us right now. In South Dakota there was a, two hundred attempted suicides by young people, last year. And 2007 said that Native American women were most likely to be sexually assaulted. And that’s from our own people as well as the outside. So if we don’t talk about it as writers, or think about it as teachers, I think we’re doing ourselves a disservice to not—Everybody’s like, oh you’re crying, NO WERE NOT. We’re telling the truth, and we’re telling what we’re supposed to be talking about. That’s why I’m a writer. I feel that what’s what I’m supposed to be doing is telling the audience: this is what’s going on, this is what’s affecting us. And it doesn’t mean that we’re down in the dirt, face down and crying, that means we’re surviving still. We’re survivors as people. And we have hope and we’re going to make it. And they can knock us down as many times as they want to. They tried to kill us, they tried to put genocide on us. But that doesn’t mean we’re crying, that means we can talk about it all we want to because we’ve been told shut up too many times. And if we need to tell those stories than we do. I’ve had students that get up and tell their history, and it’s important because I don’t know everybody’s history—all the Indian people in here. And I think until that day comes, when we know everybody’s histories. “Oh I’ve already heard that, I know you…” No you don’t. We’re diverse, we have so many different kind of cultures. It’s not just one culture, it’s cultures. So you can do pan Indian things and have universal issues, but all our stories haven’t been told. And they’re all going to be different because they’re not from the history books, they’re from our own oral traditions. And my story of my family is way different from—everybody knows QuanahParker, who’s Comanche—We’re or no relation to him and we have different stories about him, than the praise that he gets from the history books.

Dianne: We have different stories too.

Doug: I think maybe we should just come up with our own history books.

Terry: So that’s my stance on that. If people want to think I’m negative or whatever, I’m going to keep talking about our history. But it doesn’t mean that we fail, it doesn’t mean –it means my ancestors survive and they are still alive, and they are still alive through our writing and through our stories. They are here now. And they are not going to go away, and they are not going to shut up. They are going to keep talking and telling us, don’t forget your history.

Okay, now, my second part. (laughter) Okay, I was thinking about how you all…there are two writers and I don’t think they are here. Rhianna Yazzi uses traditional story in her theater. She had the woman who turns into a bear, I think that’s right, it’s a Dene story. And it’s contemporary and traditional and there’s an Alaskan writer who’s not here. That’s Cathy Rexford. She does the same thing with her writing. She uses traditional and contemporary. But I was going to ask you about, when you said you work with the youth and you use traditional with contemporary, I was going to ask you about how you go about the ethics of the Intellectual property rights, or cultural property rights. When you use certain songs and you know a lot of songs are written by families or members of families, and they keep them, and it’s getting to be even more so now, if you’re going to use a tribal story. Somebody asked me, should I get permission from your tribe? Yah, probably. How do you work with that when you work with the youth and you’re selecting your music. Do you have to go out to each tribe? Or do you have something specifically written for you? If you’re going to use a traditional song?

Tamara: It’s a good question. I write my own hand drum songs, and I don’t use traditional songs. I find that there’s a place for my traditional songs and I’ve always chosen to keep it very separate. I travel with my hand drum everywhere, and I write songs in my language. Whatever community I go into, I’m not usually that great with all the languages, but usually with Cree or Ojibwa or any of the Annishnabe languages, it allows the kids to say their words, so I usually just leave it open. So they can bring theirs in. I guess it’s always important to me to show that I write my own songs because I had to. There are so many that I didn’t get from my grandfather. And when they know that I learn the language on my own and I wrote the songs on my own, it makes a lot of, especially my generation that didn’t grow up with a language or their grandparents have passed away, the other important story is that we have to tell, to the younger generation, is that if you didn’t get that really beautiful moment of sitting on your mushum’s knee, hearing about where you came from, you can start your own stories. And that’s probably the most empowering, especially when you’re removed from your community to know it’s okay, to start your own stories. And to start your own songs. Now, my songs that I’ve written, they’re our family songs. And I sing them with my sisters and now they’ve been left in different communities. I just got an email from Africa, from the National Woman’s Day a few months ago, and she sang one of my songs at their events. I also do make sure I let people know that these are not traditional songs. And especially when there’s non-Native audiences, the teaching has gone far enough that I get email in, can I sing this song at this school or at this school, so at least people are knowing that there is a lesson that has to come…I guess I try to educate with that. And I just want to add something else to what you were saying. The one thing you mentioned that we’re not talking about is one aspect of our storytelling is the healing. That’s why we always have to tell those stories, and tradition is proof of survival and perseverance. That’s the power of it, and when you know that you can say the story, even on the other side—my grandfather, he’s a Holocaust survivor—and he has been the grandfather for so many second generation Holocaust survivors because their grandparents would never speak about it. So when you have stories that have been locked up because of pain and will never be passed on, than you realized okay, yes, there is the art part of it. There is the community and joy part of it. But then there’s this other reason why we speak, and why we tell our stories, and even just. I’ve done Daniel’s play, and I’ve looked around the room and I can see, yes, there are all these other great aspects of the theater that we’ve done but it was always healing. And maybe that’s always been our tradition: we have to heal.

Jennifer: Just on that note. The theater, for so many in my generation, and I think my sister can, and we all can relate to it, was where we found our culture. We were void of it. We grew up with a lot of alcoholism, abuse, and completely cut off, and that was not a family that, at the time, made us proud of being a Native person, there was a lot of shame. And theater was where we can express that shame, and overcome that shame, and invite other people to overcome—how empowering it is to talk about you stories, and we’re not even talking about traditional stories, we’re talking about, you know, I’m embarrassed of who I am. I have an alcoholic mother who embarrasses me every day, that still to this day every kid we talk to and who we teach—we can relate to. So let’s use music, let’s use dance, let’s use theater let’s use hip-hop, let’s use all these things. But, I think Doug was saying, not from a victim mentality, because that’s almost a self-fulfilling prophecy, and if we perpetuate that that will just keep us down, from a survivor mentality, from an empowered place, where, like what you said (to Terry Gomez), knowing that I’m not going to shut up, and I’m going to tell you how it is, and I’m going to tell you how I feel because if I speak out than those ten kids over there might feel empowered by me and we can be a team. You know, so in general, I would just like to give a shout out to theater, which is why we’re all here, and a lot of people from all different cultures can say that it was a place where they can go to express themselves freely and not be judged by the color of their skin, or where they came from or whatever. And you’re allowed to be strange and odd and dysfunctional.

Muriel Miguel: One of the, this is a story, you know we’ve been around for 31 years, that’s a long time. We didn’t’ really understand who we were for at least ten years of that time. We were out there working, and we were out there telling our stories and telling other women’s stories. We were at Harbourfront and we were doing Sun, Moon and Feather, which is a story of our family, and these three young Ojibwa girls came up to us and each one said who they were in relation to us. One said I’m Lisa, one said I’m Gloria, and they were oldest to the youngest. And we were rather shocked. And the mother came up and said this is the first time they’ve ever seen three grown Native women on the stage, and this was the first time that they ever felt that they could do something and they’re hearing their stories. And we were so shocked to know that we were roll models. I thought, "my God we’re roll models!" But that’s what happens, you know, that’s what happens to all of us once you tell your story. You know that it’s the reflection, you see the reflection of yourself, in that person, and these are... you know, they’re grown women now, they’re cartoonists and teachers, but….you know, the fact that they thought of us that way was amazing. And we didn’t know it.

Jennifer: Well I can tell you there’s lots of people who think that about you guys.

Tamara: I thought about you like that!

Jennifer: Lots and lots! But yeah, I guess it’s a pretty profound experience to think of you guys that way and that your voice means something and it actually resonates with one or a million people.

Monique Mojica: We been talking that there’s a difference between acknowledging having been victimized without having being a victim. So the difference between the victim and being a survivor is enormous, but it doesn’t mean that in order not to be a victim you don’t tell the ugly stories. You got to tell them, you’ve got to have the whole.

Jennifer: Absolutely, yes.

Diane Glancy: I just want to say one thing about building a story, also. The patience and the humility and the work that it takes, I know if I brought in all my drafts of one play it would be amazing, it’s very humbling and it takes a lot of endurance and hard work to let a piece reach all it’s dimensions and all its layers and to let it go where it wants to go, it’s um—it’s work.

Donna Cross: I just wanted to say that I think it’s very important that we remember our whole stories, our songs and our dances, because I really believe it’s the throughline to who they are today. And I think sometimes when I’m hearing that people are having a difficult time with the contemporary part of it, it might be because of the disconnect to their past. And I just find that there is so much power in the stories, I love the old stories, and my husband and I, we do them. We are storytellers and we go everywhere, and we find that these stories are blueprints to humanity. They have so much to teach and people are hungry to hear it. And we do make a living here doing that. We go everywhere…and it seems like everyone wants to hear those stories. And they say, who are those stories for? And they say, it’s for families, everyone comes from families and they can relate through that way. But I just, I’m thinking of the power, and I think, it’s not us either. You know, it’s the song that you’re singing that has the power, and so does the story and all you have to do is just remember , that’s all. I know it’s not possible to say but that’s what we’re doing and I’m going to continue doing it. I think it’s important.

Jennifer: Thank you.

Rose: I just want to say thank you for that because storytelling, no matter where you’re coming from, is a real art to take a space and transform it for people is an art form, and I know many wonderful story tellers and I know a few and I think—why do they call themselves storytellers? Because they know a story, but they don’t know how to transform a room, and it’s the same thing as taking a hand drum, and taking a song and transforming the room. You know it’s like, there are some singers when they sing the space has changed. And that’s special, and that’s art. So we need our storytellers to tell the stories, because what happens is, when we go to communities and tell stories, you inspire someone else like me and go, I’m going to take that story. I’m going to go to that person and ask for permission to see if I’m allowed to do that story in that way. Which was what happened when ----Looking Horse came to Toronto. And he told this story to me and he sang a song, and I asked for permission, gave him tobacco, and said can I take that White Buffalo Calf Woman story and put it on stage. I promise to keep you informed, and because of my job, you know I haven’t finished it, but it’s taking new legs into a hip hop level. You know, I want to those buffalo to get down. But if I hadn’t heard the story, the way I heard it, from that man, I wouldn’t have thought to do it. And that it was the story teller who changed me. And so it’s really important. We’ve got story tellers, to continue teaching us. And so, I’m forever grateful that I hear that people are still committed to doing this work, because we really need them to do it. Because how else are we going to do what we do, if you’re not doing it.

Jennifer: Thank you Rose.

Tamara: Can I add something? The other thing that’s really powerful, to bring the Indigenous, perspective of storytelling to Western theater is that we forget, I think sometimes we forget, when we’re artists working in conventional Western theater, about the form, that our form was always mixed mediums. We told a story with song and dance and music, and there were never any divisions, we never divided that. And that’s very avant-garde for Western theater, you know to have—and so I’ve always loved that it’s actually made me a more interesting artist. When I go back to the way that I learned how to tell a story, like the coming of age of a women when I’m fancy dancing, that to me is a full...little musical. You know, and it actually can empower us and make our mark in traditional Western Theater, and really know the socks off of people if we really owned up to how huge it is in our traditional story telling. Can I just add one other thing? I love, I know how important it is for us to tell our traditional stories and dances and know our music, and I just wanted to introduce another, and this is the same as I started the modern approach to traditional story telling, another modern reality is that we have so many adopted babies, out there, and I also think that we have to know that it’s—when you can’t access our traditional background, we have to respect that that’s still okay, that’s why it’s like the permission to make up your own stories. Because so many—I’ve had the privilege of having adopted people in my life who are so disconnected from their Native background and that’s, that makes them feel that they’ll never be able to have that truth, that core, because they’ve been cut off from it. I guess that’s why it’s permission to all be storytellers, even if it starts right from this day, and that I’m going to create my own storytellers. If you don’t speak your language, if you don’t know all your dances, if you don’t know what to do if an outfit was in front of you and you didn’t know what went on your head and what went on your feet. You know, that we have to comfort and support each other in the variety of ways that we can be Native storytellers.

Donna Cross: I just want to say that I hear what you’re saying, and that happens to be your personal creation story, and how you are here and who adopted you and whatever. And my family was very disconnected too, at a point, but what happened was that when we started doing this we came back to our community and people really began to speak to us about some of our relatives, and we found our back and we were lucky to do that. But I do hear what you’re saying and I want to explore that as well. The personal creation story. My husband is beginning to do that, you know, he’s beginning to write now outside. This is our base, but he needs to write about Vietnam, he’s a Marine Corps Vietnam veteran, and he’s just beginning to get into that, with Kim Snyder’s help over here, and I’m seeing maybe a one man show’s coming from it. But again, very healing, he really has to do it.

Jennifer: Okay, I’m sorry but we’re going to have to stop, but his week is designed to create these discussions and continue this dialogue outside of the room. I have a couple of things to mention first. Twenty years ago, at one of the biggest stages in Toronto, the Royal Alex, was Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing, a moment that changed my life and brought me to where I am today. Twenty years ago. We’ve not yet seen that happen again. So that’s what this panel was dedicated to, you know, let’s—I think we’ve discussed so many great things today. Coming back to that, one of my great wishes to see, and I know that you guys in your panel will probably discuss your recent success, but I’d like that to manifest out there in the universe. And we have some give-aways, just in terms of modern approaches to storytelling, I took a prophecy, I was given permission by elders near Curve Lake, Ontario, and took a prophecy that it is our responsibility to share the seven teachings from the Ojibwa teachings with the world, and design my show, The Aboriginal Achievement Awards , around it, and created a song with that in mind. And it saw a lot of controversy, and I’d like to, but feel free to take them (CDs). And it’s all based around one specific prophecy, that today, now more than ever, the world needs to know that we have values that will be valuable to everybody…from today on. I’d like to thank our panelists, who were awesome, and you guys, I’m sure you’ll continue discussions after this panel, but thanks for you time.

Bringing Native Theater to a Wider Audience: Field Discussion Transcript

2009-01-26T20:17:00.004-05:00

Field Discussion
Bringing Native Theater To A Wider Audience
November 13, 2008, 1 p.m.
Moderator: Randy Reinholz
Panel: Betsy Theobald Richards and Charles Weldon.

Randy Reinholz: My name is Randy Reinholz, I’m the Artistic Director of Native Voices at the Autry, I’m the Director of the School of Theater, Television, and Film at San Diego State University, and I’m joined by Charles Weldon right now, who’s an actor, company member—

Charles Weldon: Company member, and I’m now the Artistic Director of the Negro Ensemble Company for the last—going into my fifth year, and I’m doing it to save the theater because it was leaving us, and I was the last person standing. But I’m still basically an actor, that’s standing in as an artistic director, and I’m finding out how that goes too. So, I thought when I got an invitation to come here and talk to the Native American panel, it was part of me in a lot of ways, but we’ll get to that later.

Randy: Well our topic is Bringing Native Theater to a Wider Audience, and probably what’s going to happen is Betsy Theobald Richards is going to join us, she’s from the Ford Foundation, a lot of you met her earlier today or last night, she has a radio interview right now so as soon as she’s done she’ll join us later. So, when we saw half the panel from this morning eating lunch, they were going in as we came out so I suppose they’ll be joining us too. So here we are talking a little bit about bringing Native Theater to a wider audience, and it was funny because we had a chance to talk a little bit, I hadn’t met Charles before, and I had been sort of enamored by the Negro Ensemble Company for a long time. I mentioned, it was my first professional audition up on 55th Street.

Charles: At Theater Four.

Randy: Yeah, and I just have so many fond memories. Actually there was a woman who met me in the basement, I have no idea who she is, but she gave me this speech before I auditioned and she talked about, “you’re going to stand on that stage, do you know who’s been on that stage?” And she went through this litany of people and experiences and then she said, “now your turn, you go be an actor.” And I thought, wow what a gift! You know, and I went upstairs and I killed, I got a job out of it. So that was my first experience there. And I’d love you talk to about how the ensemble, kind of, came together, you said you were there in the early days.

Charles: Yeah I came here—actually I came to New York from California, I was raised in California, but I born in Oklahoma. I was born in Wetumka Oklahoma, by a midwife, an Indian, it’s like a reservation town, a little small town, I probably have about an 8th of Indian blood in me, Choctaw, I saw that in your thing, and Jauverni was the name that the midwife that birthed me gave me that name, Jauverni, J.A.U.V.E.R.N.I, and I always—and my mom died when I was young, so I never really questioned her about it because I never used it, it’s probably like Barack never uses Hussein, and now after she passed away I always wondered what is Jauverni, because everybody thinks it’s like Italian. But it’s not, it’s Indian, so I think it has a meaning and it’s probably not pronounced the way I pronounced it, you know, I would have no idea, Jauverni, it probably means like pig headed kid. Anyways, that’s, I started out in San Francisco in Hair, because I was a singer, and in the early Sixties right out of high school I had a hit record and, to make a long story short, I got into musical theater. And what brought me to New York was when they took Mohammed Ali’s belt, the championship, because he wouldn’t go to Vietnam, he had to work. So we were doing a play in San Francisco called Big Time Buck White, and he—the producers or whatever got him to do the lead role and that brought me to New York. I had been an actor every bit of nine months and I was on Broadway, with Mohammed Ali, and that got me to New York. The play at the time didn’t last long, about three months with rehearsal and previews and opening, it lasted maybe three months, because at that time, after the people who came to see Ali, because at that time, every body was down on him, he was like a Piranha at that time. Somebody told me that there was a black theater company, down here in the village, right over here on 2nd Avenue and St. Marks, and I auditioned. I went over there, it said Negro Ensemble Company, it’s 1970, early part of 1970, probably February, something like that, and I went upstairs there and there happened to be a musical, because I really didn’t know how to be an actor yet, I was still just this—in musicals, if you can sing well, you get the job—and I got the job, but it happened to be musical. And the people who were in it, I had no idea who they were then, but they were the cream of the crop, as far as black actors were concerned, they were people that you maybe won’t know their names, but it was like Ester Rolle and, it was just the best black actors in the world. I didn’t know who they were, and I’m glad maybe I didn’t because I was not in awe of them, you know? But they taught me how to be an actor. So I never went to school to be an actor, I just fell into it, but thank God I learned from the best, and that’s kind of what got me started in this business with the Negro Ensemble Company. And I was telling Randy, did I say that right? I was telling him that I knew Joe Papp very well, because you know I was always in and out and around here because Morgan Freeman was a good friend of mine, but I never worked her and the one chance I had to work here at the Public Theater was when James Earl Jones directed The Cherry Orchard. And I auditioned, I go the job, but before I really started rehearsal Douglas Turner Ward, who was the artistic director of the Negro Ensemble Company, wanted me to do a play called The River Niger. And I ended up doing The River Niger, and I chose The River Niger over The Cherry Orchard, and as luck would have it The River Niger turned into a, we went to Broadway with it and I ended up doing the film. And so I had little angels on my shoulder here. So that’s kind of how I got started in this business; basically. So I go way back, I mean, when he said the whole thing about the people that came through The Negro Ensemble Company, and the people that are still out here now, who I have worked with on and off the stage now, it’s like Denzel Washington, and Samuel L. Jackson, and Angela Bassett, and you could go on and on and on. Anybody who was anybody, at some point, came through the Negro Ensemble Company, and the ones that didn’t they said they did, so. We were like, hey that guy never worked there! But it ended up being where, you know, people started passing away. Rosalind Cash, Moses Gun, Adolph Caesar, who was really my mentor and my best friend. Adolf Caesar was—he came along later because Adolph Caesar was a great actor, but he basically made his money with voice overs. And let me—if you’ve ever heard the commercial, “a mind is a terrible thing to waste,” well that was Adolph Caesar. He had that voice, and he did all the black Exploitation voice overs, and he didn’t really want to be on camera because he felt like he would lose jobs. Because at that time, he felt like if they identified with his voice, that he was a black, that he would not get jobs. So he didn’t really want to be on camera until A Soldier’s Play came along, and he played Sergeant Waters in A Soldier’s Play. And when they did the film he demanded a million dollars. And they were like, hey were not giving this guy no million dollars. So they started auditioning people and they knew—but he didn’t have to worry about it because he was making a lot of money anyways with his voice. But he knew that they had to have him. And they ended up paying him that million dollars. And this was long time ago so you can imagine. And he was very adamant about it, you know, they was going to give him his money. He was my best friend. And he was the one who taught me about acting. Adolph was the person that would say, if something would happen to you in life, if you were walking down the street, you know—I don’t want to relate this story because it’s really very morbid—well I will, you guys are grown. We were sitting one time here on First Avenue and Houston, and there use to be a shoe shine stand there. And we were getting our shoes shined. And there was a squeegee guy on the corner. And he was stopping cars and doing windows. And we were sitting there, and just kind of shooting the bull, and a truck turned the corner. A semi truck with a trailer turned the corner. And as it turned the corner off of Houston, off of First Avenue going uptown, something scooted out from under the trailer. And it came in the middle of the street and it rolled around and rolled around, and as it stopped wobbling you could see that it was a skull. Evidently this guy had fell and the wheel had popped the skull, and it scooted out in the middle of the road. I almost threw up, and Adolph looked at me and went, “use it!” Use it. That’s the way he was. Anything that happens to you in life, if you’re going to be an actor, use it. You know I couldn’t eat for three days and he’s telling me use it. But this was the kind of guy-- he was a great actor though. Things like that happened to me, that’s how I started in this company.

Randy: Did you ever use it?

Charles: Yeah, I did. It took me a while to catch on. It took me a while to catch on to, when something traumatic happens to you in life, where you can hold onto it without making you go crazy. But at certain times and on the stage, or in whatever you have, you can go and get it. You pull it up. But I didn’t do it right then, of course, I was the rookie. He was like use it, and I was like—what do you mean use it? But yeah, I’ve learned to use it. But what made me relate to what made me want to be apart of this panel is, at that time, and I found this out early on, at that time, and I found this out early on, was that the Negro Ensemble Company, there was no black theater to speak of. In 1967—I came on in 1970—but the Negro Ensemble Company’s first season was 67-68. And there was really no black theater at that time…there really wasn’t. And Douglas Turner Ward wrote a play called Day of Absence, and it was a play about all the black people disappeared.

Randy: A day without a Mexican.

Charles: Yeah. It’s based on the same thing. And they produced that. One of the founders, his name is Robert Hooks, who wrote on the walls in his apartment and they got together with a few more actors and they started performing this piece. Eventually they found the St. Marks Theater, which is not there anymore but it was right there on 2nd avenue upstairs. They produced it there, and they got such great revues that the Ford Foundation gave them a million dollar grant, and that’s what started the Negro Ensemble Company. And then for like probably the first four to five years the Ford foundation funded us. And I thought that was very interesting because the Native American theater, when I started—even when they emailed me and my office called me and asked me if I wanted to be apart of it—I hadn’t heard of the Native American Theater. Not to say that that means anything, but I thought that was very interesting, because when I first came to the Negro Ensemble Company, I hadn’t heard of a black Theater. In fact when I auditioned for Douglas, and I started singing the song, and I started too high because I was singing a cappella, and I stopped and I said, “Can I start again?” And he said, “Yeah, yeah, go ahead and do it again.” And I said, well “I was kind of scared because I ain’t ever auditioned for no niggers.” And they started laughing, the people in the audience started laughing, but when I said it, it just came out of my mouth. And I said, wow, I aint got that job! But he always relates that story because, I don’t know, it made him laugh and he realized I was very nervous. But I hadn’t! I hadn’t ever auditioned—when I did Hair auditions and I did the other play, I hadn’t only done two plays, and they were only musicals. I thought that was very interesting, and I want to know more about the Native American theater, and I would like to see some of the work too.

Randy: Well thanks. That gives us great context for this conversation in-- you think about—you know, a very Native American thing to do is thank, first the traditional caretakers of the land, people that were here before us, and then thank our elders for allowing us to be here. You know, we stand on their shoulders. Here we are in a, well, I guess you’re my elder. And I just think that it’s really beautiful, we’re all in the Public Theater—

Charles: That’s right, I am an elder now. It’s really weird when you change over, people started going: “Mr. Weldon.” I used to be Charles…

Randy: Well I’ve got grey hair too now.

Charles: Well I’ve got grandkids, I got proof!

Randy: Well our conversation is about bringing Native theater to a wider audience, and it occurs to me, this topic can go in all kinds of different directions. And it occurs to me, one thing I’m interested in knowing from people in the room, what are some of the audiences who might define—who enjoy Native theater; who is watching Native theater? Because it sounds that taking Native Theater to a wider audience kind of implies that there already is an audience. And my guess is, depending on where we’re from, our audiences are pretty diverse already. And I’m just curious, people who are producing, directing, acting, writing—who are your audiences? And scene…

Nicole Joy-Fraser: I’ve just come back from living in London, from living in the UK for the last six years, and I would say that there’s a definite—because London is very similar to New York, so many people call it a transient city, you know there’s people coming and going and they don’t really stay there for a long time, but it’s such a fantastic opportunity for being introduced to a new group of people, an ethnic group, whether it be an ethnic group or an organization, whatever it may be, because there is this—there’s so many different sub-cultures. And in terms of theater, it’s the opportunity to communicate and expose them, and expose the demographic to your product or your stories or your subject, or your message. And there were so many people there, just because of the way I looked, obviously I represent at first glance a number of different ethnic groups. So I always get that question, when I meet people on the bus, or, they’re curious, and they say: “are you American”, and I say “no I’m Canadian”, and they say “well isn’t that the same?” And so that brought up all of these identity things, and I sort of felt like, when I come back home, it’s sort of my mission to figure out what that all means. Because they wanted to know. What does it mean to be Canadian, what does it mean to be Native, what does it mean to be a Native here in London—what sort of obstacles do you come across? How have you discovered your place here? And so that’s when I sort of thought—wow, there’s a lot of people who don’t know. And I suddenly felt a responsibility to know more and to come home. And connect again with my roots. And my mission is, my bigger mission, and as an actress and as an artist, because there are people who do want to know and don’t have these facilities for theater, it’s something that a group of audience can attend, and learn, and share. And I had never-- while I was there I would keep my eyes and ears peeled for anyone that would come to town, if it was a tour or something, and there was very rarely any Indigenous group that came through, and I thought: oh, we’re missing a group of people here, who probably don’t realize but would probably benefit from learning about it. Because they still use some very old terminology over there, once I would tell them where I was from--and it is incredible how Americanized they have become, because of what they watch on TV. They have very similar programming and, so it’s that exposure thing and realizing that this global center could benefit from Native theater and Native stories. Definitely.

Randy: So, just to put that questions on hold, so who are your audiences, to introduce Elizabeth Theobald Richards.

Betsy Theobald Richards: Betsy.

Randy: Betsy. And Charles gave the Ford Foundation an amazing plug just a second ago.

Charles: Yeah, our first donor was—that’s how we got started was a million dollar grant from Ford Foundation. Back in the good old days.

Randy: So while Betsy a funder at Ford, she’s also a theater artist from way back. She was gracious to come to the very first Native Voices in 1994 and direct a play.

Betsy: I had to get my own plane ticket.

Randy: Yes, you had to get your own plane ticket! Welcome to my world.

Betsy: You said you can sleep at my house but you have to get your own plane ticket.

Randy: And Joseph got the dog. But anyways, tell them a little about yourself Betsy.

Betsy: Okay I said my name, I’m a member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, I’m the first Native American...

Charles: We’re all Okies up here!

Betsy: I’m the first Native Program Officer and the first Indigenous program officer globally at Ford, and—Ford hires the program officers generally--not philanthropy. They hire people who come from a particular field. They have a belief that they want people that are inside a field to be giving funding to a field; not some funding expert that has some outside set of rules. So I have a Masters from Yale School of Drama, but I specifically wanted to study theater administration, because I’d studied directing undergraduate acting, and I felt like I wanted to be able to change things. And I don’t know how much you want to hear about me? So I have this kind of directing, administration, but a real dedication to the voice of Native playwrights and strengthening Native theater and Native arts and culture in general—and that’s what I’m doing at the Ford Foundation.

Randy: Great. And then our topic, "Bringing Native Theater to a Wider Audience"—the question I posed to the audience is…what are your audiences when your shows are performed? So we kind of heard an international take, I wrote down cultural tourists or explorers, and I heard you talk about yourself as an ambassador in some ways.

Nicole Joy-Fraser: Yeah, I’d like to be able to do, becoming an advocate of some sort.

Randy: You are, you’re here, that’s it!

Charles: Something that happened, and I remember when you were talking, is that when I first joined the Negro Ensemble Company, and over time I heard the stories of how it all started, because I wasn’t there then, but one thing I think that Douglas did, which I thought was very wise, was that after they got the grant, instead of going and right away doing black theater, he chose to do a play called Song of the Lusitanian Bogeywhich was written by a white writer and they had to adapt it to make it work for black actors, and it worked! What Douglas always used to say was: find your audience—and it’s generally if you’re a black theater than you’re going to have a black audience. Generally what happens is if you do three or four shows a year, if one of them is a success, the reviewers review it, then you’re going to get the other people to come in to see it, because they read the reviews. And then that’s how you start building your audience, is because—but you always have that base audience. If you’re Latino, or—you always try to keep that base audience. And then you build from that. At least that’s what we did in the early days.

Randy: What are some other audiences? Margo, you’re producing all the time.

Margo Kane: Finding your theater audience. I’m Margo Kane, I’m from Vancouver, Canada, and I have a company called First Nations: Full Circle Performance, and I’m primarily a performer who got tired of waiting for writers to appear, and in the seventies I started creating my own work. And so some of my first works were so diverse, and I toured with them like a suit case show because I didn’t have any money and I didn’t apply for funding or anything like that. I had just worked. And I worked in TV and film and radio and that kind of thing and I eventually found the company because—I got tired of waiting for non-Native theater companies to develop our actors and our playwrights and produce our work. And I became that kind of person that people called on—“oh, we need to work in that community, can you help us, la la la la…” So I would do all of their community development work, which really started to tick me off after a while, because then they would feel all puffed up because they had done this big thing. But they hadn’t really developed the relationship in the community, to really sustain and support the development of artists and the work—and it’s still happening. So after forty years, this last year, I was uh---the long and the short of it of all that is—not much has changed in some ways. I think we have to do it ourselves, and I think time now is—it’s historical that we’re at a time where there’s much more interest and openness to reach across, or walk across the room and shake the hand of someone you don’t know—and in my life, up to this point, there hasn’t been that. There’s been a lot of, kind of, I kind of look at the theater system in Canada as a feudal system—every man out there for himself. But we’re also kind of at a point in Canadian history, where we just celebrated, over two years ago, 50 years of public funding of the Canada Council of the Arts. And so in those 40-50 years that was Nation builders. So they funded theater, which was a lot of non-Native artists because, you know, what were we doing—First Nations people, we were just trying to survive—and so they funded theaters and the building of theaters, therefore arts administrators and designers and writers and whole teams were given theaters and support from the Canada Council. So the big institutions were developed then, you know The National Theatre School, The National Ballet School, The Winnipeg Ballet School, and all of these big companies were supported: The Stratford Theater Festival, were really supported. So we’re kind of at a different era. And everybody’s been examining this for maybe the past ten years or so, trying to figure out—the pie is this big and we’ve already divided it up. How do we support the development for emerging artists, cross-cultural diversity artists, Aboriginal artists, you know that sort of thing. So I’ve been becoming apart of that think tank off and on. I walk away regularly because it ticks me off—it’s hard. You just want to create and do the work. So, I founded Full Circle because I wanted to gather a number of artists and playwrights, and whoever, to begin to work together and train together. We started with some small workshops, training regularly together, there was hardly anybody actually. And I wanted to develop a vocabulary around our own work and creating our own work, our own voice. And not just taking our playwright’s form, you know the well written play text form, as something that we would use. I actually wanted to develop voice, self-determination, self government principles, based upon the teachings of our people, and I try to make—to build an infrastructure that could support that development. So fifteen years later, we at the point where we have an Aboriginal ensemble training program, in which we attempt to do that very much. And we’re just into our seventh year, so we’re learning lots about the development of that. It’s a two year program, it accepts people—you can come from dance, or music, or theater or whatever. And we’re just tweaking that program, it doesn’t achieve quite what we need yet. And another thing that we did, in order to get an audience—which is really what were talking about here—is not only—we developed the Talking Stick Festival. And it’s a multidiscipline festival. It occurs in February every year, it’s an annual festival, and we’re just going to do our ninth. And really we’re struggling with the same problems, there’s not enough administrative help, there’s not enough project help, I’ve had to learn how to do a lot of things, and delegate, and help guide a lot of people to make it happen. But the kind of cool thing about it is the arts community, because the arts community in our region are not working in playwriting per say. There’s a lot of music, there’s a lot of performance art, there’s a fair number of novelists and poets and spoken word people. In order for us to develop new play development or new performance development as I prefer—we’re starting to have conversations that—this year, Native Earth and Yvette Nolan and everybody, we’re talking—they’re going to come over again, in the festival, and we’re going to have some conversations. So we can actually begin to build a new play development, right within the festival. Because the festival itself right now maybe brings in mixed audiences, maybe half and half, a lot of the artist come to a lot of the events—we keep the ticket price really low or free. We have to work in a lot of venues, we don’t have our own venue. We have to therefore rely on the fact that Vancouver is just really tight with venues, we just don’t have anything, and so we have to make our own steel, but we manage to carve out maybe four or five different venues that we work in for this festival, it’s a week long festival, and we present a variety of different kinds of performance. So this year, last year something happened—very interesting—I lost performers two months before, and I had to scramble to try and program. There’s no new play, new performance being developed. After 40/50 years of public funding, last year one of our colleagues, Kevin Loring, got the assistance from a couple of residency grants. So he worked with Vancouver Playhouse, big established company, they helped support him administratively and creatively to develop his piece. But he also had the alliance and assistance from Sharon Pollack. He had a very fine dramaturg/playwright working with him and the play was workshopped over a long period of time. It took him a while to do it. And then they produced it and fortunately I got to perform in it in May/June, and so there was kind of, after forty years there’s been a few playwrights, and you have a couple in the room like Daniel David Moses who’s been very prolific, and you know…

Daniel David Moses: And Kevin won our playwriting prize at Queens University. He won second prize at our annual contest and we workshopped the play there again too. And he got to work with John Lazarus, which is how he started working on the play.

Margo Kane: So it’s kind of those alliances that spread across that are going to help build our ability to create work so we can have an audience. And I guess what I’m always struggling with is the festival brings in an audience, but because—like last year, as I said, we had a number of very community based and improv and scenes that we ended up plugging into the cabaret, because we didn’t have any plays or performances like that. Things had dropped out. And there was a real keen interest and there’s a nice audience for that now and I think it partly because we built this festival to attract people and we have an opportunity now develop. And with things like, just historically last year, Kevin’s play opened at the Magnetic North [Theatre] Festival, a Canadian theater festival that moves around every second year in Vancouver in June, and the play opened on the day of reconciliation, when the Prime Minister announced to the world and Canada and apologized to First Nations People, for the dreadful history of the residential school system. I guess what I’m trying to say is that there’ s a whole history that’s happened and right now is a really prime time I think because things are changing and shifting. We do need to develop but we also need the alliance of others, of theaters, that have people in places that get assisted developments, and we need to work together. That’s what I’m feeling very much. I can’t do much more. I’m spread pretty thin, but if I can work with Native Earth and if I can work with you guys and various people, that eventually we can begin to have a touring network and plays can get second and third productions. And I toured a lot and I have a nice little network in British Columbia and I know how to tour, and I know how to make things happen that way, but now we need the work. And I guess that’s, kind of, the audience can expand. It’s hard to get our own people into the theater, we don’t have theaters in the area where our people are living in Vancouver, so it’s hard. Anyway, we’re developing alliances with people in those regions to see if we can even begin a small—Lepress Sparks starting a theater for young audience, which you started last year—Joe and Donna Cross came out from New York and worked with some of our team members here and began to develop family audience here, and it was like a success in a minute and a half - and it was like - whoa, this is a no-brainer. But now how do we create that when you do have space, when you do have ongoing funding, when you don’t have that kind of thing. So it’s thinking amongst several of us.

Randy: Larissa?

Larissa Fasthorse: Well I just, and this I apologize because…I’m like sitting here and I’m already struggling on what wider audience means, especially as a Native American person. Because, you know, I’m a playwright so I don’t have a theater or a home like yall do, and I’m from the States, and I’ve only worked with two theater companies. You know Randy’s [Native Voices at the Autry], it’s a Native American theater company but your audience is very mixed, it’s a very mixed audience.

Randy: We survey out at about 40% Native, and we’re often described as looking like Los Angeles. You go in there it looks like LA, there’s old people, there’s young people, there’s multi-ethnic, but we survey out at about 40%.

Larissa: Yah, so we, I represent these kids, our school group radio, and then I work for a mainstream theater, which is a fully white audience large theater, which is primarily white. And we were working so hard in Minneapolis, trying to reach out desperately to the theater company, trying to reach out desperately to the Native community there, and I was there for six weeks talking to every community group, trying to—I’m from South Dakota, and I’m Lakota, so I wrote it based on the Native people in that area. And just trying to get to—…for CBC they have great audiences, but for me I was so frustrated, both of those experiences, because what I want is I want me to write about reservations in South Dakota, to see that quality of work. I want all those kids that I know, those 200 kids that tried to kill themselves last year, I want them to see this work—you know? So for me, I’m really struggling through this whole topic of, you know, what is a wider audience? Earlier we talked about mainstream. I’ve been fortunate enough to work with people in mainstream theater, which is great and I loved it and it’s wonderful, but to me it’s like what’s important about that. To me, wider audience is such a loaded word. To me it has to go back to…to me it has to do with the heart audience, that’s who I write for. I write for that one kid who went to one of our earlier workshops on disco, and he was like, he came up to me and said: “I just realized I’m not the only one.” You know, that’s all she said to me… You know, that’s who I write for. …anyways, that’s it!

Tamara Podemski: I’m interpreting wider audience, not necessarily as mainstream, but to go beyond—to open up the possibility of who can have access to your story. And I quite like the idea and I just came from Toronto, where our very big theater company, main stage company, is suffering from major budget cuts, and so they would have to close down their small alternative space, which is called Berkeley Street Theatre, it is the most beautiful, alternative theater space. And so what they ended up doing, and I think alliances is one way that you can get a wider audience, and I think the other one is just innovation. And what they did was they allowed small theater companies to piggy bag on them, it’s called the Berkeley Street Project, and I did a play with them with Nightwood Theatre, which is sort of a feminist woman’s theater, and they would never get the Can stage [Canadian stage] audience, but because they wound up in a Can stage theater, they are getting and audience who would never see feminist theater, or woman’s theater, or, it’s very different from what their regular audience is. We had people walking out, we had a great shock to—it was culture shock because people like their theater in the way that they like their theater. And they know what theater they would want to go to, and relying on who’s safe to watch and relying on having a good time, and this just really shook up—and this is still going on. It’s a whole year of programming where they have small little theater companies going in and—I like that idea of wider audience. It’s not only a chance for us as artists to be exposed to the audiences, but audiences themselves only know what has the biggest add in the paper. And they’re looking to us to tell them what’s good, what’s interesting, and they have very limited ways to find out what’s good and interesting to go and see. So this piggyback thing and the ways that, even how you get in their to the schools, and how do we create—there’s not enough venues. So what are all the ways that we can make the park a venue, the classroom a venue, the school bus a venue? And that’s our job as artists, to deal with these problems and say: Oh my gosh, imagine the school bus, imagine that half an hour ride where you have to bus your kids into school—imagine that being a performance space. I think that’ s our job, I think that’s …what’s has to happen to bring it to a wider people.

Vickie Ramirez: I just wanted to address that question that you had, that moral conundrum about the wider audience. I’m a playwright as well, I get it, I totally get, because especially when you talk about appealing to a mainstream? There’s that tang of it means, oh I’m selling out, I’m doing this for money, I’m not doing this to tell the stories of the people that we grew up with, that you see in non-Native based plays that Native people depicted like these weird—and who the hell, that’s not my uncle Frank! So I get that, but I think we’re missing the fact that, finding a way to weasel our way into the mainstream is a way of taking back our images for ourselves. I think, like, with black theater, you know, they have a great sort of...they did it. How they started off sort of just taking their roles, and taking this, and playing the game, and then going in there and establishing enough of a presence that people were in there and you get these characters coming out. And then people start claiming them back for their own. And, I think that’s eventually what…I mean, I see no reasons why these plays can’t be taught in universities, you know, not as Native plays but as classic plays as a—I feel like it can be done. And especially with kids on the rez, well the ones on Six Nations that I know, I know we don’t know the same ones but—to get them to a theater I might have to lasso them kicking and screaming. And especially, a lot of them, Native theater. I’ve tried to get my niece and nephew and watch Native movies, Native plays, and they’re just like, “quit annoying me, all right eh?” And so I think if it filters through the mainstream we’re actually are addressing them, that, for people who trail in and the mainstream audiences who sort of sit there quietly saying, well this is…well hold it. Because a lot of…to go along to get along, we have to fit in, day to day, with the world outside us. I mean there’s a few of us blessed enough, well I don’t know if it’s always blessed, sorry, from where I grew up, to live a rez life, but—you go along to get along to get something, then something from your culture hits you, and it’s like: Oh my God. And we have that moment, and it’s like, what you said, okay I’m not alone. And it’s something as little as seeing Sheila on "Law and Order." My niece and nephew were so thrilled to see Sheila on "Law and Order," they were thrilled. It was like, okay so we’re not freaks of nature, and we’re not so other. That’s my take anyway.

Diane Fraher: My name is Diane Fraher, and I’m the Director of Amerinda, and I’m a writer also, and I’ve been directly involved with the Indian arts community for my entire professional career, and I feel like that we as artists, that we have a great responsibility because what, I feel like in modern society that our writers defend us in courts and I feel like that we, the artists, in all disciplines, that we defend our right to a cultural sovereignty in the work that we do. And by the stories that we tell that are in our hearts. And following and having the courage and conviction to follow that, that we— Well first of all, that demythologizing the images of Native people, thereby making them more accessible and I feel like, we are breaking up a very static presence because we are stepping up. Making ourselves know, making ourselves visible. Probably the two core issues that we all face as Native people on every level here are lack of ownership, because the governments—we can in the United States politically exile the Indian people so we have our reservations, we have our nations, and we no have our ownership in the society. So we face—when we have no ownership it’s very difficult to accomplish anything and it’s very difficult to even consider some of the things that have been discussed. For example, if you say it is a good idea, yes that your work is reviewed and talked about because it’s important that your work receives attention, then you have to ask yourself the question: who’s writing that? Is the person who’s writing that, have they ever even met Native person, have they ever had genuine dialogue? So how can they write something that’s really informed? And how can they really have a really interesting commentary and dialogue about what they’re seeing or hearing—yes they can talk about their own feelings, that’s for sure, but there’s a level beneath that. So I think about that a lot, that based on this issue about lack of ownership, lack of sovereignty, and exercising by being really true to the stories that are really in my heart, you know, that I just have to tell. And I think the other think is also, our invisibility for all of us, the Indigenous people in North America, that how many times have we faced that, where someone’s told you: Oh we wanted to do this, or that we wanted to dialogue with you folks, or that we wanted to partner with you, or we wanted to do this… We sort of, because we have been exiled, we haven’t had the visibility. So again the work is a way in which we can have an idea that’s recognizable and at the same time, for people to realize that their identity is rich and very, and the identity of folks from the North West Coast is very different from the Plains Cree, is very different from the Micmacs and the Nova Scotias, is very different from the folks down in Florida. And that’s just as rich and as varied as the idea of all the folks that came over here, from the different nations. So I think we have a real important role—we have to turn it around and feel empowered about that role.

Randy: Betsy has a comment, I think Charles has a comment too.

Betsy: Charles do you want to say something first?

Charles: Well I think, to go back to her, I think a good story has no ethnicity. And so you stay true to yourself. I’m not a writer but I feel like what happens is that when somebody write a good story it doesn’t matter if it’s black, white, Native American, whatever—it’s a good story. And if people see that good story then they bring in that wider audience. The wider audience just means to me, and this is to me because I see that as helping you to sustain. It helps you to sustain. A black theater—all theater is a struggle, but especially minority theater. It’s a real struggle. There is no national black theater. There is no theater, anywhere in America, that is black-run black-owned, that you can make any money, that you can live. The closest that’s ever been was when we were in the 70s and 80s with the Negro Ensemble Company. And then we were on a real nice level. But that’s when, I think they thought they were doing a good thing—Congress passed a law that said, if the established theater companies, that were the big companies, didn’t do a minority play, than they wouldn’t get any money from the federal government. So they just would do one black play year, or one Spanish play a year, and generally that was in February, so…if you were black and you didn’t work in February they would say: you’re in the wrong business. But I think any minority theater is a struggle, it’s a real struggle, so you have to really love it. The lady here, she was talking, you can tell that she really loves what she does.

Betsy: I just wanted to add two things. One, I was just a guest on Native American Calling upstairs, and a question that Harlan asked me was: Do you loose your Indigenaity when you come into a space like the Public theater? And my response was, well, I think you carry your Indigenaity wherever you go. But you when you have those moments when you think, I wish I would have said that, and you kind of go back and rehearse, but it already happened—So I’ll say it to you guys. What really strikes me about all this, same thing about reaching wider audiences or making change, I have to think about this all the time, is how do we invest money into the Ford Foundation, to make change happen, that’s what we’re talking about: change. What we have is good, but we want some change. Is that, we can say there’s Indian Country and then there’s here, there’s Indian Country and there’s here, but isn’t really what we want to say is: actually this is Indian Country? Right here underneath us? My Haudenosaunee brothers and sisters, my Algonquian brothers and sisters that are in here in this room, this is your land.

Charles: Yes, this whole country is Indian country.

Betsy: And we need to be standing in the Public theater, not just because this is the Public theater and they’ve invited us here, but if we’re going to re-write this paradigm, if we’re going to rewrite this history, we have to kind of stand on the history and claim it. And to that, I also have the privilege, I’m a great respecter of you work, I kind of leaned a lot of my—My last name is Richards, my married last name is Richards, and I’m Lloyd Richards daughter in law.

Charles: Oh wow.

Betsy: And how I met his son is, he was my dean while I was at Yale Drama School and I got to witness a lot of August Wilson’s work, he made, he worked with August, and see black theater go to Broadway a lot, and start winning major awards. And I went to work for Lloyd, just to sit at his knee and say, you know, you were the first African-American director on Broadway, you directed A Raisin in the Sun, what happened? What happened in those moments? How did you make this change? His answer to me was, it was about the work, it was about the play. And I don’t know if that’s all that it is, but for me it’s like, the training and the administration and the producing and the direction, I feel like a lot of artists worry about writing something that will reach a large audience. But what need to do is maybe have more producers and have more administrators and more folks around us that can move those campaigns, that can kind of shape the message so you can do you work, so you can do really good work. Because what reaches people, like you said, is really good work.

Charles: it’s the story.

Betsy: It’s just really good stories and really honest and really clear work and what—I’ve heard some stories of people that have felt thwarted and in their good work, by producers around them or systems around them that don’t support that good work. Or don’t support that world view. And I think it’s the system that might have to change. And part of this is to encourage the Public to, why the dialogue and not just the work, is to have a The Public here, like what does that mean to support this?

Randy: I would say tenacity plays a huge role in this too. Somebody was talking about the reviewers and what they know, and we spent a long time, in Los Angeles, speaking with the press trying to educate them about what we’re trying to do. So our early reviews were about, you know, good effort; Natives try; pretty good; what was the spirit guy doing walking around with the drum? And then, you know, here we are the last few years, some of the same reviewers have been seeing us over time, and we’ve gotten really good support from the press, over the last two years, ever since Keno and Teresa were Romeo and Juliet. So, I think there’s a lot to be said about tenacity, being thick skinned, staying at it.

Donna Cross: I just wanted to say, from a real grass roots perspective, my husband and I, we started doing our performances almost 20 years ago. And we didn’t really think about any of the advertising or funding, or anything like that. We made a commitment to the work because we knew what we needed from it. We quit our jobs, both of us, and we just plowed ourselves into it. And what happened really was, it’s call word of mouth advertising. We couldn’t buy advertising like we got, because one mistake that we made was that we didn’t know how to price the performance. And it was so underpriced, of such good quality, that nobody had ever seen, that everybody spoke of it. We lived in Brooklyn and our phone just rang off the hook all the time. But finally I spoke to Hanay and said, what do most people get for this? And then we he told me I was like, oh gosh no wonder! But by that time we already pretty famous, but we’ve been going on that ever since.

Randy: Rose you had a comment?

Rose Stella: Some of the things that you just said, some of our conversation on our last panel, about heart in the work. And thank you for that because the artist just needs to concentrate on their work and their art—it’s very hard because most of us are already producers. But you have to create the story, you have to create your heart work. And then find the support for it, because if you’re worried about the wider audience or getting it our there, while you’re creating the work, the work looses its heart. And I think we do need producers, we need more producers, Native producers.

Charles: You definitely need to hear it come back to you. Is that what you mean? As you work on it.

Rose: You need to create the work in a pure space, just because it’s art, and then you find someone to go out and do the work, but the trick is that we’re often the same person, and that’s why it’s so difficult. But to find ourselves more producers who have the savvy and the understanding of what that heart is. “Oh, I know what you’re saying, I get it, and I’m going to support you.” That’s what we need, we need more producers who have the savvy and enjoy producing. Because producing isn’t so hard, you know? So I thank you for that. Leave us the space to do our art.

Charles: A lot of this is just like acting, in the sense of the writers in this business, a lot of it is luck. Being in the right place at the right time, but when that luck comes by you be prepared. That’s just the way it is. Listen if you choose this business, it goes along with it. It really goes along with it, it’s a long of the times you’re hungry.

Randy: Jennifer you had something, then Margo?

Jennifer: Well it’s changed now since I’ve heard some of these comments, but I think the praising comment is a really important thing to touch on. Larissa was saying, it made me think, "God, we’re talking about two different jobs here," but so many of us are so used to doing everything, wear so many hats, and a lot of us we talked about this last year. When you find you have a certain talent and have a certain savvy to bring a certain artist or piece to a wider audience, you have to move past your inner artist and move beyond it and almost give up that part of your life. And we had a little cry about it, last year, talking about it, how hurtful it is, but recognizing that it’s for a much greater cause. This means, well Larissa, it struck me as, we’re not saying writers should write to appeal to a mainstream audience and, you know, appease every appetite. And the main thing is shifting perspectives, and who’s responsible for that more than a producer, to say, ya, this is not Native theater. This is an incredible story about a woman who’s doing this that and the next thing, and it’s about selling it. And being able to take that to, not necessarily a wider audience—a different audience. So we can always focus on training kids, our youth is so important, they’re our future, to continue the training but to not say those kids that we’re training are the only kids we’re going to be presenting to. It’s like, you can dance in front of the mirror for years, but there comes a point when you have to see if I can do this, outside of this house. And ultimately that’s a huge risk, and who’s going to like it. But I think it’s important—I’m glad we’re having a producer discussion and an artistic discussion and we just need to find the people, not necessarily Native people, but people who will understand where we’re coming from as creators. And that’s where a lot of things get lost in translation, you know, and in television where I focus a lot of my time, it’s pretty disgusting. You can focus a lot of your time to come at a project with great integrity, but the person who spins that has to respect that, where it comes from, has to respect the cultural aspect; and most of the time how it’s effective. So, a lot of it is education. Educating the audience, educating our kids, our youth, kids who are up and coming and writing and teaching them what to aspire to. This conversation happens a lot in television, like APTN is our national Native broadcaster. To go into a class and talk to kids about learning how to write for television, I think it’s a disservice to say, let’s aim to be on APTN. That’ no, I’m not trying to slander APTN, I mean I wouldn’t have a career if it wasn’t for them, but I think it’s a disservice to say that you as a Native writer—that’s your cap. No your cap should be HBO, it should be channel four in London, it should be every mainstream broadcaster in the entire world on the planet! It should be like everybody else—aim for the sky, don’t just aim for that small little ----- that someone tells you that’s all you’re going to be.

Betsy: I just want to add to that. Yes we need more Native producers, we need more Native everything, but I would also add that I think there seems to be this gap between, kind of, we want to be produced and they don’t want to produce us. I don’t know if I completely buy that. I think there are plenty of reasons that we’re not produced and that there’s some major erasure. At the same time I also feel that there’s some new campaigns to be had. Giving people a sense, and this is a personal responsibility of the Native community, not just the outside, of figuring out ways to have conversations with producers. Just the same way as Native people say, meet with me where I’m at. Meet me where I’m at, please hear what I’m saying. Well, to have conversations with producing organizations to meet them where they’re at. Understand that you’re not a victim if you have a twenty person play and they have, you know, a hundred-thousand dollar budget for the entire year—that they can’t do it. But also to understand just to really have a space where you can get, I mean the folks that produced all of August Wilson’s plays on Broadway, there were no black people. These were white people—made a lot of money. Made a lot of money off these plays. And they were not interested in it as philanthropy, they were interested in them as incoming producing products. The person who produced these, it was woman, the woman that produced Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raison in the Sun, she made a lot of money. What was her name?

Charles: It was…it was a guy too. Philip Rose and the woman…

Betsy: Yes, but it was a journey about not convincing, not hitting those people over the head, going you have to produce black theater, but saying: this voice has something to say for everybody.

Charles: And it was going back to the story too. It was a powerful story.

Betsy: And how powerful these stories are. So I think it’s very easy for folks to say, okay, the black people take care of the black people, the Indians will take care of the Indians…there’s a danger to say we just need more of us. We definitely need more than us. That’s a given, we need more of our professionals on every level. But we also need more folks on our team for all different levels. Barack Obama just won his presidency not just because black people voted for him.

Charles: Let me say this too, and I’ll just piggy back on what you said. I’ve become a producer! I’m an actor that’s become a producer, simply because I’m the Artistic Director now. But I don’t just look at black plays, I look at plays about the human race—I really do. So, if somebody’s in there that has a piece I need to see, let me have it. I look at plays to just see what it is, I would prefer it to be a play about the people in the minorities, but I want it to be for all people. I don’t want it to be just a black play; that’s passé now. It’s come to pass in a lot of ways, you know? So I think in the twenty years that I was associated, twenty good years that we were on top, and we maybe had four to five productions each year, sometimes six because those were the good days, we maybe had four plays that went to Broadways, a couple of Pulitzer Prize plays, and a couple that won Tonys or something. So you figure out, how many is that, out of 100 plays, you can count it on two hands how many plays out of that hundred went to that other level. And they went there because of the story. They didn’t go there for any other reason, because some producer came and said—they wanted to produce it because people started to come and say that was a good story.

Margo Kane: It is true, you know, we are developing a community and we’re developing, you know we roll up our sleeves and do the work that needs to be done and that’s how I was raised, and that’s how I keep working. And it’s unfortunate that I’m really good at other things because I can’t just act. And there’s not enough work for me to just act. Because I also have a political community consciousness and I want to bring about change and I want to find ways to be useful, to help make it happen. So I have skills in producing, I just learned this because I went along in administration, and I’ve learned that because I have, obviously, some skills in that area. Yes I would prefer to do my art, and to just create some work and not have to raise the funding and train and mentor the students and discuss the big issues with my program officers—you know all of that. At the same time, I guess what I’m advocating for when I say this is we’d all like to do what makes our hearts sing, but sometimes we have to do the slogging work to get there. So somehow we have to find the balance as we’re trying to develop together. To share the load and share the burden, and I felt very alone in my life, and partly it’s not because people don’t care or anything, it’s because I’m an eldest child and I’ve been at it a long long time. And I’m looking around and I would love it if you came to Vancouver and produced a part of my festival. You know, I would really like to invite and raise the money for the whole company. And as an artist you can get a residency grants, you can get your own internship grants, I would really like it to be able to find people to come over and do a piece of the work; not just for me, and the festival, and for Full Circle, but also for the skills and development and sharing of you own skills that you have. And also for an audience that you might bring. We have a whole youth component to our festival, we’re trying very much to develop youth participation. And it’s a challenge because you have to sometimes find individuals who have the, who are ready to go—and they bring with them their audience of young people and a group of people who are supporting them, and by supporting them and helping, they produce a small event at the festival, you bring their community with them. So I’m kind of advocating for—let’s share across the countries. I mean this whole thing about invisibility I think is important Dianne, because when you’re all alone by yourself-- and my God I don’t know how people manage it in New York, you must get so overwhelmed—because you get lost there. But I think it’s the alliance amongst our community members as well that will start to help us start to feel that we can be empowered to make some change. That it can effect a much broader—that’s the paradigm that needs to be shaken up, is we live in a much bigger world that just this one right here.

Donna Cross: I just wanted to say that it was wonderful last year working with Margo, because she heard what Joe and I wanted to do and she invited us to Vancouver. I had never really been into Canada so much, you know, and it was a piece that was in my mind for 15 years, and we couldn’t get off the merry-go-round to do it. But Margo really helped us with that. In four days we put the pieces up, I had all these pieces I had been collecting for a long time, so I had a rug, the set, you know anything to flesh it out. And it was so wonderful to do it and share that, and out of that came, there was a person who came who really enjoys these kinds of stories, the creation stories and the old stories, and Margo then was given grant. So this is how we really need to work with one another. We got what we needed to get, I mean it’s a start and we’re going to make that bigger, and I’m going to ask some of the people to look at it, and then Margo is going to be able to continue with that work too. So just wanted to say that this is so important that we’re sitting here with each other and these networks that we’re making.

Randy: Muriel, I got to thinking you have something to add to this. You’ve had so many different kinds of audiences throughout the years. I’m just curious, what are your takes on some of these issues, maybe the kinds of audiences you had, or thought you would have had, or were surprised to have had.

Muriel: Well in the beginning. (laughter)

Rose: This is a creation story!

Muriel: It was a feminist movement, it was that time. And so we went out into the world as the feminist movement, and it was a mixed group of women, and we went into Europe. What we found is that we did not have the interest here, but we had it in Europe, so then we came back and things changed and what we found that happened here was that our community, and it is a big community here and it is a high profile here, not as high as we would like it, and we found that our community said that we really want you. So it became a Native-feminist theater group. And that’s how it really happened, was that we were really pulled into our community, and they even told us what they wanted from us. They wanted us to talk about giving away our spirituality—and out of that came Winnetou[’s Snake Oil Show from Wigwam City]. The Winneto show that we did. But that was really the beginning of facing these issues within these communities. And with that we attracted them, it was broader because we started to look at theater people who were coming to work with us. So it’s not just community Native people, but it was theater people. And then we started to really teach, and I started to really teach, and that brought in a whole other group of people, young people, young Native people, and we do it through storytelling, this complicated storytelling that we do and the weaving of these stories of all these different people. So we went on to reservations and reserves and that’s when we really started to work with young people telling their stories. And we would put up a production in two weeks sometimes, and sometimes in three weeks. Now I do it in the language, so now I was in Kenora working with Waawaate and Don Kavanaugh and we did it all in the language. Which meant that places like Grassy Narrows, or all these places around Kenora, these kids came in. And I saw these kids come in and I thought, oh no we are really going to have a problem, they’ll starting acting up, blah blah, but once it started and it was in their language, and once the lights went down, they were so agaw about the lights dim. It was magic, you know 17 little nasty kids going wow! And some of these people in the play brought in their younger sisters and brothers who did warm up with us. But we discovered so much from doing it in the language. And also we did it in a red neck section of Canada, real North, it’s a hard section.

Charles: Really, in Canada?

Muriel: Oh yah boy, the Indian Canada sometimes is not easy. We did it in a basement of a Baptist church, which means we also smudged for ourselves, and because we smudged we had this reaction from the Baptists because we smudged in their church. And it was very interesting because we didn’t back off, as they say move over.

Randy: Really, you didn’t back off? (Laughter)

Muriel: But what I guess I’m getting at is these people came in, they saw it in their language, and it was really exciting. It was exciting for them. And for their elders, teaching their language. And for the younger ones teaching their language. Then we went to Leftbridge. You know I spent a lot of time in Canada. I spent a lot of time in Canada because that’s where people appreciate me. We went to Leftbridge and we did the same thing with their language again. And we had these big Blackfoot guys, you know, told us they wanted to be on stage. And again the same thing happened again. They are now, they stuck it out, there are four or five of them, and they are all now at the program at CIT. Four of them! Four big guys! Which is wonderful. It’s because it’s in their language, and they understood, we were there, we were supportive, we all—it was a collective team. And when we talk about ingenuity, it’s more than just one producer, it’s a team. And you have to work in teams! When one person is falling back, there’s another person to bring sanity back to it. When I’m teaching I teach in a team for the same reason. And I think if we do that in teams, and producing teams, it would be fantastic. That’s all I have to say.

Randy: Thank you.

Rose: I find the teaching training as one way of creating a wider audience for us. One of the things that The Center for Indigenous Theatre, that I’ve been trying to do, is to take our plays into UofT, we’re at Factory Theatre this January, we’re moving around and trying to make our face in the places where—We are going to get our usual audience, we don’t charge admission, it’s by donation. This is for our students, we want our students to have an audience, but we are really working in places where we don’t have a theater. I want them out of the studio and I want them to feel what being in a theater feels like. What it really feels like to be not in a safe zone of that space that we’ve created. The theater’s still safe, but they have to re-create the safety for themselves. But those people in those theaters are going, "Oh CIT’s back, I wonder what they’re doing this year," "it’s really exciting what they are doing." And even though it might not be mainstream, but there is a wider audience being created through the university circuit and the small theaters in Toronto. But one of the things that has been happening in Canada is the language thing. You created that CD where you sang in Ojibwe, and it was a really important hard work. And you didn’t do it because it was something to cash in on…no you did it from your heart. (To Jennifer Podemski) Well this language work for us is a serious part of the work for us. Alanis King wrote a play for us that her father translated an entire play for us in Ojibwe, a very very old language and we had to re translate it, because it was such an old language we couldn’t teach it, but it was a two year heart project for our students who had to learn the play like opera.

Charles: Do the established white theaters in Canada do your plays? Are they interested in doing, have they ever been produced in Canada. The established theaters in Canada, like what happened to August here.

Rose: Peter Hinton at National Theater, in Ottawa, is probably the biggest champion right now.

Betsy: I think what he’s asking is have Native Canadian First Nations Aboriginal playwrights been produced on main stream stages successfully in Canada?

Rose: Successfully but not enough; once in a while. Not enough…

Charles: But it’s visible?

Rose: It is visible.

Daniel David Moses: It was really interesting last season to see Native Earth and the National Arts Center English Theatre that Peter Hinton co-produced a project that Native Earth has been working on, adapting Shakespeare, Caesar, became Death of a Chief. A lot of gender reversal type casting and they opened in Ottawa, had great reviews, I think it was 97% of houses for the run, and then it moved to Toronto where the critics just wouldn’t allow it. They were saying maybe Natives could do A Midsummer Nights Dream or The Tempest , but not Caesar, it just doesn’t work. So it’s…

Charles: What I find—bringing a theater company back, like I’ve been trying to do with the Negro Ensemble Company, because it was almost lost, and I find that that just because I went around and asked questions, you have to think outside of the box to a certain degree. So the first play that I produced as the Artistic Director was a play that was written by a white man, but he was the editor for the New York Times for 28 years before he wrote this play. So I figured, hey this is a good play to do, because I figured I would get the Times to come in to do this play.

Betsy: Did they?

Charles: Yah they did, and they still come. And even now, when I’m working over at the Signature Theatre, it’s just another way to help the company come back into being. They’re doing some of the old historical Negro Ensemble Company plays over at the Signature Theatre. And it’s putting us back on the map. So I find that’s, and I catch hell from a lot of mostly blacks. They say: Why the white man doing your play? And it’s like, you know, cause we aint got the money to do it. That’s the reality, you know? But it’s still putting us back on the map to the degree where people realize that we’re not gone, so, you have to think outside of the box sometimes.

Tamara Podemski: With that point, something very exciting happened in Toronto last week. The factory Theatre put together an experiment of mixed-racial casting. The question they’re posing for theater is, can an audience accept a mixed race---can an audience be color blind. So they’re taking our canon of Canadian theater, with classic roles that everybody knows, and can a sister be black and the other sister be white? Can a mother be Native and the son be Filipino? And can someone watch a story of that on stage, and completely believe everything and not question it. I left before they finished, so I don’t know what to do with the answer.

Charles: I tell you that it can be that—because I’ve done King Lear that way; where all the daughters were Asian, white, black, and nobody—it worked.

Tamara: Did it work for the actors?

Charles: Yah. It worked for the production too.

Tamara: I think the wider audience thing is also about the wider experience for the actor and I think that’s the other thing. Just for directors and casting directors and mostly to open their eyes. Because we don’t get to go in for things that aren’t Native specific and I think that it’s great that we’re in that space now, and I think it was a really big deal for that theater company to—for those discussions to be had because it just means greater opportunity for us. Give us the chance that we can go in for Juliet or something like that.

Morgan Jenness: I mean the casting thing is really interesting point to me. Betsy you remember when I was here at the Public and we were trying to do some things and, you know, a lot of times when I was trying to work with a couple of Native writers and go around to theaters and it’s a big excuse for people to say, oh we can’t cast the play. And working now with an Egyptian writer named Yussef El Guindi, a wonderful writer, and he has a ten character play about an Arab-American family called, it’s a great title, Ten Acrobats in an Amazing Leap of Faith. And he very much wants it to be done with a completely diverse cast. So black, Latino, Native, Arabic, white person. I think that’s a really interesting issue. I remember when David Hare’s Fanshen was done with a completely diverse cast. So that’s a question. And I’ve always been of two minds about it. So I’m very curious to hear about people do about the issue of casting. Because if you go that way, things can open up to tell stories…

Betsy: Are you giving up power?

Morgan: Are you giving up power, how true is that, is it a step… I’m just so curious to hear what people think about that. Because I’m in the midst of trying again.

Randy: Sure.

Sharon Jensen: I’m Sharon Jensen and I run what was the Non-Traditional Casting Project and now it’s called Alliance for the Inclusion in the Arts, and I would just like to say I Just think through years of experience, there’s no one way of doing things, and everything is done in a context and for a reason. And sometimes that’s opening up a play to a global view. Sometimes there are instances where, for example, Mr. Wilson was very specific about how he wanted something cast, and that issues in the play turned on issues of race, and for him that was obviously crucially important, so I think one respects that. I think in a healthy theater ecology there’s room for all of it. And it’s not like you just do this thing this way only, ever, I think we all work in a context. Whatever that is. Whether you’re in an all girls school doing a production of something, whether it’s a Shakespeare, whatever it is. I thin all casting, though, is deliberate. Whatever you envision the world of that play, you are going to try to cast it accordingly. It’s not that you’re going to say alright, now I’m going to cast this week because he or she or black or just because he or she is Native American. I think that if you have global ---that when you’re thinking about that play, you’ll have a lot of people in mind, about the possibility to do that. And that I know, for example, when Greg Lennox did The Great Gatsby in Chicago, one of the reviews wrote it up, and I thought this was such a good comment, that people sometimes mix up the character with the color of a person’s skin. And really the issue for the actor is about transformation, and you’re going on that journey with the actor. And it’s not that you forget that someone is black or African-American, or Native American, or Asian-Pacific-American, but that that may not be the primary characteristic that you’re focusing on. So really it’s about the character’s journey, and not necessarily about cultural identification. Although in some cases it is, and then in those cases, obviously…but I think it’s no one way.

Charles: Yeah, in some plays it’s probably easier than others. I just came back a month ago now from doing Glengarry Glen Ross, and it was no problem because I think anyone can be a realtor, and you know, the only problem I had was saying, eh? I had a hard time.

Sharon Jenson: Years ago at the National, a black actor by the name of Joseph Simon did an Arthur Miller play …Marilyn Monroe, and Millers response to it was that he really thought it opened up his play in a new way. And he thought it was very exciting. If there was ever a play that seemed to be specific about a person it was that one, and his own view of it as the playwright was that it was expanding. And I’ll just say one other thing, and I can’t remember whether it was Jules Pfeiffer or not, and he said “It’s a play it’s not about…”

Charles: Yeah, but then that’s what August was telling a story about a people.

Sharon: Right, and one respects that. And also what we do now may not be done in ten years; it may be different.

Charles: It’s true.

Sharon: But it seems also important also that every culture population has an adequate opportunity to tell its own story in its own voice. And that it doesn’t get co-opted. I think that’s an issue.

Randy: I’m just going to remind us that we probably have four or five minutes left so—Terry, you had something to say.

Terry Gomez: I was just going to say that in the spring, Sheila came down and directed one of my plays. And I usually write—all my plays are about Natives…and we were using the students from the University of Mexico, and I think there was only one student in the acting class, and we looked around for Native people and couldn’t find it. And Sheila really wanted a diverse cast. And at first I thought, well this is specifically about these women, four Comanche women…So she convinced me otherwise and I thought she wanted the best. And she said this little woman is not really doing that well so I would really like to replace her, so I said okay; we did. And after it resolved in a great draw and I thought it was effective, however I’m going to be working with some African-American women this coming spring and they told me we really really like your play, but the main character was white and that ruined it; we wouldn’t buy it, that she was supposed to be a Comanche woman, and that ruined the whole play. And I was really disappointed because it thought that that actor—she even learned our language. And she did pretty well. But on the other hand, I thought it would work because we were so different looking. There’s all white Indians can look…blonde, red, white hair, you know, and all skin colors, and part African-American, and you never know who’s Native American. And we can look all kinds of ways. So that’s why I thought it would work, but they told me that they…so I was kind of disappointed in that.

Charles: I think that was just them. That was just there interpretation and everybody’s got their own, and they probably put someone in there that they wanted. I’ve learned to take that with a grain of salt.

Nicole Joy-Fraser: Just going on the subject of, it’s a little bit to do with casting, but when you were talking about—sorry, my names Nicole—Does it work if you’re casting different ethnic groups even though the subject matter may be specific race or ethnic group. And it isn’t a piece that I was apart of, it wasn’t a theater, it was more of a singing chamber choir group that I was apart of, that someone told me about in Canada. And it’s an Afro-centric chamber choir called the Nathaniel Dett Choral, and they do a variety of Negro spirituals and classics and jazz, gospel, and it’s so refreshing when I first hear about them. Someone said, you can audition for them, because they knew I had choir experience, but I said, do you have to be black? No, no, no it’s a diverse group of people who want to sing and are interested in material, and interested in the stories that are told through the music. And I arrived at the first rehearsal and I saw how diverse it was and there’s only about thirty of us, men and women all ages all backgrounds. I was sitting beside someone who had perfect pitch and music degrees, where and I was sort of tagging along. But the reactions from the audience, and the wide range of audience members, because we were inviting our families and friends and we all come from different backgrounds, and everybody was there. And it didn’t matter because they were here to hear the music, and we were introducing them to this sacred music and I think that’s what was so special. And I was learning them as well while we were learning them too. The conductor, Brainerd Blyden-Taylor, was always educating us about what we singing about and where they all come from, so it was exchange, and there as change made because people were introduced to them and they didn’t know who Nathaniel Dett was, and they’d say: oh, I’ve heard that music before in movies, but here you all are. And its so refreshing to see everyone taking part in it and presenting it, and we managed to tour a little in Ontario and dip down into Kansas City and the reaction was so positive, people walking up singers and saying, we were so moved and so refreshing that you represent the world up there, and I’ll be watching you sing, and that was what was so refreshing. We took pride in that—that we had come from all different walks of life, but we were all focused on a certain type of music and it worked. It worked because it was about the songs. But it might be different, if you have specific character, plot lines and stories, but it is being done. Even in the West End they’re casting Les Mis with all Nations, so—all Nations are playing in Les Miserables in the mainstream theaters, and it’s not just for that time and era in the French Revolution, we had, there was, my friend was Filipino and a range now, so we’re breaking barriers.

Randy: Margo’s threatening me with bodily harm, so we’ll take that comment and let Charles and Betsy finish off.

Margo Kane: Thank you. Because what I’m going to say is a bigger conversation that can’t be handled here. I think it’s dangerous to think that all of a sudden we’re looking globally and we’re going into a whole other kind of paradigm that says we’re all the same, and we all have feelings, even you’re black and I’m brown and you’re red and you’re yellow and whatever, and I think that’s dangerous territory to go in, but I think it’s important that we go there and we walk there and have that conversation. Because as an Aboriginal artist I got turned away from some many roles because there was a non-Native actress that wanted the role. And I didn’t have enough expereince, or something, or I didn’t live in the province and they couldn’t afford to bring me over, so as a young performer I didn’t get to perform; even with the few plays that were there. So I think there’s something about, there’s a whole politic around this arena. And the other is that yes—and I struggled with that myself as an actor, I’d like to be an actor, but actually myself, I’m an Aboriginal actor, that is the role I’ve chosen in my life. And there’s a mission and there’s a whole kind of thing I’m working towards, on behalf of myself and my people, for the development and the opportunity to develop our work and to produce the work in a way that we want. And the kind of forms and the kinds of plays and the kinds of performances. So there’s all of that. So, that’s a choice I make. Not every actor of color, or Aboriginal actor, chooses that. They want to be an actor who can play anything and everything. So I really say yes. There is a variety of perspectives when we talk about our teachings. The perspectives are that it takes the full circle of people’s perspectives to describe the sacred tree that stands at the center of the medicine wheel. It’s everybody’s perspective within its different. They see that tree from a different place. And it’s our combined perspectives that describe fully that tree and fully that vision, and you could put anything if you are envisioning a Native production or community. You put that vision in the middle. It takes all those perspectives, so I value that perspective as well. So, I think there is a place for—One more point around the place to consider is that as an actor you’re training and your work is to really inhabit that character and what we’ve seen too often is artists of no color, who are actually trying to play a culturally specific character, who have no concept of living with no privilege, of living with serious trauma in their community families, who have no concept of that, personally, and so the challenge is for that performer is to understand fully the nature of that history and the community that that person that actor, that person comes from. I just believe that.

Randy: Thanks. Charles closing thoughts?

Charles: My closing thought, closing thought: I’m very happy that I came to sit in on this panel. I really would like for you to take my card, for people that want me to read their plays, because who knows? I would just like to do it because I don’t think I’ve ever read a play from a Native American playwright, and I would like to do that. And it’s just very interesting to sit here and listen to you guys. When I first started this conversation, a lot of people weren’t here. And I was talking about a good friend of mine, a great actor by the name of Adolf Caesar, who always told me as an actor to—anything that happened traumatic to use it. And this fellow here asked me, did I ever use it? And to end that story, was that when Adolf died, it hurt me very much. It hurt me very much because he was my best friend for seventeen years, and of course I was just distraught. I didn’t see how—it was very tough on me. And I remember being at his funeral, and Douglas Turner Ward, who started the Negro Ensemble Company, came up to me and said, are you doing all right? And I was crying and why did he die, and Douglas said: Do you know what Adolf would tell you? (laughter) True story. I can cry whenever I want now. But thank you guys so much.

Randy: Betsy do you have any closing thoughts?

Betsy: Well I just wanted to say, Margo, that the image of people surrounding the sacred tree, I think that’s, you know, I don’t think we know any of these answers—is the point. We don’t know the answers. And one of the reasons why I felt so strongly supporting Oskar and Mandy and Sheila and the other folks, all the folks involved in putting this together the field conversations, which are as important as the scripts themselves, in that no only do Indigenous people in doing this crazy thing called theater not know exactly, and you’re faced with different choices all the time. But we all stand from different perspectives at different moments in the shift. But there is something very strong about the alliance. I was just talking to…woman, who was saying, you know, let’s talk about collaboration, collaboration, collaboration, she said I keep hearing the word alliance, it means that we’re sovereign Nations. We’ll work together from our places of sovereignty, that we’re allies, so I just want to leave you with that thought. Maybe it isn’t just about us kind of bumping into each other and figuring out ways to work together, but that the term ally—I think it’s really powerful because it gives the power to that individual expression. And for that homeland, and for that place that we all to… but it means that there are spaces to come together with that still there.

Randy: Thank you. So if you want to know more about the panelists, there are these nice bios here to tell you what they’ve been up to and who they are.

Cultivating the Artist: Field Discussion Transcript

2009-01-26T20:16:00.003-05:00

Field Discussion
Cultivating The Artist
November 13, 2008, 4pm
Moderator: Alanis King
Panel: Terry Gomez, Christopher Hibma, Jennifer Podemski, Randy Reinholz, and Rose Stella

Alanis King: Welcome everybody. Welcome to the ‘Cultivating the Artist Panel’ here at the Public Theater in New York City. My name is Alanis King and I’m the Artistic Director of Saskatchewan Native Theatre Company, I’m also a playwright. Beside me Terry Gomez, Comanche playwright…(see bio); Christopher Hibma (see bio) from Sundance Theater; Rose Stella is the Artistic Director of Center for Indigenous Theatre (see bio); Muriel Miguel, Muriel is the oldest Native theater artist living (Laughter), thirty years ago she founded Spiderwoman Theater with her sisters and I’d say she reached a far net throughout the island; Randy Reinholz, Artistic Director of Native Voices at the Autry (see bio). So welcome panelists. Thank you for being here and thank you for letting me be the moderator today. And the topic for today is "Cultivating the Artist" and I’d like to pose to the panelists a question of what that title means to you? And I though maybe if you could give it some thought, I’d have you share one by one what cultivating the artists can mean, and in your experience has meant. So no particular order, but Terry do you want to start?

Terry Gomez: I knew you were going to say that. "Cultivating the Artist"—I think I can separate that for myself into two divisions. I’m an educator, I’ve worked with a lot of students, and I’ve worked with the Institute of American Indian Arts for four years as a theater instructor, including playwriting, acting, and theater production. And it was a very hard job because there was no department, so you had to fish the students out of their individual departments and, what would you call it, not convert them but recruit them, and convert them, to where they could understand that theater would be a good way to express themselves and for the playwrights to see their work up on stage. Because that wasn’t being done. The playwrights were writing it, and then their plays were being put away and forgotten about. But they had, there were students writing about the environment, the KKK, white supremacy, abuse of Native women, and I thought that they all deserved to be heard, their voices needed to be heard, and that’s a big part to me of why I like theater and why I got so involved in it. I really didn’t plan to be involved in theater, I was going more toward being a fiction writer, but after I saw my play up on its feet and I had an audience, a lot of Native people were coming up to me and saying, “that’s what I’ve wanted to say forever; that’s how I feel about that, thank you!” And I thought, well, I kind of like this and I think have more to say. So I wanted to do the same thing for my students, and there are some that continue to—there’s no theater department there—they continued on working either in playwriting or in acting. So I think a big part of what cultivating the artist means to me is giving a hand to our up and coming students and encouraging them and then showing them the way so to speak that they can have their voices heard. And then, personally for myself, I think it’s been very difficult. I finished my degree, but I’ve had a very hard time finding an academic position in my-- I can’t leave where I am right now, I have a mother who’s an elder and I have a son who’s wayward, for lack of a better expression. He just turned eighteen and I’m still holding onto the reigns a little bit and making sure he’s going to go the right way. So I can’t just up and go, even if there’s an open position, so I’m having to find other ways to get my work produced and to keep myself motivated to write. And that’s happening, but it’s very slow and it’s hard going, but it’s possible because I really think it’s important that we continue to speak up and speak out, and-- Okay I’m going to stop right there because I feel like I’m rambling. Okay.

Alanis: Thank you Terry.

Christopher Hibma: Well first of all, let me just say what an honor it is to be up here with all of you and to be here. I work at Sundance Institute in Los Angeles, actually here in New York now, but it’s really a pleasure to be up here as the only person from the non-Native nation here. I did grow up on a farm in Iowa, if that counts at all—sorry… (laughter) Anyway, I feel really privileged to be working at a place like Sundance, where 30 years ago Robert Redford began what has grown into quite a mechanism for supporting artists of all kinds. And I have a wonderful position there. In theater I don’t have to sell a ticket, or find any real funding, I just get to support artists like all of you. So that’s what I’m doing here this weekend, is to find out what Sundance could learn from you and do for you. So I welcome all of your thoughts. We have a year round program at Sundance supporting artists, and we have laboratory and workshop experiences in places that happen outside of major metropolitan areas. We have the mountain in Utah, in the Wasatch Mountains, where the Indians were originally there and we welcome their blessing at the beginning of each of our labs to honor the traditions that have become before us. So that’s a three week lab that you all are welcome to apply for, you can all go online and apply for that. The way we support writers there is the playwright is given every other day off from rehearsal to do rewrites. And that’s a rarity in the theater, especially in major metropolitan areas especially when you have to turn over the pages the next night for the copying the next morning. So we accept 700 submissions each year for about seven slots. It’s highly selective. But what we heard from artists was that that working environment wasn’t perfect for some genres. For example musical theater, they like to rehearse everyday, there’s a lot of music to learn, so we’ve created a new lab for them down in Florida, at a place called White Oak, which is this fabulous nature preserve with giraffe, and rhino, and zebra, and antelope, and artists. We get to go down there for two weeks, I just came back from there a couple of days ago, and we support a musical there and a piece created by an ensemble. Ensembles are different in that they already have a working vocabulary and language with which to work with each other. So they like to rehearse everyday. We have no public performances of any kind, which also creates a sacred place for that work to take lots of risks. We don’t care if you come in with a play and you leave with one act. We don’t care if you took a risk and it didn’t quite work out. It doesn’t matter, as long as you as an artist were able to try something new. We give you a dramaturg, we give you some actors, and we give you some feedback from creative advisors in the field to respond to your work and we allow you to answer questions, to ask questions, of your work. Instead of us telling you what we think of your work, it’s what questions do you still have about it. We have a playwriting retreat that happens in the wilds of Wyoming, outside of Sheridan, in this seventy-thousand acre cattle ranch, and we send six playwrights and two composers up there each winter for 18 years to put pen to paper; to give them the space and time to get away from their everyday life. So that’s another way in which we support artists. And this is the second year, I’m proud to say, that we have started a whole initiative in East Africa, supporting artists in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Ethiopia. There we’re doing much the same as you’re doing this weekend, is that we are getting to know the community there, of artists, by asking them who they are, what their issues are, what they’d like to see happen, and what could Sundance play, if any, in the development of their work. And so, in one way that’s how we’re getting to expose American artists to artists from other cultures. Just one of the things we’re focusing on in the next couple of years. So cultivating the artist, at Sundance, has a bunch of different connotations, from a place to write, a space away from your everyday life, somewhere in nature, and then after you leave hopefully there’s a relationship, and some sort of community of Sundancers, able to help you on your journey towards full production.

Rose Stella: Hi everybody. The Centre for Indigenous Theatre, I’m the principal, I design the curriculum, I’m the artistic Director, I design what’s going to be presented. I wear two hats there. I was an actor and a writer before I started my job, and it’s been a real learning curve about what I really need to know and how to go about doing what I’m doing to cultivate these young artists. How to give them what I think they need, how to figure out what they need, and giving them both without spoon feeding them everything. Like helping them become adults in a very competitive field but also giving them really solid training. So as an artist myself, I understand what it takes. In order to cultivate the artist it’s really important to be an artist yourself so that you understand how difficult it is. You really know how hard it is to be an artist so you know that they need to be really good at what they’re doing in order to be successful. And even then you’re not always successful in the way some people call success. Margo’s been doing this a long time, you know what I’m talking about. So cultivating an artist, you have to figure out how to get them in the door to understand that they need training. And then once they’re in the door, to understand how to be a student again. We’re a three year training program. We’re not a two week workshop. In the summer we have three weeks, a three week training program, but when we’re doing from September to April, a full time training program, and we need them there at nine in the morning to six o’clock at night, helping them learn that there’s a discipline involved with being an artist, there’s a whole retraining of a mindset that happens that I actually wasn’t sure that I was prepared to do once I saw that that was what I needed to do. But I’ve, it’s five years now, I’ve been there five years. And a lot has changed, and I’ve inherited a lot of—there were people in there before me that did a lot of work. And I’m really grateful for them because they laid the ground. Alanis was a really important part of our faculty before she moved on to Saskatoon. She wrote a really important play for our students, that was translated in the Odawa language by her father, and that was huge for cultivating the idea that language and theater—that you can take that language, and learn culture through theater. We toured it. It was the first time we’ve toured in years and years. So, it’s a really important place for young artists right now. And we have committed young people, but we’re a tiny school. We’re tiny. We have nine students in a three year program right now, and they get lets of attention. They’re getting very very good training, and sometimes one on one training depending on what we’re doing. Cultivating the artist is, for us, understanding how to hear them when they come and sit down with me and say we’re scared. A lot of them are so scared. We have four young men from Alberta who were all excited to come to Toronto, and as soon as they came to the door and were in Toronto, you know, were scared young men. They never left Leftbridge before, they never left Alberta. There’s a lot to cultivating an Indigenous artist that’s beyond the studio. So there’s a lot of challenges, and we do have support from the community, we could use more, but we do have support, and we have strong teachers, and I have flyers here, and I have pictures of shows that I’m happy to share with people. But cultivating the artist is first making them feel safe for us and having them trust us so that we can go to the next step, which is, you know, allowing them to be vulnerable enough to take in the work.

Muriel Miguel: I was thinking just now, when Christopher was talking, that many of the piece that I have performed and Spiderwoman’s big theater pieces, that really have been cultivated by many of the people that are either here in this room, it happened through Marrie Mumford at Banff, it happened through Weesageechak at Native Earth, it happened with Urban Ink, going there, so a lot of my pieces have really been supported by the communities around me. I was also able to perform at the community house when I had ideas, and I was able to just show my idea, sometimes just in a reading, sometimes a staged reading, so again this community here in New York also has supported Spiderwoman. So that to me is very important that the Native community, all around me that surround me, really supported me. I also work for CIT, and I go into CIT with a very strong purpose. I come in as a teacher in the beginning, and then I change into a director; that’s when the kids are scared of me. But as a teacher, to really pass onto these young people that where you’re working is a safe area, and that’s really important, that this place where you are working now is a safe area and you can fail. And that’s scary, you know, and you really have to continue with and continue with and talk to them about it. That all their experiences are valuable. And the type of work I do in storytelling is to do many of these themes and weave them together; so you’ll not only have one person’s story, but you’ll have many persons’ stories in one elaborate tapestry. So I come in in many ways. I come in as an elder, as a senior, a teacher, I come in as a director, but I come in as a person that has been working for 31 years in theater, and I can still get on the floor; and if I can do it, you can do it. And so that’s really the basic thing, that’s where I start, and if I have to get down on the floor and do something I tell the kids, don’t make me do it again—as I crawl off. That is one section, so you know, the communities that have supported me, the way I try to support the communities that I am working in, we are also asked to go into communities, like Tohono O'odham, many communities in the States, and a lot of them in Canada, to work the same way. So sometimes we are just working with teenagers, sometimes it’s a mixed group of elders and teenagers, we’re going to do a piece here, with elders and teenagers that my sisters made a reading out of. So again it’s cultivating those stories, and listening to those stories, and talking about the stories. I work with young women, and encouraging their one woman shows, which is very important for me, to get those one woman shows out, and so someone said, god I feel like I’m in therapy, because I want to know where are they going? What’s their ideas? What’s in their head? So now I am 71 and it’s time to pass on a lot of this now to the next generation. These young women that I’ve been talking to, these young women that I’ve gotten one woman show out of, these people that would have had all these exchanges, it’s time to give it to them. It’s time for Spiderwoman to go on, which means that--I have a 501C3, that’s what it means. And that I can, if I can give this to the next generation of women, if I can pass it on and see it change. It may not be the way I think, it may not be the way I would do it, but to see it go on is very important to me. So I’m really that here in New York City, Spiderwoman should start its base, from that Native base that we can branch out into many other bases, many other fields about what a lot of us are thinking about. So that’s where I’m going, and I’m also thinking that we should work now in language, because I’ve been doing that, I was talking to him about language.

Edward Wemytewa: That one.

Muriel: That one—that man over there! And so I’m thinking of bringing in young women. A young Navajo woman who wants to tell her stories in Zuni, a young Zuni woman who wants to tell her stories in Zuni, and start a new Spiderwoman. So that’s where I am in cultivating artists.

Randy Reinholz: I would like to echo Christopher’s idea here, with such esteemed company, and it’s really nice, and Rose’s idea that our work does come from those who preceded us and, certainly, we’ve all benefited a lot from Spiderwoman, and I see Hanay’s name there, and I think a lot about Daniel David Moses and Margo, who have done so much work along the way before I was really involved. So I always like to start by thanking. Native Voices, our mission is to develop and produce new work for the stage by Native American writers and to elevate the status of Native theater artists nationally. We work on new scripts, we have a number of different programs, sometimes we work with new scripts, sometimes they’re stand alone readings, sometimes they’re festivals, like this festival, several readings at once. Sometimes it’s a playwright’s retreat where we go away and we’re in residence for five/ten days at a time with a company of actors and what we call friends of the playwright, sometimes directors, sometimes dramaturgs. We work simultaneously at developing writers and actors. We had a nice pool of talent both ways, when we started in Los Angeles in ‘99, and these both groups have grown and it’s really exciting to see them thrive well beyond what we’re doing. Rhiana has a Jerome Fellowship in Minneapolis and is producing work on her own, doesn’t need Native Voices at all anymore, she’s on her own. And we’re watching that happen on so many levels, with young artists that we’ve invested in, and it’s exciting! It is terribly exciting actually. We do produce, try to produce one show every year. The last few years we’ve been producing two plays a year, and we felt it’s very important to produce on an equity contract, and we pay artists, we pay on an equity contract, so we pay artists. We pay about 150 artists per year. And that’s been a big goal, to try to produce-- not try to, we do—under the equity contract because people can’t dismiss the work. People will try to dismiss the work, but we’ve worked very hard to help the artist not do dismissible work. LA Times, Backstage, Variety, what else, the Reporter, LA Weekly, I mean we really are in all the major periodicals in Los Angeles. So there is a written paper trail of these ten Equity productions and these writers are actually able to take these reviews and use them in other places. The actors, I’m starting to see, you know, “I’m a Native Voices company member.” We haven’t really formalized what that means yet, but dogonit I love it that it’s their company, they’re taking ownership of it, and in some ways they’re defining what it should be. That’s our most, that’s most of the programming we do to cultivate artists. We have a radio project that’s three years old that Betsy helped us initiate. Actually, Betsy and my wife—you know, people who say, you’re pretty good at this, learn how to do this—so with that we’ve project three shows a year. And it’s been exciting to be in different communities, sometimes we were with Eastern Cherokee youth, a couple different times—Rhiana had a show she did recently, a variety show—we’ve had Super Indian in Los Angeles, a comic book hero about a super Indian. So there’s been all kinds work coming out of this. Lots of comedy, lots of drama—as my Canadian brothers and sisters would say—so that’s what we do at Native Voices.

Alanis King: Thank you Randy. Well I thought maybe I could share a bit about Sas’ Native Theatre Company, and how it’s working out there. It started in ’99 with a program for youth at risk, and it was called the Circle of Voices Program. And through four components, of culture, life skills, performing arts and career management, we would put the students into this program of being first time theater practitioners. And we hook them up with a senior playwright during that time. And in a circle, because all of it’s cultural activity, we work with elders out there as well. And it’s really awesome, culturally strong, land base. And there’s so many urban youth, and where we’re situated, in Saskatoon, is in the heart of the inner city, so if you just go outside your door, you’re gonna see a lot of tragic lifestyles. And I think for a lot of these young people, who joined the theater, they kind of come in there as a safe haven from everything that’s going on back home. And some of them are 18/19/20 and then their moms are all messed up when they go back home. So we kind of provide a haven for them. But I know, when they go through this program, they’re being cultivated to discover themselves and I think that’s what’s important to draw out. And from that, the ones who really want to pursue the performing arts and stay in the theater, we have another program, a more senior level program, and it’s called the Red Spirit [Performing] Arts Training Program, and it’s a two year one. The Circle of Voices is a six month. So for me, it’s kind of like a three year program because the COV go into a more intense two year structure after that. And that one, we’re putting quite a bit of emphasis on different aspects of their training. We do the basic stuff of, you know, voice, movement, dance, singing, traditional singing as well, traditional dance as well, all of the normal activity you’d expect in a theater school, and then on top of that we get, not daily but it seems like it sometimes, commissions from different bodies, like Saskatchewan Government Insurance. They ask us to do a play on road safety, and we create this with those students and then they take it out on the road. So I just feel like—the people who are commissioning us want to turn their issues and have them portrayed by the very people they’re trying to reach. And the only way they can do that, and some of the most successful ways, have been through the use of theater. So these young people are getting right out there, right away, with their own work, being collaborated and collectively created. And after that we have a young company, and it’s called the Fire Spirit Players, and we put on an annual Christmas play, and it’s called the Kohkum's of Kiweetinook, and it’s Rez Christmas Series. And this play has become so strong, within the community response, that it’s been, it will be instillation 7 now, and we’re keeping it going annually, and it’s already sold out, and it already has it’s tour booked, about sold out as well, so I guess I mean, there are some that we have that are very well known, and others, when we start brand new work, we have a tougher time getting a mainstream audience. And I guess, the University of Saskatchewan, allowing us to use their theater—rent their theater—was a first historical; and I had no idea, we just needed a space. We have two huge buildings, one is dormant because we are trying to renovate it into a black box studio, which it was years ago but the fire inspectors came and realized a few things. So we’re doing a major capital campaign for it, and it will be just beautiful when it happens, and it will be, you know, a long time dream come true to see an actual Native theater in Canada that’s really operating. And the square footage that we have throughout the year, in the other building, is where we offer all the training. And sometimes we feel we still don’t have enough space, but we want to invite you all to a future festival and have another gathering of all our artists just so that we can show you what’s going on the Prairies, and with young people, and some of our alumni. So this company I’m working with was actually founded by Tantoo Cardinal and Gordon Tootoosis who were in Big Bear, in Saskatchewan, way back and then they decided, over the fire, wouldn’t it be nice to have an art’s center and wouldn’t it be nice to have something for youth to go to. And, you know, there’s common programs in the visual arts, but this one was theater specific. And I think when I got there, it was kind of like…Native Earth and CIT all in one and that was my job. And there wasn’t like a charter or something to follow, so we kind of hit the ground running and do all we can and try to create it from a model of CIT, a National Theater School, but always Indianizing it and Aboriginalizing everything that we do, to give back these young people their own sense of purpose. And out of that we’ve had many writers and I think that’s really where the cultivation begins. Because I don’t think we have enough plays, and I always emphasize that to them, that there’s not enough Native plays, and that’s why I became a playwright, because there wasn’t a play to produce after the one we had just produced, so we had to write another one. And then we’d act in it, and then tour it to 90 communities in three months, and sleep on the billet’s floor and all this. And nowadays we have hotel rooms, and it’s a major luxury and huge transitions for the humble beginnings so to speak. But I think that all of that, creating a venue for an artist, is really the most important thing to do period. So long as an artist has venue, and it could be small—a rock on a beach, it could be grand. I think that’s what the purpose is for, with the community. And it think in terms of Native theater, it’s always been, my approach anyway, it’s always been that my work is for my community first and that if the wider society comes, and they’re all welcome to the reserve or to where I’m at now, I think that’s a real bonus. And if they come back, and again and again. Saskatoon population, and I don’t know if it’s approaching 50% Native, but it’s the wild wild west out there still, so, all the things you’d expect are visible. So you’re always dealing with that kind of thing. But the support is there, with all different levels of government funding, that’s always the big, you know, how are you going to operate. And the Canadian Federal Government thankfully does have a little of arts funding still, so I think that historically we’re, you know, we have to be great with so little. And Stratford got everything in ’53, and here we are getting funded in ’86, you know, so we need to catch up and we need to get the same amount, and why are we so invisible, and why doesn’t anyone know that Native theater happens. It’s really just because of that. And, I guess the final thing is that all the young artists, like Muriel says to, you know we do need the next generation of young ideas and have a real solid base of where they are going to go, and some of them do create theaters, go back home, but some of them are going to take over, you know, take over the whole company or the young company, or what have you. So I just wanted to ask the panelists if you have any other thoughts, or we could actually open it up to the audience for questions.

Rose Stella: I just want to say one thing because it was connected to what you were saying, and I think when those young people, I think opening them up to understand that they’re worthy. That was one of the things that I was surprised that I would have to help to get past the lack—the students didn’t feel worthy to grow. They were there, they wanted to grow, but there was so much shame and suppression and it’s, making that space a place where they are worthy of growing and worthy of becoming an artist, to be called an artist, and it doesn’t happen magically. That they can take their life and still be worthy of being an artist or a person that still has a career. So it’s one of the things that it’s really important, to let our young people know they’re worthy, because they are all coming from a place where—a lot of broken spirits and healing those spirits in kind of the first steps for us.

Terry Gomez: I’d like to talk a little bit about someone who’s not here. Martha Brice was here last here and she works in Seattle with a youth group called Red Eagle Soaring, and they’re from anywhere form 8 to about 18. And she had about 12 students. And she asked me if I would come out for the month of January, she’d pay me $1500, and I would stay with her family and we would put a play together. So I was a little apprehensive about it because I told her, what tribe are you in, and she said, I’m adopted Tlingit. And I thought, hmm, well, I don’t know her. So I kept talking to her last year while were here, got to know her, and we were started hanging around together, and she’s an elder, and she’s very proud of the fact that she’s adopted Clinket. So, I thought well, I have that month and I’ll take it—she wanted me to stay two months, but I told her I only could afford to do one month—but, for somebody that cultivated, she bought food for that youth group, she made sure that they were there, if they weren’t there we there. If they weren’t there, we, she had one of those navigation things, she’d put it in her van, and she kind of scared me with her driving on the Encino, and we would go all over, out of her own pocket, and pick these kids up, and if they couldn’t make it she’d call them, on the day that we were supposed to be there twice a week, and she would pick every one of those kids up, and go way the heck out of her way and take them home. And to me I was just really in awe of her, because of her intense dedication, she’s really dedicated, and I don’t know if I could have done that, because she put everything to the side, she didn’t get paid for it, but that’s what she did. And I thought, well, I was pretty proud and I hope that I’m wiling to do stuff like that. And I think a lot of times that we don’t get paid for our work, or we have to volunteer and do things, but it’s worth it, especially when you work with young people because they need the help, they need the attention, and I just wanted to say that, she called me and wished she was here, but she couldn’t make it this year so she told me to say hello to whoever knew her. So I just wanted to put that in there for her.

Alanis: So if anyone has any questions for our panelists, we’re totally open to that.

Mandy: Rose, did you say you had 9 students, from September to April.

Rose: Yes, yes.

Mandy Hackett: How did they find you, or how did you find them?

Rose: Our first year students, this year, one young woman came through one of our graduates, so she was a friend of one of the graduates, so she’s Iroquois, she’s from Ontario, and she already graduated from Concordia in Montreal. So she’s come to this school with a real strong sense of purpose. And is really helpful to those young men, because they look up to her like she’s an older sister, and she’s helpful to them because she’s been through school. The young men came from our summer program that we had in Leftbridge. They were so excited about the program that they decided to come—we had about three other students that were enrolled, but lost the funding. So we would have had seven—eight in first year. But basically we recruit. We go out and we do recruitment tours and we have summer schools that we hope will bring in new students and get people excited about training and understanding that theater isn’t just about acting. Part of the program is the technical part, so that we hope that we can inspire people to be writers, or lighting designers in general. We hope that we can create our artistry throughout the whole gamut of what theater is, but it’s through recruitment. It’s very hard, because there’s money problems for the students. We’re not a diploma program, we’re a certificate program, so funding is an issue, but—so that’s one of the reasons why it is a small school, but we persevere.

Diane Glancy: I had question for Randy. How do you handle playwrights who come to your workshop thinking that their play is just finished and ready to go.

Mandy Hackett: Christopher should answer that too.

Randy: You know, I think it’s a long process, and I think a lot about setting expectations. So in the beginning, I think we probably hurt people’s feelings by not talking about that right up front, so now we try to set, in the call for scripts. Why would you want to come here and work on your script, so there’s not a judgment from me, they’re saying from themselves, this is what I want to accomplish, this is what I want to do, so I think that’s real important to get the playwright to define what their job is. And again, we often match them up as you know with directors or dramaturgs, and we find out who they might be able to vibe with or have a relationship with, and I think that’s really important.

Christopher Hibma: Yeah I conquer with that. We also require a playwright and director’s statement in all the applications, and when we have gotten burned by playwrights—we say burned—who come and want no help, it’s because we haven’t read those—who aren’t open, to change or take a risk-- it’s because we haven’t read those statements quite as closely as we needed to. But I think it becomes obvious when you are in a community of people who are all engaged in creating a better product; where the holes in something are. We’ve also, however, instituted a program where our dramaturgs are able to meet ahead of time, ahead of the Lab experience, with an interest in playwrights, so that they don’t come to the Lab experience on a blind date, and it’s not just a stranger advising you on your work, but there’s a conversation that’s already been put in place. That’s where we try to head off those wall before the bricks are laid.

Betsy: I have a question about, to all of you who spoke about the safe space you’re trying to create for artists to create the work, whether that’s the actor training, particularly the playwright and directors in training—is there, I’d just like to hear you different perspectives. Do you feel any responsibility, and there’s nothing loaded in here, I just want to hear your different perspectives—any responsibility in cultivating the artist, besides giving them that safe space and helping in the safe space. Linking them to a place to that think that they’ve created, when what they’ve created is done. Or are you cultivating—helping them cultivate the relationships? Is that part of the work, or is that up to the artist and is that… Because that’s another space where people—are you going to produce me?

Randy: Right.

Muriel: Are you going to produce me? Is that what she said?

Randy: Yeah, you know, artists come with a certain expectation—if I do everything you want will you produce me—is a tough question. Well one of the things we’ve been doing is cultivating a national reading panel, so that we have about eight different people around the country, a mix of Native and non- Native, sometimes literary managers, that way we expose a lot of people to the plays. Last year we partnered with Literary and Dramaturgs Association of the Americas, because they have a national conference, so Salvage was a play that was read in front of that group, so 200 literary managers and dramaturgs saw that work. So we work strategically to get people involved with artists that they might be interested in later. We have a little network of people coming together who have said: well I’m interested in Native theater, I’m interested in Native Artists. Then you just try to see those relationships. And certainly that’s a great idea of putting dramaturgs and directors in touch before. And we’ve noticed, what’s happened, is that the dramaturgs tend to stay invested; The dramaturgs we’ve been using. We also have a pool of actors that are really good at reading. So they’re very fast, and they’re fine with, you’re reading today, and you’re the lead, and you’re the support, and the next day it’s like, ah, let’s switch it around, and you be the lead, and you be the support. And the actors are totally cool with that. SO that safe space is a company idea. It can’t just be sort of one person’s idea. And the actors are really good about that. Actors know how to give notes now, and they’re not like give me more lines, they’re more like: ah, I don’t know what the characters are doing right here, or it seems like I’m doing the same thing for three pages here, what’s going on with my change. And it’s a very giving group that way.

Christopher: Yeah I think, this is the question that I think, in development organizations, we need to wrestle with more deeply. We of course do all we can to talk to literary managers and artistic directors when we, when there’s a project that’s ready for production. One of the things that we’re actively doing this year, one of the things that Sundance does really well is bring people together. And this December is, we are convening the people who do what we do in the world of new play development. I liked your word new performance instead of new play, I liked that, because I think the definition of play is limiting. We’re bringing together in the US the people who do primarily development, like New Dramatists here in New York, or the Playwrights Center in Minneapolis, the Playwright’s Foundation in San Francisco, the LARK, the O’Neill Theater Center and Sundance. We’ve never all met together in the same room, so we’re meeting together in the same room, for two and a half days, to talk about issues just like this. What happens when a play has been in one of our development programs, is there something that we need to be doing together, communally, to make that happen, what—primarily we need to figure out what our core values are, because we’re all very different organizations, just as each and everyone up here has a different core value, and what’s interesting is to figure out what we have in common and what we don’t, and how that informs our work, and our process.

Betsy: What did you find out?

Christopher: We have not yet done it. In December we’re meeting. So, I’ll let you know.

Vickie Ramirez: Could you more clearly delineate the difference from an artist perspective, when we approach a producing organization vs. a development organization, what our expectations should be, what our, what the point of the process is, because I know a lot of my colleagues, who are playwrights, when some of them are like, but they didn’t do it. And I’m like, but didn’t they give you all that feedback and give you some—so, can you delineate what the mission is, with a development organization vs. a producing organization? Anybody?

Alanis King: Well I think some of my experience on that level is that, you know, development is extremely important and if it’s your first play, but you could have written 20 plays but it’s your first play again, first draft, and I think those forms are so valuable. You know, like Weesageechak and other places, but to really have professional actors and a dramaturg and director, I think that gives the playwright so much more than what they arrived with. Because before that it was just stuck on the paper, and now when it comes to life, you are going to be so much more deeply informed about it, and walk away, and hopefully, sometimes, if you’re lucky and there’s a lot of resources, you can come back six months later, or six weeks later, or something, and have another go at it, you know? And that is its own thing, and when you really feel that its ready, than its ready for the theaters to receive it, for script calls and such. So then you take your opportunity there. But it think if you’re in the milieu, and people know what’s coming down, and what’s recommended, I mean that’s part of it too. So then the producing side I think is a very special, very special limited place. You know, you could have a vision until 2012, and you’ll only have the opportunity to do six plays, and that’s sad, but really we should be doing one play a month, producing one play a month, you know, and even, dare I say, have a longer rehearsal period, you know? But, so the producer part, that’s where our chances are a bit more limited with the companies that exist out there, but that’s where I find a lot more Native theater artists are becoming self producers and starting their own companies. And you just have to go in those steps and stages all along, really, and that stick-to-it-ness, because if your script is something that you really see and I give the students a list what makes constructing a play, so just with things like that, I mean that once you’re on the production side, you can do a lot of that self producing, or by mailing out it will be read and maybe it’s all luck and timing, it really is. I mean, you know, someone’s script for me may be well loved, but cross country down south, it doesn’t work over here. It doesn’t mean it’s a bad play, a bad playwright, a bad idea, it just means that at that time, for that location and person, it just didn’t fit. So, I think of musicians, how do I get into music and get a gig and get a CD? And the answer is always, go out to a concert, with other musicians, and show your support, and you’ll start networking, and they’ll give you ideas. So there’s a lot of really, you know, tactical strategic ways to do it, but I think it’s really—you just can never ever give up on the baby, right? And that, if you have that vision and dedication to the craft itself, the very essence that this play I have to see come to life, it will. It just will. And that’s what it takes, will.

Randy: Sometimes I think too that being around development processes is really important, because seasoned artists know how to take advantage of the opportunities. And there so, they happen so fast, the opportunities. And as my mom said, you only get one chance to make a good first impression, you know, those kinds of things, those opportunities. And it think just being around the process and watching how people work, you can pick up stuff so fast. I mean I learned so much at Weesageechak, just going there for a couple of years, and then someone said, well we’ll let Choctaw boy direct one. And then I started to learn a lot, what was going on.

Muriel: I think, what I like, is that little place, that small place where someone comes to me with and idea and that’s all it is, it’s just a little idea, and we talk about it and we talk about it, and then… Or then somebody comes with a story, and it’s one page, and then something happens, we talk about it and we talk about it. And then, we did evening in Paris, I don’t know if you saw it, and a young woman came to me, actually I met her, I was performing with her in Marie’s play in Vancouver, Michelle Olson, who was a dancer, and she started to talk about this woman that a lot of us know, Molly Spotted Elk. And we were talking about it and I told her I knew her, when I was a kid I met her, and we started to talk about it, and she was really interested in the idea of that iconic woman, the Josephine Baker of the Native world. Fringe instead of bananas. And so we started to talk about that. Then we went back and she started to talk about her grandmother, and how her grandmother loved Evening In Paris, which was the five and ten cent store perfume, yeah, with this beautiful bluebottle. And how her grandmother lived in the North. So we took that and then we started to talk about starlings and sparrows and we took that, and she started to write these stories about—there not starlings, what are they? There’s a certain, there’s a bird that comes and goes, but—Yes a swallows. That’s what they are. And she wrote these swallow stories, of how a woman turns into a swallow, how a swallow turns into a woman, and they all started to connect together into Molly and who Molly was. And big discussions about Molly, because who is Molly? Is she a sell out? Do we think of her as a sell out? Because after all she was the first show biz woman we know and have in our world. And out of it all came Evening in Paris, our dance theater piece that came out of it, but it just came out of this little thought, this little idea that she approached me with. And that’s what I like, and think about when I think about cultivating the artist. It’s those little thoughts that happen, that little thought becomes this thing. That’s what I’m interested in, that’s how I think about cultivating.

Rhiana Yazzie: You know, I was really struck by something that Rose said, about when you’re working with Native artists that they have an issue with worthiness and trust, and it makes me think a lot about the community that I’m living in. I’m living in Minneapolis right now, and everybody knows there’s almost a hundred theaters in Minneapolis, but there are so so few collaborations that happen between the Native community and the theater community. And the longer I live there, and the more I get to know the community, it becomes more apparent to me that there’s this tangible, historical trauma that seems to get in the way of Native artists being able to produce there work. Because if you’re not able to understand the world that this young person is coming from or this writer or this actor is coming from, you might push them away, but really they’re going through this cultural/historical trauma. It’s like how do we as artists or producers get through that, or it feels to me like it’s something that I always have to talk about when I’m working in my community with Native People and non-Native people trying to bring things together. Because I know a lot of examples that have happened, like even in the past year, of Native artists trying to work with non-Native artists, and they’re becoming this huge rift between them because they didn’t talk about this historical problem. And in Minnesota, it really doesn’t get talked about. You know Native people, they’re not even in the tourist brochures, so I mean it’s something—I was wondering if you could talk about that?

Rose: Well, I think any group that’s working has to begin from the idea that you need to make sure that everyone is feeling they understand that they’re worthy. It has to be asserted, no anyone you’re working with, who has not been produced or worked, or they’re beginning. Because their trauma may not be spoken about, but shame is one of those insidious evils, you know, that stops people from growing, it stops people from working in a way that’s larger than what they’re doing. It keeps people down, it’s designed to keep people down, and designed to control people. So now, what we need to do is find a way to allow people to understand that that’s what happened to them. There’s so much, all peoples we deal with, it’s all kinds of people who deal with this, but in our world, we have—there was, my very first year doing this work, I had one student who’s sister was murdered, and her two people in his family had a murder and a suicide, in that person’s family, another person was dealing with a friend’s suicide, I had 9 students this year, and I was dealing with that little group. What the hell? I’m thinking, what organization of people in training deals with this kind of trauma? That’s like 1 in 2 trauma, or less, you know, 1 in 1?

Randy: isn’t that who becomes artists?

Rose: But to be an artist, to be a living and working artist you have to survive it. That’s what I’m saying. Al this chaos, drama, trauma creates art, if you can survive it to make the art and be stable enough to survive until you’re a senior and do the work and continue to pass it on. I’m just saying at those morsel times, those times when you’re just beginning, those young people, or even if they’re not young people, beginning artists, or they don’t have to be young they can be fifty years old and begin to be an artist. They have to understand that their legacy, their history—face it and tell them that they’re worthy of being an artist. And help them and encourage them to get help. I tell all of my students, get help, so that you can access your emotional world. Because art demands to access your emotional world. You can’t be an actor if you can’t access anger, love, innocence, you can’t be an actor if you can’t access that in a safe way. And you can’t be a writer if you can’t access those things in a safe way. So I ask them—we provide counseling, but it may not be the right counseling for everyone, so I ask them to tell me when they’re in trouble, to trust me enough to tell them when we’re in trouble, so we can keep finding them help, but so that they can begin from a slate of understanding that there is a legacy of trauma, and begin the healing work so that they can move forward. And be artists, or whatever they want to be, so that they feel strong enough to do it. I don’t know if that helps or answers your question?

Rhiana: it’s this systemic societal issue. I mean I will…think about it, because why aren’t there that many Native people doing theater and accessing it the same way, and it all comes down to who can get help, where is the access to that?

Rose: It’s even feeling worthy of getting the help. Feeling worthy enough to get help is a real big issue.

Muriel: I also think that, we’re talking about these institutes that we work with and how we take care of people and care for these students. Well if you go to a big institution, if you go to a big university, you’re out! If you don’t show up for the week, if you fail, you’re out. And so that’s it. Or you can swallow it, and if you swallow it you either drink or take drugs. You know what I mean? That’s it! So these places are places, sometimes they’re over protective, sometimes they over indulge, you know I want to slap them upside the head and say get real now—you know that’s my reaction! (laughter) But the other thing was that in Minneapolis, there was a place called Foot of the Mountain, which was a feminist theater group that started in Minneapolis, that brought Spiderwoman in. And we worked from Foot of the Mountain and we had a group of about 10 women. They were Mexican, I think we had 3 Natives, one Black woman, one Jewish woman, so I think there were like eight of them and three of us. And we produced a piece at Foot of the Mountain called Neurotic Exotics - something like that - "Erotic Nexotic" [laughter] - but talking about being an exotic, and being a neurotic because you’re an exotic. And we had all these women, and we did it, but the thing was, we really wanted Native women, but they said, "we sent out brochures, and we sent out flyers, and we sent out audition, and no one showed up" they said to us. And we said of course they didn’t show up. So we went out to every powwow, you know we gave out things, we talked to people, and you know, five Native women showed up. And we took every one of them.

Betsy: I think that’s a really interesting question about—you ‘re talking about cultivating the artist and using, kind of farming language. You’re talking about soil, what you’re trying to grow folks in, and nobody talks about the G word in the United States, you know…

Muriel: What’s the G word?

Betsy: Genocide word. Those folks in Minneapolis, those women and children were marched to Fort Snow and shot, had garbage thrown at them as they were on the march. The men were hung in town, but nobody says that, and I just feel that we have to say that. That hey don’t teach that in the school books, and they don’t—when they have the centennial celebration, the bi-centennial celebration of the state, they don’t talk about that. And that is really hard, being in that situation, and folks act like there’s an even playing field, like it’s just an inclusion law, you know we invited you , just come, and if you don’t come that’s your own problem. And I guess for me the question is, does something else need to happen, or are there questions for theater artists. How do they take part in that? Is it just about doing work that you’re just uncovering the stories, or is there something else? I don’t know, I mean I feel like I wrestle with that all the time, with this kind of length between memory, not just memory as a guilt trip, but memory that activates you to change your behavior, and how other change their behavior, and memory that’s shared. Memory that people have ownership of, other than you like, oh yeah yeah that’s somebody else’s problem. I think actually that’s the realm, partially like what Muriel was talking about those things are…of here.

Muriel: It’s not necessarily that they’re good memories, you know, but they have to be shared. You know, we’re here and we know this much about our lives as Native people, but we know them because of our grandmothers and grandfathers and great greats. They may not have been great people, but somehow we’re here, we survived, somehow we’re here because of them. And so I always thought of them as the unsung heroes, the whores, the pot heads, the ones that maybe had the wrong choices and the wrong ways of trying to get us someplace, or trying to not get us someplace, but they did leave us some kind of a legacy, you know, those people are to me just as important, and those memories are just as important when you talk about, you know, how did we get here.

Alanis: Margo?

Margo Kane: I just want to talk a bit about—for me I wrestled with it my whole performance l life, because as a performer, here I’m safe. Going into a world whereby you have to play every ethnic role that’s there because there are no Aboriginal plays, and you’re lucky if you get the roles for the Aboriginal play anyway, and so the unsafeness was too much for me. I began to find my own way. So part of what we wrestle with, in our training program, is that, and the way we establish the training program, was to create a circle of safety for the work to proceed. So I developed it through creating my own work and the way I created safety for myself, and created safety for other people, or at least to set up the possibility was that I turned to my teachings, and my elders who said the circle is a sacred circle. We are sacred and when we sit on that circle, every voice and every perspective, is important to it. And so it didn’t matter how much training they had, or how old they were, or what kind of trauma they lived through, in creating the working space we set up the space up together and I made the suggestion that this is how the teaching of the circle worked. So I welcome your perspective and we set up the guidelines, based upon the principle of our teachings, and—just—you know you all know them: you love and respect everybody, even if you don’t fully agree with them or understand them in that circle. And so we work from that model. And it doesn’t mean that it solves the problem of, like working with other non-Native companies, or with people who don’t fully grasp what you’re talking about, you know all of that, but what it does do in cultivating an artist in our training work, is that it cultivates, they learn how to speak their truth, from wherever it is. So they learn how to participate in the development process. They learn how, that some days they come in and they’re—in the morning, we have a kind of ritual that we do every morning when we open and when we close, we always open and we close. And we’re not dogmatic about it, because everybody has different religious, or doctrine, or teachings, and so we don’t try to say you all must smudge everyday, and you know all that. You know it’s like, we created this place of silence and a meditational time and then we pick up the drums and we sing. And we don’t even have to sing a song, if you don’t know a song you don’t have to sing a song, but it’s kind of an openness of an acceptance that our elders keep reminding us, is that we’re all very precious, each one of us, and that we all bring certain gifts, and maybe your gift is to listen that day, and maybe your gift that day is to pour your heart out, because something traumatic has happened with a child as you’re a single mother and you’re trying to come to acting class. And so that kind of sense that, we’re creating a place so that we’re learning how to live with the trauma that they’re living with. They learning—we also have some very skilled teachers who also assist them, and respect them, and support them through the development as they begin to develop all the wealth that they carry. And so it’s also in the supporting of the people and their voice, that it’s going to create a piece, actually. We’ve had some wonderful students who are very active in the world, and eventually it’s those voices, combination of voices, that are going to stand up for your voice in a respectful way. And that’s the other thing, is respect, that you might not agree with me, but I must say this, you know. Even though it’s learning how to reconcile those difference too. And there’s going to be challenges working with people who maybe say they want to produce your work or want to work with you, but then you come up against stuff, right, and maybe you don’t feel safe. But what I think we’re trying to do is maybe lay the ground work so that we are strong together, even if we are separate somewhere else, that you can actually call upon each other and the knowledge that this is a sacred work, this work must be spoken, this thing must be approached, you might not resolve it all in one play or two plays or anything, but I think that’s partly what we’re trying to do, its recognition, it’s recognizing our artists, what they’re going to do and saying, yes we acknowledge you, we support you, and there’s nothing like that, like you go out into the world by yourself, you know that people are standing behind you, even if they’re not with you.

Victor Maog: I’m Victor Maog and I’m a theater director, and I just want to touch two points. The first one, I’m very happy to hear these point of views today. I’ve worked with different groups, victims of war torture, and Cambodian Genocide, and I’ve been invited to go to the Monacan Nation in rural Virginia to let these stories begin to emerge. I think what I’m taking away from this session, and the previous session, is if you put yourself on the line, try to put yourself where you are in the world today, on the line. It takes a lot of bravery, and I know—you were talking about how you take care of someone who says, here’s my story and I own up, and you actually go, alright everybody, I’m out here now. That’s really important. And what systems do you have to create a frame so someone doesn’t get hurt from something like that, because it’s very powerful. Because the more people feel comfortable in telling their stories, I guess the more chances you will have, if the goal is Broadway, or whatever it is. People are just not going to shy away from that, and that’s really important, I’ve given that away. Number two, on the idea of cultivating the artists, I wanted to say that it’s wonderful to hear all these training programs that are coming into play, and I think it’s beautiful—I also run one, in Colorado, called Perry Mansfield, it’s a 95 year old performing arts school. And I’ve just taken over and the most important thing is that, I think comes into play, is the idea of diverse energies coming in. And so I’d love to talk to any of you, you know, people who have young artists, people who really want to go for it, or you think they have extraordinary potential, I have some scholarship money, I scholarship a portion of most of my students, and I’m happy to hear who you think is an extraordinary person, or who needs an extraordinary chance, to be able to train with some world class people. Because I think that’s part of what my job is too. So please, I’m Victor, come talk to me and I can tell you more about the program and this scholarshiping, and I want to find the best, most exciting—all the different stories that I can. So I just wanted to add that to this artist conversation.

Alanis: Thank you.

Dianne Reyner: I think when you’re talking about cultivating the artist, I want to be very clear on a couple of different things being said on the panel. One is the presentation—being a development organization and I appreciate that whole heartedly, but I’ve been to a lot of those, and I’ve spoke at a lot of those, from Los Angeles to Washington DC, to—and we talk about the same thing, over and over again. And I think slowly I’m seeing the development of a partnership that we continue to talk about , but it never really materializes. And, you know, in cultivating the artists, we can develop an enormous amount of work. There are millions of stories that we can write, and interpret, but if no one hears those stories, what have we accomplished? If we don’t open that up and share them. And, you know, I appreciate Randy and the Autry for what they’re doing, and I see the slow development, but is it time that we start talking about, when we develop these works, and when these artists in developing these works, and looking at—what do you do with them? You have representatives from across the United States in Canada here, you know, and you have representatives that have theater programs. You have theater programs in Kansas City, you have theater programs in New York, you have theater programs in Colorado, you know, if we take small steps and once works are developed, why can’t they be read across the country and opened up to the public, where the public can experience them. Because it’s not only cultivating the artist, we’re also talking about, in this conversation, cultivating the audience, and showing them something different, and retraining them, and having them look at different cultures in different ways. And we present these stories this morning, I talk about telling the stories from these eyes, and what I have experienced, and what my ancestors have experienced, and how I move within the world. When we were talking about the piece that we just did, Re-Generations, how does that particular Athabascan move from an ancestral world to a contemporary world and how does that life reach into the future. Well that’s a perspective that most audience members are very unfamiliar seeing or hearing. So, you know, as we’re cultivating artists, shouldn’t we also be cultivating the audiences? And we’re talking about retraining our people to see the history, to feel the pain, experience the pain, go through it, get over it, move on, find strength in everything that’s happened before, and part of that is retraining the world at large. I don’t know, I began to talk in circles... so…

Suzan-Lori Parks: One of the best things I’ve learned, from an…artist, and I don’t know if this is the same for Native peoples but, one of the best things I’ve learned is that you have to…diversify your portfolio. So you have to—because for a lot of artists coming up in the world, we love Sundance and programs like that, honestly, a lot of people I know come out saying development sucks. It just sucks, because there they do—there’s the carrot in front of you, and they take you along, and then there you go. And you’ve had a lot of people talking in your ear about your play, and whatever, you’ve lost your play, or maybe you’ve found it, but it’s kind of difficult. And what I’ve learnt early on is that, if you get into a development program, great, but you don’t let it stop there. You can have your play, you can self produce, like Alanis was saying, a lot of people self-produce, and...it’s fantastic. It doesn’t have to be a huge show somewhere. The first show I had in New York was downtown, in a garage—a gas station actually that no longer is in use because they tore it down—but it was self-produced too. You can do that too, while you have a play in development at a fantastic place like Sundance. And you also are, in a way, as much as you connect to your specific community, whatever that is, you also liberate yourself from that one connection, by knowing that you can send your play to any theater out there. You don’t just—cause a lot of years I spent trying to get my play into the Negro Ensemble Company, trying to get my play into the Negro Ensemble Company, they wouldn’t have anything to do with me, all right! So then I started to send in my plays to people like the Public. I mean, they were are White theater, but I didn’t care, because the afternoons that I thought I was going to be walking in—aesthetically, it was an aesthetic thing, I just wasn’t their cup of tea, which is cool. So you can just spread your—I mean not spread yourself thin, but just realize that a wonderful thing like Sundance doesn’t have to be the be all end all for your work. And you can re-educate yourself. You are audience number one! As a writer, as a performer, you’re audience number one, you’re the first person to see through, and you can go up from there.

Rose: I just want to say that the clear thing about development, which we don’t do, we do training for—we don’t develop playwrights at CIT. But I mean, any opportunity I’ve ever had to do development work, I loved. And so I take the opportunity for what it is. So I don’t want to cool down what you said, but I’m a person who really enjoys development work, but I never expect from the development work that it’s going to be produced. But I just want to go back to self producing, because it came up from somewhere, is that one the things we do in the senior classes is that we are now training students to self-produce. Because it is the only way to do your own work. They must produce their own one person show in third year, and they are learning how to self produce it. That is the only way to feel confident to go out in the world with your work. But it’s, you know, nobody knows how to self produce. I mean, I didn’t know how to do it before. They have to learn how to write a grant, they have to learn that language is attached to it. And so it is part of the training, they’re no just in the studio, they’re learning how to do the process of producing. And some are coming back to do an internship, after they’ve graduated from third year, to continue their training; and we offer that as well, we offer intern work.

Muriel: And dramaturgs.

Rose: And dramaturg work. And it’s a very—we’re growing and understanding what they need to actually work, after they’ve been trained. And if they have the ambition, than they will, then they will. But I love that kind of work.

Suzan-Lori: I’ve seen millions of writers, they do it constantly, they just—you talk, you know, it sucks.

Rose: I’m not a main playwright, so I’d understand if I was a playwright.

Suzan-Lori: I think there’s so—I think the work that comes predominantly from the directors and dramaturgs and people, you know, yeah it’s fun—but for the playwrights, that I talk to anyways, it’s difficult.

Christopher: I think there’s a difference too between bad development and good development and hopefully we’re continually finding the model what it means to develop in a healthy and wonderful way that is supportive to you and it isn’t a drudgery, you know?

Suzan-Lori: No, I’m very happy to go… I just want to say one thing about the Sundance thing. You said you got burned? I would just wonder if you could just have a little par for the possibility of the playwright coming who actually doesn’t want any feedback. You know, who just comes to sit in the room or…

Christopher: Sorry, say that again? You would like to come—

Suzan-Lori: No, no, no I don’t want to come. I’m just saying that you said you got burned, that one thing, and I’m just wondered if there is a possibility for the development model to include the playwright who just wants to come and have fab actors and not have a lot of feedback. Because a lot of playwrights don’t work well with a lot of people talking at them. I mean that’s just one more way for you guys to work, in a way that you won’t feel like you got burned. You’ll feel like--

Muriel: Well maybe they shouldn’t go to Sundance then. They feel that way, maybe they shouldn’t go there. Well yeah, but I think Sundance has been very receptive to a lot of models and there’s lots of playwrights out there who work in thousands of different ways. That’s all.

Alanis: So maybe we have time for maybe one or two more questions. Did you have a question?

Larissa Fasthorse: Well I just have one more comment. I just want to say, quite a few of us have worked with Randy and his company, in the room here… cause I just went through the experience in one year, developing two plays with Randy and one that was produced and one that was not going to be produced. But for me I didn’t find any less value in the development. Like I feel like I got just as much on both of them, and I’m sure that has to do how Native Voices does their development, which isn’t for everybody. It was a shock to me, I’d never had, like, we had a lot of public input, which was a real, you know, and…it’s shocking, because every step has public input, which is—talk about overwhelming, you’ve got 200 crazy people just telling you stuff, they just showed up, you know? So it’s a funky process, and I don’t like all of the process, but overall, I felt like as an artist—because I just go into it, like, I’m a rewriter like crazy—so I go into it wanting to make good work, make the best work I can and I’ve never had any heart in my work getting seen, my work has gotten seen and I don’t feel like I’ve had any heart in it, expect creating it, and then I’ve been fortunate enough that people need a…network, and producers were talking about that they need…like Randy and other people and taken it and done their part in it. And I think that you really have to—as far as fellow artists in the room, that you’ve been talking with the few people here about figuring out this development, production thing, because with me, I don’t approach them any differently, you know, I don’t see production as an end, it’s just creating good work. And I think that’s what we keep coming back to, and we should come back to it, especially with artists, giving us the opportunity—you said a carrot of production, and shouldn’t be. To me it should be the carrot of creating something amazing, that you’re proud of. I don’t really care if …produces it or sees it, I want to see something incredible that I’m really proud of that really meant something, and sure I want something that’s nice, if someone else sees it, but I think that’s where a lot of artists get lost, especially Native communities get lost, because there are so few opportunities to get produced. The crumbs are so small that people end up just fighting and fighting like crazy for that and forgetting about all that gorgeous and beautiful roads there. Anyway, I just want to compliment Randy and their program for being so fluid and so supportive and so—and for all the plays, you assign me a dramaturg sort of person, and I didn’t want them to be my dramaturg, so forty-five minutes I switched to someone else, and it was fine, because that was the person who we connected and—I just think, I don’t know, anyways, I probably had another point but.

Alanis: Thank you.

Mandy: Yeah I just wanted to respond to that. I think it’s great to create work for the sake of creating work, but I just wanted to echo what Dianne was saying, is that, you know, theater is a collaborative art form, and I think anyone who is an artist in the theater knows that the true magic happens when your work is in front of an audience, I mean, that to me—a painting doesn’t really become a painting until someone looks at it, you know, until there is that connection between the creator and the person who’ll be seeing their work. And just to say to Dianne and everyone, what you’re talking about is not only Native issue. I mean you have that issue whether it’s non-Native, brown and white, the background is, you know, there’s an issue in the American theater today that there is a tremendous amount of development work, we do a lot of development work here at the Public, and there are never enough opportunities to do the amount of plays that should be produced. I mean we could produce, we could have produced, you know, ten Native theater festivals without thinking, we could produce five seasons of work here. Right now I could list 15 plays that the Public Theater would want to produce Native or non-Native, so I think it’s a crisis facing the entire field, so I don’t you to feel burned. I know that it’s magnified, and obviously there are specific concerns—

Dianne: I think what I’m referring to, you know, I realize that and completely—but when I look at Native theater, and stories that are creative…I look at tons of stories that have not been told, in history books, text books, and stereotypes on television. And we have these fabulous artists and these wonderful stories, and wonderful plays, but they have got to be heard, and they’ve got to be seen if we’re to fight those stereotypes, that still exist. So it becomes a larger issue than simply an artist who… I don’t know, I just take it to another level, because of where we’re coming from in the story.

Mandy: Absolutely, but I think there is a solidarity among all of us that, you know, that’s good. And we should hold onto it. And I agree, I feel like for mainstream theaters to present Native work, it’s the theater at its most powerful because there is a real transformative potential to bridge the gap of a broken history. You know, what I’ve learned about the Native experience, in my textbooks in history, is not real. And experiencing a theater arouses me as an individual—forget about the fact that I work at the Public Theater—to literary rewrite history together and be able to move forward. So there is something very real with that, absolutely.

Alanis: Well thank you everybody. I don’t know if the panelists have any closing comments. Don’t forget the fringe, the fringe is always available.

Christopher: I just want to say that the people of Minnesota need you to raise the voice loud. I grew up there. We need you to say those tough things to hear—please. And it’s about creating a relationship so that there’s a context for receiving as well.

Alanis: Great, so thank you all for being here and I’ll see you tonight.