Native Theater Festival Begins November 12 at Public Theater
By: Robert Diamond Nov. 11, 2008
The Public Theater (Artistic Director Oskar Eustis; Executive Director Andrew D. Hamingson) will begin its second Native Theater Festival on Wednesday, November 12. This four-day festival is dedicated to presenting extraordinary theatrical work by Native theater artists from the U.S. and Canada. The Native Theater Festival will run through November 15 at The Public Theater and will feature three free readings of new works by Native playwrights followed by post-show discussions; a concert by Native and African-American singer Martha Redbone; topical field discussions on issues of particular concern to artists in the Native theater community; and a conversation with Oskar Eustis and other artists on politics and performance that will be open to the general public.
MARTHA REDBONE (Choctaw/Shawnee/Cherokee/Blackfeet) at Joe's PubSinger/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 and African American heritage.Tickets are $18. Please note that Joe's Pub has a $12 food or 2 drink minimum per person. For table reservations, call 212-539-8778.Thursday, November 13 at 8 p.m.
THE CONVERSION OF KA'AHUMANU
By Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl (Native Hawaiian/Samoan)
Directed by Marie Clements (Metis/Dene)Featuring Jacquelyn Pualani Johnson (Hawaiian), FeliciTy Jones, Elisabeth Waterston and others TBA 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. Admission is FREE.Post-Show Discussion: "Writing About Early Cultural Contact"
Special Guests: Marie Clements (director), Diane Glancy (playwright), Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl (playwright), and Betsy Theobald Richards (Program Officer, Media, Arts & Culture, at The Ford Foundation/ director).Friday, November 14 at 8 p.m.
CHASING HONEY
By Laura Shamas (Chickasaw)
Directed by Alanis King (Odawa Nation)Featuring James Fall (Stockbridge Mohican), Gary Farmer (Cayuga from Six Nations Confederacy), Cara Gee (Ojibway), Cody Lightning (Plains Cree), Ryan Victor Pierce (Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape), Tamara Podemski (Saulteaux/Israeli), Chaske Spencer (Lakota-Sioux - Fort Peck Indian Reservation), and Sheila Tousey (Menominee and Stockbridge-Munsee) 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. Admission is FREE.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 at 4 p.m.
PANEL DISCUSSION: "Politics and Performance"Moderated by Oskar Eustis (Public Theater Artistic Director) and Sheila Tousey (actor, director, and Native Theater Festival Consultant). Panelists will 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). Admission is FREE. Saturday, November 15 at 8 p.m.
RE-CREATION STORY
By Eric Gansworth (Onondaga)
Directed by Leigh SilvermanFeaturing Avia Bushyhead, Dylan Carusona, Joe Cross, Billy Merasty, Monique Mojica, Kim Rosen, and Michelle St. JohnNovelist, 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 contemporary Haudenosaunee life. Admission is FREE.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).PARTNER EVENTS
For further information about partner events, please visit individual organizations' web sites.The Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian:
Indigenous Style and Design Event
Saturday, November 15 12 p.m. to 5 p.m.
Featuring a lecture by Dexter Cirillo on Southwestern Indian jewelry at noon and beadwork demonstrations from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. National Museum of the American Indian, Rotunda
One Bowling Green
www.AmericanIndian.si.eduAmerican Indian Community House: Drums Along 42nd Street!!
Monday, November 10
2 p.m. - 6 p.m.
Learn about AICH's programs, enjoy Native drumming, get free gifts and win prizes.6:30 p.m.
AICH presents its annual Native American Actors' Showcase.Kirk Theatre on Theater Row (410 West 42nd Street)
www.aich.orgTICKET INFORMATIONNATIVE THEATER FESTIVAL runs November 12-15 at The Public Theater, 425 Lafayette Street. All theater events are free (excluding Martha Redbone at Joe's Pub on November 12) and open to the public but reservations are required. Two reservations per person, per reading. Tickets must be picked up 15 minutes prior to each curtain or they will be released. All readings will take place in the Anspacher Theater; seating is general admission and subject to availability.Please call (212) 967-7555 or visit The Public Theater Box Office.
For more information, visit www.publictheater.org. BIOS OF NATIVE THEATER FESTIVAL ARTISTSMARIE 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. Her Broadway credits include 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 BIOSSHEILA 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 (Saulteux/ 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.
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