WHERE WE BELONG Comes to Portland Center Stage This Month
Where We Belong begins preview performances on February 25, opens on March 3, and runs through March 26 on the U.S. Bank Main Stage.
By: Stephi Wild Feb. 02, 2023
Portland Center Stage will bring Portland audiences the Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company production of Madeline Sayet's profoundly affecting and breathtaking solo show Where We Belong, presented in association with Folger Shakespeare Library.
Directed by Mei Ann Teo, Where We Belong recounts an Indigenous theatermaker's journey across geographic borders, personal history, and cultural legacies in search of a place to belong. Indigenous actor Jessica Ranville will make her Portland Center Stage debut performing the role of Achokayis.
Where We Belong begins preview performances on February 25, opens on March 3, and runs through March 26 on the U.S. Bank Main Stage. Tickets are on sale now. As part of the partnership for this production, complimentary tickets are available to Native people.
Woolly Mammoth's Artistic Director Maria Manuela Goyanes said of the production, "I loved Where We Belong from the moment I encountered it. Madeline's personal history with our country's suppression of her Indigenous language and culture is heartbreaking, and her reflections in this play strike an exquisite balance of delightful humor and painful truth. The journey shared in the script speaks directly to our current moment and what it means to belong in our increasingly complicated world."
"Where We Belong is an invitation to all of us to begin our journey to understand the real impact of colonization and erasure of Indigenous peoples and cultures," said Karen Ann Daniels, Director of Programming and Artistic Director of Folger Theatre. "Madeline offers us her personal history in Where We Belong as an entry point to engage learning as individuals, communities, and cultural institutions - we are proud to support this vital conversation."
Where We Belong premiered at Shakespeare's Globe in London in 2019 as part of Border Crossings' ORIGINS Festival, the UK's only large-scale multidisciplinary festival of Indigenous arts and culture. Sayet then adapted the original piece for the digital realm at Woolly Mammoth with director Mei Ann Teo. That collaboration was followed by a national tour that launched in the spring of 2022.
Where We Belong comes to Portland direct from an acclaimed run at The Public Theater in New York. The tour is slated to continue through 2024, including an upcoming production at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in the fall, with a final stop in the winter of 2024 at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC.
Each theater's commitment to the tour has been led by a desire to engage in authentic, continuous, long-term relationships with both the Indigenous nations whose land each presenting theater occupies and the local Native community. These values are embodied in a community accountability rider developed by playwright Madeline Sayet with support from Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company.
"I didn't want my story to be able to be used as a tokenistic way for theaters to check boxes, without actually changing their behavior," explained Sayet. "So we created an accountability rider to go with the show in order to ensure all the presenting theaters would commit to what I feel is the bare minimum commitment toward engaging with the Native peoples whose lands they occupy, and the history of our erasure in the 'American' theater."
Sayet continued, "Each presenting theater has agreed to never present redface again, develop an ongoing relationship with the Native peoples whose lands they occupy, offer free tickets to the show to all Native audiences, present work by local Native artists, and organize events supporting local language revitalization initiatives. It is my hope that these initiatives will lead to more Native stories being told, and, when done in tandem with the show, create awareness of some of the actual issues the piece is trying to address."
Where We Belong features production design by Hao Bai, costume design by Asa Benally, original composition and sound design by Erik Schilke, dramaturgy by Vera Starbard, dialect coaching by Liz Hayes, and casting by Judy Bowman. The tour is stage managed by Alison McLeod and has technical direction by Megan J. Coffel and makeup consulting by Dawn Newsome. Broadway & Beyond Theatricals serves as Executive Producer and booking agent.
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