Word for Word 30th Season 2023 Concludes With CITIZEN

Word for Word and Z Space 30th Season reaches its crescendo with the October production of CITIZEN by Greg Sarris October 21 - November 12. In CITIZEN, Salvador, an American citizen who speaks no English, procures his proof of citizenship and begins to discover his true identity, and what it means to fit in.

Word for Word’s association with Greg Sarris goes back to 1994, when they produced “Slaughterhouse” from Sarris’s book Grand Avenue, a novel of interlinked short stories about contemporary, urban American Indians and other marginalized people who live in Santa Rosa and Sonoma County. After seeing this show, Sarris became a fan of Word for Word; and this led to many more wonderful collaborations over the years. Since 2018, Word for Word’s arts education program, Youth Arts, has been in residence as the arts provider for Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria's youth summer camp programs. Every summer, Youth Arts teaching artists provide arts instruction across several genres and teach Word for Word’s unique dramatic style to native youth.

“This season we’re thinking a lot about belonging. Whether it be home, country, family or self – where do we belong? How do we belong?” remarks Word for Word artistic Director JoAnne Winter, continuing “All of the stories we’ve chosen to present this year investigate those kinds of questions - Greg Sarris’s Salvador – born in California, raised in Mexico – both indigenous American and Mexican, but where does he belong? Who is he, really? What defines us? And how do we participate in our communities, our nations? Through these productions, and the Off the Page readings as well, we’ll explore these questions and many more.”

Word for Word premiers on October 21 a full production of CITIZEN, a story by long time company friend and collaborator Greg Sarris. “Citizen” tells the tale of Salvador, born in the U.S., raised in Mexico; son of an American Indian mother and a Mexican father. He has returned to California to find his mother, or rather, her grave. Working in the fields and ranches around Santa Rosa, he meets his mother's family, encountering both kindness and opportunism, as well as glimmers of hope. An American citizen, who speaks no English, Salvador procures his proof of citizenship and begins to discover his true identity, and what it means to belong. The production is directed by Gendell Hing-Hernández.

Greg Sarris (Author) is a novelist, playwright, and creative writing professor born and raised in Santa Rosa, California. His publications include Keeping Slug Woman Alive: A Holistic Approach to American Indian Texts (1993), Grand Avenue (1994), and Watermelon Nights (1999). Greg has also written plays for Pieces of the Quilt, Intersection Theatre, and the Mark Taper Forum. His play Mission Indians opened at Intersection Theatre in San Francisco in February 2002, receiving the 2003 Bay Area Theatre Critics Award for Best Script. He also co-produced, advised, and was featured in a sixteen part series on American literature for public television called American Passages, which won the Hugo Award for Best Documentary in 2003. In 2012, Word for Word performed his collection of children's stories, How A Mountain Was Made. Greg regularly works with The Sundance Institute (reviewing and revising scripts) where he helped develop a summer writing lab for American Indians interested in film writing. 

From 2005 to present, Greg has held the Graton Rancheria Endowed Chair in Writing and Native American Studies at Sonoma State University, teaching Creative Writing and lecture-based classes on Native Cultures of Northern California. Greg is currently the Tribal Chairman of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, in his thirteenth elected term leading the Tribe in its economic development endeavors. He is equally passionate about the environment, laying the groundwork for organic farming that does not exploit people or resources and will sustain for many future generations. greg-sarris.com

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