Review: ON THE FAR END at Round House

When elders pass, surviving family members often learn more than they knew about the departed by clearing out their home and going through papers left behind.

It's what Mary Kathryn Nagle did after her father-in-law died in 2020 and she found a trove of writings and clips concerning her mother-in-law Ella Jean Hill Chaudhuri, who died in 1997.

Chaudhuri, who run away from Indian boarding schools multiple times, and heard the brutal story of the Trail of Tears told her by her elders, dedicated her life to a number of programs for Native Americans in a variety of roles through her life - enough to get her honored at the U.S Supreme Court.

And Nagle, a noted playwright and attorney whose work has covered various issues in the Native American community, was uniquely qualified to shape and present the story. Not only does she have family ties to the subject, whom she never met before she married her son, Jonodev Chaudhuri, but her own history in both Native activism the and theatrical arts. An attorney who has worked on issues of tribal sovereignty and sexual violence on reservations, Nagle, an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation, was also Executive Director of the Yale Indigenous Performing Arts Program for four years.

Her resulting play "On the Far End" is having its premiere at the National Capital New Play Festival at the Round House Theatre in Bethesda, in tandem with Morgan Gould's "Jennifer Who Is Leaving." Both were first presented as readings in last year's festival.

"On the Far End," the first of the Round House MainStage Equal Play Commissions to be produced, is heavily dependent on Nagle, who not only wrote the play but because of a last minute departure of the initial actor, also the star in the one-woman production (directed by Margot Bordelon).

As such, she presented it with an introduction and each chapter so marked by projections of each chapter number, in English and Muskogee. She takes up the voices of more than a dozen others who populate the story along the way, but largely she's portraying her unsinkable subject, undeterred in each of the causes for which she fights.

As such, it's part lecture, part TED talk; both a history lesson and a rallying cultural pep talk.

It covers a lot of territory, from the savagery of the Trail of Tears, the forced displacement of tens of thousands of Cherokee, Chickasaw and Muskogee tribes people less than 175 years ago and the quite contemporary struggles of Native health care and the closing of Indian schools where children were forbidden to speak in their native tongues.

It's deepened by the personal story with its own twists, with the marriage to a Bengali scholar - an actual Indian! - as well as the various moves that come from academia and their children dealing with their own mixed heritages.

The pinnacle of the life story may be the American Institute of Public Service Jefferson Medal given to Chaudhuri at the Supreme Court by Justice Byron White in 1977. But more often Nagle's text repeatedly touches back to a different Supreme Court justice, Neil Gorsuch, who in 2020 upheld treaty that granted promised land to Chaudhuri's Muskogee Creek Nation. His memorable ruling began with the phrase "On the far end of the Trail of Tears was a promise," giving the play its title as well as a recurring theme.

Gorsuch was a clerk for Byron White, so perhaps the work of one recognizing Chaudhuri trickled down to the other, but his landmark ruling of McGirt vs. Oklahoma was another chapter in the nation's long and fraught history with its original peoples.

It's a heartening tale to be sure, but presented as a one-woman play, may lack some of the drama of a more fully realized production may have had. Having the playwright in the role as sole actor may be asking too much as Nagle brings a more presentational approach to the material than strictly dramatic, sometimes coming off as more of a speech turned legal argument than personal narrative.

Scenic designer Paige Hathaway does what she can to set the stage which has as its center a desk, a la Spalding Gray, but also a chapter turning book (a la Disney). A bare tree provides an area to remember the dead; a large frame behind her opens at the end.

What was great to see opening night was in the audience, with Nagle's handsome family in attendance, so proud of their mother, their heritage and their story, down to grandsons who look inspired to continue the family's laudable history.

Running time: About 90 minutes, no intermission.

Photo credit: Mary Kathryn Nagle in "On the Far End." Photo by Margot Schulman.

"On the Far End" runs through May 7 at the Round House Theatre, Bethesda, Md. Tickets are available online.

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