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- Amplifying Indigenous, Feminist Voices On Stage Grambo, Morgan https://iro.uiowa.edu/discovery/delivery/01IOWA_INST:ResearchRepository/12779538150002771?l#13779538140002771 Grambo. (2020). Amplifying Indigenous, Feminist Voices On Stage [University of Iowa]. https://doi.org/10.17077/etd.005486 https://iro.uiowa.edu Free to read and download Copyright 2020 Morgan Grambo Downloaded on 2022/03/09 17:18:14 -0600 -
AMPLIFYING INDIGENOUS, FEMINIST VOICES ON STAGE
by
Morgan Grambo
A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the Master of Fine Arts
degree in Theatre Arts (Dramaturgy) in the
Graduate College of
The University of Iowa.
May 2020
Thesis Committee: Art Borreca, Thesis Supervisor
Kim Marra
Mary Beth Easley
Copyright by
Morgan Grambo
2020
All Rights Reserved
This thesis is dedicated to the innumerable Indigenous women who have worked to improve
conditions for their relations for centuries, especially those dedicating their efforts at this critical
juncture in the fight for sovereignty of women’s bodies.
ii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I want to thank my thesis committee, Art Borreca, Kim Marra, and Mary Beth Easley, for
their advisorship on this project that began as a kernel of an idea in September 2018. I want to
thank Marisa Carr, Mary Kathryn Nagle, and Sarah dAngelo for their generosity in engaging
with my thesis questions, as well as the countless individuals who recommended playwrights and
plays to consider. The University of Iowa has funded this process tri-fold: an MFA Summer
Fellowship that allowed for a focused research period for the project in Summer 2019, a PHIL
Student Success Grant for attending Manahatta at Yale Repertory Theatre in January 2020, and
the Division of Performing Arts for sponsoring the staged reading of Marisa Carr’s
Reconciliation in March 2020. Thank you to my family, friends, professors, and colleagues who
have participated in non-stop discussions around the work studied in this thesis and their
willingness to learn alongside me. Finally, I want to thank my partner, Mark Benedetti, for his
endless support.
iii
PUBLIC ABSTRACT
What does an Indigenous, feminist history play look like? By surveying forty-two plays
written in the 21st century by Indigenous North American women, this research attempts to
identify the various approaches to the intersections of indigeneity, women’s bodies, history, and
feminism. The stage affords Indigenous women’s voices and bodies a location to reinject their
stories into our historical record and relate those events to the contemporary realities of
Indigenous women. The plays studied in this project reveal a preoccupation with challenging
settler colonialism, highlighting relationality and survivance, and foregrounding the sovereignty
of Indigenous women’s bodies. These focal points demonstrate what is at stake for Indigenous
North American women writing plays in the 21st century: the opportunity to critically improve
conditions for Indigenous peoples, specifically women, by demanding space on stage for their
perspectives and histories. An advocacy- and action-based methodology involved producing a
staged reading of Marisa Carr’s Reconciliation at the University of Iowa and close analysis of
works by Jaisey Bates, Diane Glancy, Larissa FastHorse, and Mary Kathryn Nagle. This research
addresses the need to amplify Indigenous women’s voices on stage and close the gap between
the number of plays being written by Indigenous women and the number of their plays receiving
productions.
iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS
LIST OF TABLES vi
LIST OF FIGURES vii
PREFACE viii
CHAPTER 1: METHODOLOGY & APPROACH 1
CHAPTER 2: PRODUCTION-BASED ADVOCACY 25
CHAPTER 3: TRENDS & STRATEGIES 45
REFERENCES 69
APPENDIX A 72
APPENDIX B 83
APPENDIX C 85
v
LIST OF TABLES
TABLE 1.1. PLAY & PLAYWRIGHTS RECOMMENDATION SOURCES 13
vi
LIST OF FIGURES
FIGURE 1.1. SAMPLE EMAIL 16
FIGURE 1.2. PLAY REVIEW FORM 17
FIGURE 2.1. THE CAST OF RECONCILIATION WITH MARISA CARR 33
FIGURE 2.2. RECONCILIATION LOBBY DISPLAY 36
FIGURE 3.1. “SYSTEMS” WORD CLOUD 46
FIGURE 3.2. SCAFFOLD, 2012 48
FIGURE 3.3. “NATIVE TRAUMA IS NOT ART” 49
FIGURE 3.4. ADA BLACKJACK 52
FIGURE 3.5. THE THANKSGIVING PLAY AT PLAYWRIGHTS HORIZONS 55
FIGURE 3.6. MANAHATTA AT YALE REPERTORY THEATRE - 17TH CENTURY 60
FIGURE 3.7. MANAHATTA AT YALE REPERTORY THEATRE – 2008 60
viiPREFACE
In June 2018, I attended the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas annual
conference in Toronto. The organizers of the conference highlighted Indigenous theatremakers
throughout the conference as they are essential members of the Toronto theatre community. The
work of two women in particular stood out as I returned home: Falen Johnson and Jill Carter. An
idea began to gestate; what stories are Indigenous women writing for the stage right now?
Coinciding with a course on the history play genre, I narrowed the question: what makes an
Indigenous, feminist history play?
viiiCHAPTER 1: METHODOLOGY & APPROACH
Theatre is a location where the categories of indigeneity, women’s bodies, feminism, and
history can coalesce and have a critical impact. Unfortunately, the individuals that lead in
tackling these ideas on stage, Indigenous North American women, are writing plays at a highly
disproportionate scale to the number being produced. In the 21st century, Indigenous women are
writing about their experiences, histories, and bodies in a comprehensive and material way. As
dramaturgs, it is our responsibility to facilitate the advancement of playwrights’ efforts and place
their plays in front of audiences that need to hear them, whether or not audiences are ready to do
so. This project advocates for scripts by Indigenous North American women to be read by
theatremakers of all disciplines, in order to realize the world from their respective positionalities.
In wanting to examine pieces investigating and highlighting Indigenous stories,
particularly concerning women, I knew that the perspectives I needed to consider were those of
the women themselves. These are their stories to tell, and they are the ones which history has
ignored. Simultaneously, knowing that analysis was only part of the research project goal, with
advocacy for production as an equal component, I wanted to ensure that Indigenous women
benefited from this project in a substantive way. For these reasons, I intentionally chose only to
examine plays written by women. It is not that Indigenous men and gender non-conforming
individuals cannot create feminist pieces of theatre; Indigenous cis and trans women’s voices are
the ones that I particularly want to uplift through this project. Euro-American discussions around
gender are only in the past thirty years encroaching on the complexity of how Indigenous North
Americans understood gender pre-colonization. An entire theatrical research project should be
dedicated to examining the work of Two Spirit, nonbinary, gender-fluid, and GNC Indigenous
1peoples. Through my previous experience working with feminist drama, I hypothesized for this
project that there would be more central women figures in the texts written by women, as well as
casts that were composed of more women actors and characters. I began this project with a
number of hypotheses due to an absorption in feminist theatrical works and the ways in which
they have overwhelmingly rejected “traditional” (i.e. male, white) storytelling techniques.
However, the plays of this project required a more specific approach due to examining the
intersections of indigeneity and womanhood. I sensed that patterns may emerge in the content of
these plays as well as any formal similarities. Compiling a reading list of the works of
Indigenous women playwrights and one performance troupe, I saw a need for feminist theories,
specifically Native feminist theories as reflected in my above sentiment, as explanatory
framworks of analysis that could help amplify these women’s voices on stage.
Situated knowledges and standpoint theory suggest that a particular perspective begets
objectivity (Haraway 581). To use one of the playwrights as an introductory example, Mary
Kathryn Nagle emerged as a playwright whose plays exemplify the significance of seeing these
theoretical lenses in action on stage. Nagle’s playwriting is only one of her many public
contributions in troubling the current relationship between women’s bodies, indigeneity,
sovereignty, and history. Nagle is an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation and a full-time
attorney. These two positions create symbiotic practices in her life, as explained in this excerpt
from The Creative Independent:
I’m a partner at a law firm called Pipestern Law. We focus on the restoration and
preservation of tribal sovereignty and jurisdictions, specifically (and most
importantly) to protect tribal citizens… The work I do as a lawyer is very much at
the core of the work I do as a playwright. The stories that I tell as a playwright are
varied, and each play that I write is unique. And yet, when you get down to it,
almost all of the plays I write do focus on legal issues—especially issues related
to tribal sovereignty and justice. (Köener)
2In this interview from 2018, Nagle outlines her relatively young playwriting career, explaining
that she has only begun receiving commissions and productions of her work in the past five
years.
Uplifting Mary Kathryn Nagle’s voice in the conversation dedicated to integrating
Indigenous voices into “mainstream” concern is most effective when considering the playwright-
content relationship in one of her most recent plays, Sovereignty. This play, which was one of
three of her pieces covered in my research, was produced by Marin Theatre Company in 2019.
The play tells the story of:
Sarah Ridge Polson, a young Cherokee lawyer fighting to restore her Nation’s
jurisdiction, confronts the ever-present ghosts of her grandfathers. With shadows
stretching from 1830s Cherokee Nation (now present-day Georgia) through
Andrew Jackson’s Oval Office, along the fateful Trail of Tears, to the Cherokee
Nation in present-day Oklahoma—Sovereignty travels the powerful intersections
of personal and political truths; bridging our country’s distant past and imminent
future. (“Sovereignty”)
Mary Kathryn Nagle is positioned uniquely and powerfully in regards to telling this narrative.
Her career as an attorney is reflected within the work, most literally in the protagonist, but more
interestingly in the play’s exploration that spans into the future, dramatizing the passing of the
Violence Against Women Act and its critical role in protecting Indigenous women. She invokes
history at the end of the piece and creates a hopeful future for Native women. Nagle’s
positionality as a playwright, attorney, Cherokee, and woman reveal a particular standpoint and
situated knowledge to engage with the content of the piece. As Aileen Moreton-Robinson states,
“An Indigenous women’s standpoint is ascribed through inheritance and achieved through
struggle. It is constituted by our sovereignty and constitutive of the interconnectedness of our
ontology (our way of being); our epistemology (our way of knowing) and our axiology (our way
of doing).” (340) Significantly, Nagle creates an intersection of these three ideas within the body
of Sarah Ridge Polson on stage. Nagle’s placing of a powerful, contemporary, professional,
3complex Cherokee woman on stage is inextricable from the project of the play and the notion of
sovereignty itself. “Indigenous women’s bodies signify our sovereignty.” (341) In this way, this
project attempts to illuminate that sovereignty by allowing Indigenous women’s voices to dictate
how their bodies on stage operate and partake in essential storytelling for theatre audiences.
Including the element of history in this project is essential because one of the most
significant failings of the United States has been the erasure of Indigenous women’s bodies and
stories in our historical record and the impact of that erasure on their treatment in our
contemporary society. In addition to amplifying their voices on an array of topics, it is critical to
look to Indigenous women to share their accounts of history and reflect an application of situated
knowledges and standpoint theory required in a robust understanding of feminist theories.
Narrowing in on Native feminist theories, amplifying these plays through this research project
and advocating for their production are acts of acknowledging the legitimacy of Indigenous ways
of knowing. “Feminists must recognize Indigenous peoples as the authors of important theories
about the world we all live in.” (Arvin, Tuck, and Morrill 21) There has been movement toward
acknowledging Indigenous voices in the realm of history, futurization, and decolonization since
the 1970s, but the movement to include women’s voices in this discussion on stage was primarily
achieved through Spiderwoman Theater until the turn of the 21st century.
As a student of feminist drama, I encountered only one example of theatre created by
Indigenous women in my entire undergraduate and graduate educations: Winnetou's Snake Oil
Show from Wigwam City by Spiderwomen Theater. Their significance and influence on the work
of the women studied in this research project cannot be understated. Continuing to be active
theatremakers, as well as literally and figuratively birthing the next generation of Indigenous
women on stage, Spiderwoman’s aesthetic, as well as structural and formal decisions in their
4earliest works provide the theatrical foundation for works in the 21st century. Their way of
working is unique, described as “storyweaving.” Muriel Miguel describes this method as, “the
combination of music, dance, power of voice, artwork backdrops, physical objects (props) and
the expression of spirit through body movement that create a powerful testimony. It is a
conscious, layered weaving of story.” (Brave Heart) Through my research, I located thirty-three
playwrights in various stages of their careers bringing their powerful voices into this
conversation in addition to Spiderwoman. The number of playwrights studied in-depth for this
project account for over three-quarters of that initial figure.
Maile Arvin, Eve Tuck, and Angie Morrill articulate additional areas in which Native
feminist theories should challenge feminist discourse in their article, “Decolonizing Feminism:
Challenging Connections between Settler Colonialism and Heteropatriarchy.” These challenges
provide a strong foundation for considering the impact of the highlighted plays and this project
overall. These challenges are: “problematize settler colonialism and its intersections,” “refuse
erasure but do more than include,” “craft alliances that directly address differences,” and
“question academic participation in Indigenous dispossession.” Orienting my approach to
surveying these plays with these principles of Native feminist theories provided a significant
location of analysis to help determine if and how these plays could be defined as feminist. Since
this project aims to recognize how indigeneity and feminism intersect in 21st century playwriting
exclusively, a deeper look at these theories in this article is highly recommended.
Contemporary concerns of Indigenous women playwrights are primarily rooted in
systemic issues emerging from historic injustices. While identifying what voices are most
significant to hear on this subject, a foundational understanding of the concept of “history” is
essential. For this project, I am considering the primacy of the idea of history as a living “body of
5knowledge” that through its assembled parts challenges hegemonic retellings of historical events
and peoples. (Borreca 29) With this suggestion in mind, those invested in the results of this
research project should consider “...the prime effect of historical drama is the impression that it
reveals the past itself to an audience, uncovering by the force of dramatic logic and cohesion
what, how, and why the past was and, by extension, what how, and why the present now is.”
(Borreca 18) While the work of my advisor Art Borreca complicates and considers the concept
of the history play through temporal and geographic specificity, primarily following the 1960s in
Great Britain, his articulations regarding what history may be and can do are useful to this
research project. If we are invested in altering the contemporary challenges for Native women,
we must investigate the histories resulting in the current environment, especially from their
perspectives.
Felt theory as explored by Dian Million plays an essential role in legitimization of these
playwrights’ voices and their budding role in the “history play canon”. The American theatre is a
prime location for this exploration because “Canada and the United States resisted the truth in
the emotional content of this felt knowledge: colonialism as it is felt by those who experience it.”
(Million 58) Settler colonialism’s historical and contemporary impacts must include Indigenous
voices in order to present the complexity and realities of its existence. When discussing
American myths and archetypes, one does not have to look beyond kindergarten lessons of
Thanksgiving and elementary school lessons of Manifest Destiny. The playwrights under
consideration in this research follow Million’s assessment of felt theory’s role in history,
especially regarding: “Feelings, including their anger, would and must re-enter their accounts,
which would be incomplete without them.” (73) Within the theatre, a location that emphasizes
catharsis and somatic experience, feelings as a theoretical lens is a more readily adopted idea
6than many other fields of research and this work proposes their overt examination as a mode of
Indigenous knowledge.
While felt theory plays a major role in legitimizing the inclusion of Indigenous women’s
accounts into the historical record, via their playwriting orbiting the history play genre, affect
theory is a similar strategy to approaching their work. Clare Hemmings states, “Affect broadly
refers to states of being, rather than to their manifestation or interpretation as emotions.” (551) In
the texts studied, a pattern emerges of the characters not articulating, or necessarily internally
synthesizing, the emotional impact of the events unfolding in their worlds; yet, they feel the
impact deeply. In On Sympathetic Grounds, Naomi Greyser states:
Affect is difficult to trace, name, or even reliably sense -- perhaps especially
across the expanse of a century or more. Affect studies scholars have usually
defined affect as a ‘precognitive’ intensity, a sensorial event distinguished from
emotion, which refers to the vocabulary people assign to those events (happiness,
surprise, fear). Affect often drives individuals to narrate what they are feeling,
even as its intensities cannot be accounted for by discourse. (6)
The affective truth of these plays adds a missing texture to the “body of knowledge” of which
history is composed. Again, acknowledging affect in this way challenges hegemony. As
Hemmings states, “This texture refers to our qualitative experience of the social world, to
embodied experience that has the capacity to transform as well as exceed social subjection.”
(549) Affect and felt theories play a major role in examining these works, assessing their
intentions and impact, and advocating for Indigenous women’s plays to reach audiences.
Situated knowledges, felt and affect theories, and a closer look at the principles of Native
feminist theories provided a kaleidoscopic lens through which to determine what playwrights aid
in the project of answering the research question: what makes an Indigenous, feminist history
play? Before tackling how I located these playwrights and the process of selecting what plays by
these playwrights would be read, an acknowledgment of the theoretical writings regarding
7indigeneity, feminism, women’s bodies, and history that have contributed to this research and
carved out space for Indigenous voices previously must occur.
There are a select number of writings that engage closely with Indigenous performance
theory and history itself, of which I recommend Performing Worlds Into Being: Native American
Women’s Theater (2009), Indigenous North American Drama: A Multivocal Perspective (2014),
American Indian Performing Arts: Critical Directions (Native American Performance and
Critical Studies) (2009) and the electronic “Indigenous Theater and Performance of North
America Resource Guide” compiled by Lilian Mengesha. The final source is a comprehensive
online resource for individuals interested in Indigenous theatre and performance. The previous
writings include partial historic overviews and critical essays on Indigenous drama. Within
Indigenous North American Drama: A Multivocal Perspective, Däwes calls for an examination
of Indigenous drama through a gendered lense. Women’s contributions to Indigenous theatre and
performance gained traction as a location of analysis at the turn of the 21st century, primarily
through anthologizing.
The majority of plays studied within this research have not been published, but there are
essential anthologies that have brought together Indigenous women’s voices. These include:
Seventh Generation: An Anthology of Native American Plays (1998), Keepers of the Morning
Star: An Anthology of Native Women’s Theater (Native American Theater) (2003), and
Contemporary Plays By Women of Color: An Anthology (2017). Many publications blurred the
lines of anthology and theoretical essays. The final anthology on this list includes a few
Indigenous women, but it is not a completely Indigenous-focused work. While these lists of
resources are not exhaustive, what became clear in my introductory research to the project was
8that there is more than enough space and a location of great potentiality for a closer look at
Indigenous North American women writing plays at this moment.
My goals for this research are inextricable from the form which they are engaging: plays
as meant to be seen live on stage. In order to advocate for the production of plays, it feels
necessary to articulate emerging patterns and high-impact artistic choices made by the
playwrights. In order to be acknowledged for having any proficiency in this subsection of works,
I knew that an immersion process would be necessary by surveying as many plays as possible to
get a true sense of what is out there. Due to the daunting nature of reading and retaining
information for an unknown number of plays, I developed a two-pronged approach to the
research: surveying plays utilizing a “Play Review Form” that I developed and a contextual
exploration. The latter reveals many of the limitations of the project, as well as exposes a
foundational element of its overall goals.
As a Euro-American white woman, my positionality must be acknowledged in relation to
the theatrical works that I have chosen to study. Indigeneity as an ethnic, social, and political
identity required significant education prior to seeking out the plays and playwrights. Similarly, I
felt that it was critical to research North American history, specifically looking at the last four
hundred years of Indigenous peoples in relation to the policies and settlers of the United States of
America and Canada from Indigenous sources. As previously stated, the purpose of this research
project is to aid in reinjecting and amplifying Indigenous women’s voices in a variety of
conversations. However, it would be a disservice to these playwrights to rely on their work
exclusively as an educational tool. In order to serve the writers highlighted in this project,
addressing and correcting my own lack of knowledge of historical and contemporary Indigenous
issues was work that I needed to tackle outside of the survey reading. Throughout this process, I
9have focused on bolstering my own knowledge, reading a variety of books and articles that do
not focus on theatre but on Indigenous history in North America, as well as a more contemporary
approach of following as many of the playwrights and other Indigenous academics (primarily
women) on social media to keep up to date on what the current conversations are on Indigenous
issues. The length of this project has allowed for a deeper understanding of these foundational
concerns and histories; however, I am nowhere near immersed and fluent in these issues to date.
Due to my orientation as an observer and amplifier of the plays and playwrights of this
project, a portion of the goal has taken the form of gathering the scripts into an easily accessible
resource and attempting to allow the plays to speak for themselves as much as possible. While
examining the formal trends and genre-stretching strategies located through the plays studied is a
critical part of the research project, I do not aim to place a higher value on certain plays over
others. I will examine strategies where I felt the project of the playwright was clear in the writing
of the piece and, on occasion, whether that project achieved what it appeared to set out to
accomplish. At the time of this writing, I have not been able to engage in conversation with
every playwright represented in this research project and that continues to be a goal moving
forward.
Concurrent with bolstering my knowledge and examining my own positionality to the
works of this research project, the process of identifying plays and playwrights for the survey
immersion portion of the project began. A variety of decisions regarding this section of the
research were made when the question first emerged in September 2018. While I would need to
read as many plays as possible that could orbit this delineation of “Indigenous, feminist history
play,” I would need to consider certain requirements to limit the study. First of all, the
playwrights must publicly identify as Indigenous to North America. This requirement sounds
10simplistic, but the question of who “qualifies” as Indigenous is extraordinarily complicated, both
civically and culturally. There are an array of resources out there written by Indigenous people
that examine this question and I encourage individuals interested in this research project to
become more acquainted with those ideas and distinctions. For the purposes of this project,
playwrights are representative of enrolled citizens and non-enrolled members, as well as an
individual who utilizes language that includes “of ____ descent.”
The other requirement for playwrights is utilizing she/her within their list of public
pronouns. While this remained a criteria throughout, I do feel that the playwright pool was
overwhelmingly cisgendered and in the future more efforts should be made to seeking non-cis
playwrights. I do think looking at distinctions of cisgender and transgender folks in relation to
their plays would be valuable when taking a closer look at the scripts, as well as advocating for
an equitable and inclusive pool of women. The plays themselves reflect the playwright pool in
that they do not have a substantial number of non-cisgender characters represented and
unfortunately, queer narratives in the plays themselves are virtually not present. I cannot imagine
that this is representative of the work being created by Indigenous playwrights, but it is a
question that has emerged from this work that I will continue to engage with when this portion of
the project is complete.
Following the criteria for the playwrights, the plays themselves would need to be written
primarily in English and drafts or publications dated in the 21st century. While there are inherent
limitations to this strategy -- the scope only reflects contemporary writers and English is the
colonizer/settler language of the area -- they were intentional decisions in order to allow for a
more action-based research and writing process that goes beyond the academic analysis and
toward an ultimately collaborative, production-focused approach. The decision to utilize majority
11English language plays resulted in a look primarily at Indigenous writers in Canada and the
United States, as opposed to those of Mexico and Central America. The one playwright that is
covered in my research from below the United States’ southern border is from the region we
know as El Salvador but actively working in theatre in Washington, D.C.
In soliciting script recommendations and searching for plays through a variety of
resources, I avoided focusing too heavily on the “historical” and “feminist” delineations that
would be most helpful in answering my research question of what makes an Indigenous, feminist
history play? Since these were the notions that I hoped the project would re-define or stretch, I
wanted to allow space for interpretation of those concepts. I did flag if a public synopsis of a
play referenced a historical moment, figure, or sense of historical impact on a contemporary
narrative. Leaving these strictures on the plays open and flexible allowed for sampling that
would help determine what the phrase “Indigenous, feminist history play” could mean.
Upon setting these guidelines, I began to compile a list of plays to create an initial
reading list to immerse myself in these pieces. Two sources immediately provided numerous
additions to the list: New Play Exchange and a list compiled by American Theatre entitled “A
List of Native Theatres and Theatremakers” published in March 2018. In New Play Exchange, an
online database of new plays operated by the National New Play Network, there are search
criteria for seeking writers that select “female” or “trans woman” and “American Indian or
Alaskan Native”. Additionally, I searched for plays on the most recent Kilroys Lists and in the
development and production history at Native Voices at the Autry, whose mission statement
states: “Native Voices at the Autry is devoted to developing and producing new works for the
stage by Native American, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian, and First Nations playwrights.” The
Kilroys List is an excellent resource compiled annually by the Kilroys, “...a gang of playwrights,
12directors and producers in LA and NYC who are done talking about gender parity and are taking
action. We mobilize others in our field and leverage our own power to support one another.”
(“The Kilroys”) The List highlights plays that are unproduced or underproduced by women,
trans, and nonbinary individuals through a comprehensive nomination process by over three
hundred artistic leaders of the field. These resources in which I found numerous playwrights and
play recommendations exemplify the advocacy and connectivity of the world of new plays, in
which dramaturgs are an essential part. Highlighting these sources as locations of allyship for
active playwrights feels essential within this project.
In May 2019, I expanded my search seeking recommendations from twenty
organizations, with the list below featuring individuals and organizations that responded:
Table 1.1. Play & Playwright Recommendation Sources (*Denotes an Indigenous woman)
Name Affiliation
Jacki Thompson Rand*, Mary Beth Easley, University of Iowa
Kim Marra, Meredith Alexander, Lila Rachel
Becker
Hayley Finn Playwrights’ Center
Meena Natarajan Pangea World Theater
Keith Baker Native Earth Performing Arts, Inc.
Art Rotch Perseverance Theatre
Sarah dAngelo* Brown University, Oklahoma Indigenous
Theatre Company
LeAnne Howe* University of Georgia
Jennifer Shook* Pennsylvania State University
13For this research project, I worked primarily with manuscripts. Only twenty-seven of the
forty-two plays that ended up composing the survey reading pool have had productions.
Production is often a gateway to publication, but even that is not necessarily the case. Fifteen of
those productions occurred prior to 2015; twelve have occurred in the past five years. This
average of approximately one premiere a year essentially doubled. Unfortunately, a side-effect of
“world premiere culture” is visible within these production histories. Most plays have not
received more than one production. However, this growing prevalence of their voices on stage
could be attributed to a variety of factors, the most significant of which is the growing number of
organizations that were created to amplify Indigenous playwriting, such as Oklahoma Indigenous
Theatre Company founded in 2010 and their new works festival as well as the Yale Indigenous
Performing Arts Program, which is currently hosting their 5th Annual Young Native Storytellers
Contest. Native Voices at the Autry is the leading theatre company that has been producing plays
by Indigenous writers since 1999 and is run by Producing Artistic Director Randy Reinholz
(Choctaw). Native Voices has served as a catalyst for productions and “maintains successful
long-term relationships with Oregon Shakespeare Festival, New York’s Public Theater, Vision
Maker Media, Washington’s Kennedy Center, the National Museum of the American Indian, the
Alaska Native Heritage Center, Perseverance Theatre, Montana Rep, and La Jolla Playhouse.”
(“About Native Voices”) These organizations have carved out spaces for Indigenous writers to
work with other Native theatre artists as they hone their new works and then produce them onsite
or assist in their process of production at a variety of regional theatres.
Arguably, there is another reason that we have seen a spike in the production of
Indigenous playwriting on “mainstream” stages. It reflects a paradigm shift of mainstream media
coverage of Native issues, at least in the United States, after the historic resistance of the Dakota
14Access Pipeline crossing the Missouri River by the Standing Rock water protectors and the
thousands of activists and veterans that joined them near Cannon Ball, North Dakota in 2016. An
article published by NPR in November of that year stated this dichotomy clearly: “1. We have
never seen anything like this before. 2. This has been happening for hundreds of years.”
(Donnella) What shifted through the resistance at Standing Rock was the impact of the media
coverage, albeit imperfect, and the participation of non-Natives displaying that Native issues are
everyone’s issues. This was the first major Indigenous resistance of the lifetimes for essentially
three generations that were not alive for the 1973 occupation at Wounded Knee. In this way,
Indigenous peoples’ perspectives and challenges entered “mainstream” consciousness, and
theories of theatre as reflections of the moment, artistic leadership began asking where those
stories are, despite them existing all along.
For unpublished texts, acquiring scripts relied on a variety of approaches. For those listed
and posted in full on New Play Exchange, downloading the text was simple. If they were listed
but not posted in full, most playwrights responded quickly to requests for full scripts. If the play
was found through other means, I would first attempt to purchase a published version of the text.
Quite a few playwrights did not respond, which is the main contributor to the higher number of
initially located playwrights than those studied. In the case of Spiderwoman Theater, they have
created a limited number of pieces since 2000 and when emailed they responded stating that both
pieces I was interested in were not ready for dissemination. I am hoping to see their play,
Misdemeanor Dream, when it opens at La MaMa in the spring of 2021. In most circumstances, I
would email the playwright directly and they would respond enthusiastically to share their work.
An example from an early-career playwright follows:
15Figure 1.1. Sample Email
Due to the nature of collection, the list of plays to read continued to fluctuate and evolve.
The list of requested plays grew to sixty-one scripts and eventually, I read forty-two scripts that
were collected. In order to keep track of my notes during this extended reading process, I created
a specific play review form. My previous literary management experience provided a foundation
for this form, but in non-research capacities, similar documentation is only utilized to assess
plays in terms of their value and connections with producing entities. I wanted to avoid that
aspect altogether. The version of the play review form used throughout this process was initially
created in October 2018. While there would eventually be additional questions asked, the
components of the existing form were critical in my analysis. In approaching a survey research
process for nearly fifty plays, this was an essential foundational element to any interpretive work
to come after.
16Figure 1.2. Play Review Form
Certain elements are relatively self-explanatory: play title, playwright, and date read. Tracking
the sources and production history provided readily available avenues of analysis. The pool of
plays surveyed represented a variety of stages of development and career-level of playwrights in
order to show the cross-section of the type of work being created at the moment. Due to the
length of the research period, including summaries and synopses were critical in order to
reacquaint myself with a piece or if I was searching for a particular work that I was struggling to
17locate. The next section, a “brief analysis of structure”, was mainly composed of a few critical,
identifying terms for each play, ex. linear, episodic, ritual, etc. that would provide the foundation
for a structural analysis later in the research process. For “systems tracked”, I relied on themes,
images, motifs, or ideas that emerged in a script that would eventually aid in finding links
between plays and began to grasp trends and particular topics of interest emerging from the pool
of plays.
In addition to these initial areas of interest, there were a few additional components of
each play that I felt necessary to track and compile in one location during the survey period. Due
to the size of the survey pool growing to represent a significant sample population of works by
Indigenous women (which was the goal), I was able to begin utilizing quantitative elements for
analysis to identify locations of further analytical interest. Identifying the playwright’s settler
country of residence and geographic region was critical. Noting where the playwrights are
located was a crucial step in understanding the contexts in which they are writing and the
complex relationships between these national governments and Indigenous peoples. Indicating
the playwright’s tribal/nation affiliation was also important to the project. When the playwright
publicly declared enrollment, citizenship, or affiliation, that information provided an interpretive
lens into their work. As previously stated, this is a very contentious and complicated delineation
to navigate in this process and in the larger context of indigeneity. Many plays explored this
directly, and nearly all had underlying conversations of what it means to be Indigenous. Early in
the process it was clear that the tribal/nation affiliations of the characters within the plays were
most often specified, but on occasion were not congruent with the playwright’s affiliation or
citizenship. There were also occasions where numerous Indigenous groups were represented in a
script. A full exploration of playwrights writing about characters outside of their own identity
18and of the intersections of numerous Indigenous peoples would be a rich line of inquiry and
likely provide a unique viewpoint of pan-Indigenous advocacy on stage.
Continuing to consider the bodies on stage in the surveyed plays provided further
quantitative analytical locations. Considering character breakdown by gender and the gender of
the central figure of each play provided one version of analysis when considering if the piece
“qualified” as a feminist piece of writing. In attempting to define what a feminist play looked
like throughout this project, having this information as an organizing principle provided an
approach to the question that at minimum answered the question of gender parity and
representation on stage. While gender was an essential location of inquiry, considering a
character breakdown by ethnicity emerged as well. Nearly half of the plays were populated with
exclusively Indigenous characters, while the remainder highlighted intersections between
numerous racial and ethnic groups. One play’s project hinged on all of its characters being white,
and a few did not specify certain character ethnicities. Overwhelmingly, Indigenous women
playwrights are providing Indigenous actors with an array of opportunities on stage. In
identifying projects of each of the plays, creating space for Indigenous bodies on stage was
deeply apparent. Interestingly, this included a high number of solo-performance pieces that
provide an unrelenting location of taking up space for a single Indigenous body, oftentimes the
writer herself.
Another approach to gathering information on each play highlighted the “history play”
nature of each script, represented in the next section of the play review form. The major
questions asked were: what histories were engaged, were any previously known, and what did
research further illuminate? I decided to frame this section in relation to my experience reading
the plays because there were bound to be histories present within the texts that as a white, settler
19woman in the United States I would not have the educational and relational background to
identify immediately, especially when subtly or metaphorically engaged. After each history
section -- within which I identified previously known histories, research-required histories, and
unknown/unexamined histories, while including links to resources that illuminated each -- I
examined the likelihood that I missed histories engaged within the script on a scale of 1 (lowest
chance) to 5 (highest chance). Since I am relatively new to research of this level and scale, this
was my initial strategy to acknowledge my positionality in relation to the plays and I believe
over time my knowledge base on the histories grew exponentially and my engagement with this
section became more confident, albeit never entirely certain.
In analyzing the play review forms after the initial survey reading period, I looked closer
at this “history play” section through three lines of inquiry: the number of histories identified and
breakdown (lifted directly from play review form), the presence of a research-supported
historical character, and highlighting a research-supported historical event. These categories
were added as a few strategies of identifying a history play. The first category was more of a
quantitative analysis that was limited in its scope. It cannot differentiate exactly between a quick
reference and a deeply engaged single-topic history play, but they did illuminate the most
densely history-referencing pieces. The second and third categories identifying historical figures
and events were the most useful categories. Both reveal different, although sometimes
simultaneous, approaches to history plays. If a piece contained either of the latter two categories,
I delineated the play as a history play for the purposes of advancing my analysis. These plays
provided a pool of works that I could begin to identify more specific strategies and approaches to
dealing with history in Indigenous North American women’s playwriting.
20Prior to leaving the historical analysis element behind, identifying which plays appeared
to deal with a personal or familial history of the playwright was significant. Many playwrights
upon emailing their plays mentioned an ancestor or family member that the play was portraying,
and sometimes when not mentioned, that question did emerge as I was reading. There are a few
plays that I have intuited include personal histories. Considering histories that have personal and
ancestral link to the playwright emerged as critical in this research, as oftentimes the project of
the plays appeared to be to provide space for those stories and to allow their descendants (the
playwrights) to reinject their perspectives into the historical record.
All of the locations of analysis in the above list led to an “infographic” created to
represent the script reading research completed for this project. This internal document, created
to demonstrate and synthesize observations for my advisors, was critical to understanding the
next steps of my process and demonstrated the value of the immersive survey period. Many of
the results represented in that “infographic” are articulated in CHAPTER 3: TRENDS &
STRATEGIES alongside an analysis of four plays that exemplify the intersections of
indigeneity, feminism, and history: To History/To Whom It May Concern - One: War/Paint by
Jaisey Bates, A Line of Driftwood by Diane Glancy, The Thanksgiving Play by Larissa
FastHorse, and Manahatta by Mary Kathryn Nagle.
In the spirit of amplifying all the plays and playwrights, below is a complete list of works
studied in this project. More information regarding each piece is compiled in Appendix A.
To History/To Whom It May Concern - One: War/Paint (2017) by Jaisey Bates
To History/To Whom It May Concern - Two: War/Games (2017) by Jaisey Bates
the day we were born (2016) by Jaisey Bates
Reckoning (2016) by Tara Beagan
21They Know Not What They Do (2018) by Tara Beagan
Our Voices Will Be Heard (2012) by Vera Starbard (Bedard)
There is No "I" in NDN (2013) by Jennifer Bobiwash
Reconciliation (2012) by Marisa Carr
Molly (2017) by Marisa Carr
Tombs of the Vanishing Indian (2004) by Marie Clements
Out of Bounds (2011) by Kimberly D. Fain
Cherokee Family Reunion (2012) by Larissa FastHorse
The Thanksgiving Play (2015) by Larissa FastHorse
What Would Crazy Horse Do? (2016) by Larissa FastHorse
Wings of Night Sky, Wings of Morning Light: A Ceremony (2007) by Joy Harjo
A Line of Driftwood (2019) by Diane Glancy
Salvage (2007) by Diane Glancy
The Bird House (2011) by Diane Glancy
Ipperwash (2017) by Falen Johnson
Chocolate Woman Dreams the Milky Way (2008) by Monique Mojica
Broken Heart Land (2012) by Vicki Lynn Mooney
Hoop Jumper (2014) by Vicki Lynn Mooney
Blood Boundary (2016) by Vicki Lynn Mooney
Bound (2018) by Tara Moses
He’eo’o (2017) by Tara Moses
Quantum (2018) by Tara Moses
A Very Polite Genocide or The Girl Who Fell to Earth (2008) by Melanie J. Murray
22Manahatta (2013) by Mary Kathryn Nagle
Sovereignty (2015) by Mary Kathryn Nagle
Crossing Mnisose (2017) by Mary Kathryn Nagle
Dear Mr. Buchwald (2010) by Yvette Nolan
Te Ata (2006*) by JudyLee Olivia
Pure Native (2018) by Vickie Ramirez
Standoff at Hwy#37 (2013) by Vickie Ramirez
Desert Stories for Lost Girls (2017) by Lily Rushing
Together (2018) by Madeline Sayet
Where We Belong (2018) by Madeline Sayet
Lucky in Hollywood (2015) by Laura Shamas
Indian Summer (2006) by Spiderwoman Theater
Flight (2017) by DeLanna Studi
Numunu Icon: A True Story (2019) by Weyodi
Siwayul (Heart of a Womxn) (2018) by Xemiyulu Manibusan Tapepechul
The dates attributed to each of the plays are based on dated drafts or the earliest date
located in relation to the writing of the play, as compiled in good faith but likely imperfect.
There are a number of potential locations of analysis for these plays included in Appendix B for
individuals interested in examining the plays studied in this research project through particular
lenses. These strategies are delineated by playwright identity, play structures, characters, by
topic, and by impact. Each of the groupings has great potential for action-based research,
utilizing an analytical process leading to advocacy and inclusion, and contributing to non-
essentializing results. The survey period of this project exemplifies how a dramaturg and
23researcher can locate tangible strategies and successes of the playwrights, that are in
conversation with each other, while avoiding essentialist statements regarding Indigenous
women or their playwriting.
The survey portion of the project seeking to answer, “what does an Indigenous, feminist
history play look like?” armed me with an array of plays that provided a foundational
understanding of what Indigenous North American women are interested in writing for the stage
right now. Coupling this reading period with my own contextual resource on contemporary and
historical Indigenous issues provided essential information to serve as an informed reader for
these texts as well as a future advocate for their end goal: being produced on stage in front of an
audience. As a believer of “production as process”, I felt it was crucial to dedicate the next phase
of the research project to producing one of the plays from the survey reading pool, while
simultaneously continuing my analyses of the works and attempting to locate productions and
readings of these works to attend.
24CHAPTER 2: PRODUCTION-BASED ADVOCACY
The strategies for advocating for the plays highlighted in this project are seemingly
endless. The advocacy portion of this research project is only in its initial stages because the
scope of what needs to change is so vast. As previously articulated, my goal is to directly
influence an increase of Indigenous women’s voices on stage through advocating for the
production of the studied plays. In this section, I will outline the variety of approaches to
advocacy taken in this project thus far, as well as the decision to produce a reading of Marisa
Carr’s Reconciliation at the University of Iowa in March 2020.
The primary advocacy strategy is disseminating my “Resource for Plays” packet found in
Appendix A to literary offices at theatre companies across the United States and Canada
(although it is more heavily populated with residents of the former). In this packet, I outline play
titles, synopses, production histories, playwright agent information, and a section titled, “how do
I find the script?” for each play listed. Additionally, I have included my contact information to
hopefully start a dialogue with the producing entities if they are interested in learning more about
any particular piece. I hope to disrupt the gate-keeping that often occurs in literary offices by
shortening the path of these plays to getting in front of the readers. One of the primary
conclusions of this research has been that there is no shortage of powerful, contemporary plays
by Indigenous women. There are no excuses for not ensuring that their works are considered in
season selection processes.
Beyond script reading, scouting has emerged as a significant strategy toward increased
productions. I have been keeping up with which writers are currently being produced and
attending their productions when I can. In January, I attended a reading in the Reflections of
25Native Voices series at Next Door by New York Theatre Workshop by Henu Josephine Tarrant
entitled Red Moon Blues. It was an incredible experience to be in the room with original
members of Spiderwoman Theater, as well as watch the piece with a nearly entirely Native
audience. While still in the earlier stages of development, Tarrant displayed a gift for solo
performance. As I prepared to attend her reading, I flagged another reading in the same series
occurring the following week when I was no longer in New York City for a friend in the literary
office at Roundabout Theatre Company. She connected me with their new Literary Manager,
who responded with gratitude and excitement at the possibility of sending a member of their
team to watch this particular reading of one of the works I have been studying, Crossing Mnisose
by Mary Kathryn Nagle. The attempts to connect theatres and these pieces have been slowly, but
surely, coming together. Advocating for these plays to be on the radars of literary offices in
theatre companies requires boldness in recommendations and directly connecting the staff
members to the scripts and developmental readings.
Advocacy can also look like amplification of the scripts and playwrights on the variety of
online resources that exist for new plays. I have submitted a homepage list to New Play
Exchange to be published in the coming months. New Play Exchange is “the world’s largest
digital library of scripts by living writers.” (New Play Exchange) For this curated list, I was
required to select between eight and fifteen plays, compose a brief introduction, and include
plays and playwrights who have profiles on the site. My submission stated:
The below list of plays by Indigenous women on New Play Exchange dramatize
and engage with a variety of pivotal historical moments, settler government laws,
and Native traditions and value systems to create powerful, vital theatrical events.
They range from short to full-length pieces, solo to community performance, and
represent innovative structures and modalities of storytelling. Plays: To
History/To Whom It May Concern - One: War/Paint by Jaisey Bates, To
History/To Whom It May Concern - Two: War/Games by Jaisey Bates, Together
by Madeline Sayet, Molly by Marisa Carr, Reconciliation by Marisa Carr, Desert
26Stories for Lost Girls by Lily Rushing, Bound by Tara Moses, He’eo’o by Tara
Moses, Standoff at Hwy#37 by Vickie Ramirez.
When they asked for an additional piece to replace one of my entries that highlighted the same
playwright twice, I added Flight by DeLanna Studi. This homepage list will result in more
members of the site reading these plays, and therefore, will be one step closer to production.
A discovery I have made through this research project is that in addition to advocating for
the production of the plays, I must amplify and advocate for the ideas present within the works.
These plays have been instrumental in my own education of contemporary Native issues and
how I can assist in movements of equity, inclusion, and respect of Indigenous voices.
Immediately after beginning this project I read a play by Jaisey Bates, To History/To Whom It
May Concern - Two: War/Games, that brought to the forefront my memories of attending a high
school that utilized a Native stereotype mascot. While I believe that there was movement toward
utilizing non-Native imagery while retaining the moniker “warriors” during my time at the
school from 2004 to 2010, I was horrified to return to an alumni basketball game in December
2018 and see imagery of the Native mascot expanded onto prominent locations in the
gymnasium. By February 2019, I contacted my district, admonishing their decision to expand the
use of that imagery in a time where it should be being entirely removed - decades after its
harmful nature was studied and made readily available. I stayed in contact with the district and
met with the principal and superintendent in June 2019. Unfortunately, at that time they rejected
my research and voice as significant enough to put the removal of the imagery to a vote with the
public and school board. While it was disheartening, I am continuing to think of ways to speed
up what I do believe will be its eventual removal. I have written letters to my representatives in
that area of Connecticut. I have made public my resource packet compiled for others to use in
their own mascot battles in their communities. An excerpt of this packet, the Table of Contents,
27is available in Appendix C. My agitation of the district regarding the removal of harmful Native
mascot imagery is nowhere near over. This project that primarily focuses on what is happening
on stage, is reflected in these actions. Through additional avenues of advocacy, the larger
purpose of the project is revealed as contributing to the momentum of improved conditions for
Indigenous peoples in North America.
Beyond the resistance I have attempted in my own community, this project has been
incredibly useful in highlighting many other principles of accompliceship to Indigenous peoples.
Allyship and accompliceship appear similar, but contain distinct strategies:
An ally will mostly engage in activism by standing with an individual or group in
a marginalized community. An accomplice will focus more on dismantling the
structures that oppress that individual or group—and such work will be directed
by the stakeholders in the marginalized group. (Clemens)
Acknowledging the perspectives within the plays, as well as expanding your educational efforts
to other sources, allows “the stakeholders in the marginalized group”, i.e. Indigenous peoples, to
guide non-Indigenous audiences toward the structures that require dismantling. We must
understand what is currently in place in order to address it. Just reading a few of these plays
dramatically alters foundational ideas of the history of the United States. They change your
vocabulary around Indigenous and Native peoples, land, sovereignty, and the complex
conversation of what it means to be Indigenous. The research surrounding the project has
expanded my understanding of appreciation vs. appropriation, the significance of Native
language revitalization programs, food sovereignty, the missing and murdered Indigenous
women and girls crisis, and inequities experienced of Indigenous peoples choosing to live on
their nations’ land. I have learned to go straight to Indigenous voices if I have a question
regarding an issue that they must be the loudest voice on. In the spirit of advocacy, the following
resources have emerged as essential and accessible readings and listenings: An Indigenous
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