Critical Companion to Native American and First Nations Theatre and Performance

Indigenous Spaces

Jaye T. Darby, Courtney Elkin Mohler, Christy Stanlake, Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr., Patrick Lonergan

• Publisher: Methuen Drama
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781350035065
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Médias et arts de la scène
• Subtopic: Histoire et critique du théâtre

This foundational study offers an accessible introduction to Native American and First Nations theatre by drawing on critical Indigenous and dramaturgical frameworks. It is the first major survey book to introduce Native artists, plays, and theatres within their cultural, aesthetic, spiritual, and socio-political contexts. Native American and First Nations theatre weaves the spiritual and aesthetic traditions of Native cultures into diverse, dynamic, contemporary plays that enact Indigenous human rights through the plays' visionary styles of dramaturgy and performance. The book begins by introducing readers to historical and cultural contexts helpful for reading Native American and First Nations drama, followed by an overview of Indigenous plays and theatre artists from across the century. Finally, it points forward to the ways in which Native American and First Nations theatre artists are continuing to create works that advocate for human rights through transformative Native performance practices. Addressing the complexities of this dynamic field, this volume offers critical grounding in the historical development of Indigenous theatre in North America, while analysing key Native plays and performance traditions from the mainland United States and Canada. In surveying Native theatre from the late 19th century until today, the authors explore the cultural, aesthetic, and spiritual concerns, as well as the political and revitalization efforts of Indigenous peoples. This book frames the major themes of the genre and identifies how such themes are present in the dramaturgy, rehearsal practices, and performance histories of key Native scripts.

PART ONE

SETTING THE STAGE

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CHAPTER 1

THE CIRCLE OF INDIGENOUS SPACES

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Underneath Broadway, that iconic, celebrated heart of American theatre, runs an ancient path, the Wickquasgeck Trail. The path is named for Manhattan’s Indigenous inhabitants who first created, maintained, and traversed this road up the center of the island to trade with their extended Lanape kinsmen and other tribal nations. Despite Broadway’s literal Native foundation, the Wickquasgeck Trail is invisible for most people who visit New York City (National 3–9). Likewise, the Indigenous presence that has long shaped both the American and Canadian theatres has existed persistently, though often imperceptibly, throughout the theatres of the New World. Indigenous theatre artists have continually challenged notions of their peoples’ invisibility. Additionally, contemporary Native theatre artists are reclaiming cultural ground as their plays multiply, theatre companies thrive, and productions extend into both tribal communities and commercial theatre venues.¹

For the descendants of physical and cultural genocide, the growing proliferation of Indigenous theatre throughout “Turtle Island” is at once political, aesthetic, and spiritual (Mojica, “Theatrical,” 3). The importance of these overlapping circles of dramaturgy, culture, production practices, and human rights are perhaps best articulated by Article 11 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which states:

Indigenous peoples have the right to practice and revitalize their cultural traditions and customs. This includes the right to maintain, protect and develop the past, present and future manifestations of their cultures, such as archaeological and historical sites, artifacts, designs, ceremonies, technologies and visual and performing arts and literature.

United Nations, 11, emphasis added

Article 11 locates Indigenous performance within the process of both engaging in cultural practices, many of which were outlawed for several decades, and revitalizing culture. Significantly, the process of revitalizing culture is not the reenactment of a lost, but-now-found again, stagnant identity. Healthy cultures do not replicate the past; they root themselves in intellectual and spiritual traditions that allow Native communities to grow and thrive across the generations. Article 11 expresses the power of Indigenous representation. Its emphasis on the right to “maintain, protect and develop the past, present and future manifestations of their cultures” pushes back against the familiar commodification of Native cultures—often seen in Hollywood, advertising, and sports mascots—and places representation squarely in the hands of those who identify as Indigenous.

This book shares the philosophy put forth by the Declaration: that Native performing arts, and Native theatre in particular, has the power to heal damages incurred through colonizers’ practices, to traverse paths that access cultural knowledge, and to enact a sovereign presence for Indigenous peoples. Accordingly, two fundamental principles echo throughout this book’s development. The first is that Native performance has always been an integral part of the American and Canadian theatres. Indeed, there would be no American or Canadian theatre were it not for Native peoples, cultures, stories, and the lands from which they arose. As Philip Deloria’s (Dakota) Playing Indian elucidates, American and Canadian national identities are constructed upon notions of indigeneity. Perceiving and acknowledging the presence of Native performers and performances throughout both historic and contemporary theatre of North America is one of our book’s prime objectives. Second, this book views Indigenous theatre and performance as embodied manifestations of human rights. Consequently, Native critical and dramaturgical frameworks drive our theoretical approach to the subject matter. Our chapters eschew Western notions of linear time and categories of theatrical performance in favor of a narrative that explores specifically Indigenous ways of art making, connecting the communal nature of performance practices with Native worldviews to create transformative theatre that supports communities, sovereignty, ecology, and human rights.

The scope of this book covers Native American and First Nations theatre and performance from the mainland United States and Canada from the mid-nineteenth century through the first two decades of the twenty-first century. While we acknowledge that these geopolitical boundaries and timeline are arbitrary and foreign to Native realities, limiting our scope in this way helps us address the wide range of works and artists representing the vast differences across Native North America, while we also address the federal policies constructed by the US and Canada. Throughout the study, we posit that Native theatre both reflects and produces intersecting forces of spiritual and intellectual traditions, aesthetic values, and political actions. We intend for the book to be read in conversation with published anthologies and current productions of Native and First Nations plays, which we approach with dramaturgical perspectives that consider live, embodied performances in time and space, rather than mere literary analysis. While we frequently provide descriptions of the various plays discussed in our chapters, our objective is to inspire our readership to not only read, but to seek out and see the many Native American and First Nations plays referenced within and beyond this study. The book’s vast temporal and geopolitical scope makes it impossible for us to include all of the visionary Indigenous theatre artists who have contributed to the field. Yet, it is our hope that the many works, artists, and concepts introduced in this book will motivate readers to continue following this multifaceted, dynamic field of Native theatre and performance. With Native presence and communities at the heart of our study, we argue that there is no better way to grasp the interrelated concepts presented in this work than to experience the cultures, aesthetics, philosophies, and political actions through their physical manifestations in live theatrical performance.

In creating The Critical Companion to Native American and First Nations Theatre and Performance: Indigenous Spaces, we aimed to write the kind of book we wish had existed when we began our studies in Native theatre and performance. The field can be challenging to approach for many reasons. First, the diversity across Native America is immense. Well over a thousand federally recognized Native American and First Nations exist across the US and Canada. Each of these has a unique culture with differing languages, homelands, religious beliefs, histories, and relationships with settler-colonial governments. Added to those federally recognized Indigenous nations are nations that are recognized only by state governments; still other Native nations have received no outside “recognition,” though the descendants of those nations know and carry the unique stories and cultural attributes of their ancestors. The complexity of these cultural differences is compounded further by the different, shifting federal laws that the US and Canadian governments have imposed upon Native peoples throughout the histories of both countries. Growing from these fraught histories is a general ignorance across the majority of US and Canadian populations about the rich cultural diversity, histories, and continuing presence of Indigenous peoples. Finally, popular culture’s images of “Indians” in advertising, movies, and mascots have worked and continue to render actual Native presence invisible to many non-Native people. Accordingly, to adequately study Native American and First Nations theatre and performance, one must attend to multiple cultures, histories, tribal–federal relationships, and the national narratives expressed through popular culture, in addition to the critically important cultural, aesthetic, and spiritual worldviews expressed through Native theatre.

To address the complexities of this dynamic field, this book uses a multidimensional, layered approach to offer critical grounding in the historical development of Native theatre across North America, while it also analyzes key Native plays and performance traditions. By exploring the cultural, aesthetic, and spiritual concerns, as well as the political and revitalization efforts of Native peoples, the book frames the prevailing themes of the genre and identifies how such themes are present in the dramaturgy, rehearsal practices, and performance histories of Native plays. Thus, in addition to the expected approaches of Native theatre history and theoretical criticism that one might expect in a foundational study such as this, Critical Companion will layer these historic and critical lenses with additional perspectives from various angles: dramaturgy, production practices, artists’ statements, law, and human rights. In this approach, we honor Muriel Miguel (Kuna/Rappahannock), the venerated Native theatre artist and founder of Spiderwoman Theater, whose work has inspired countless theatre artists and scholars. Miguel once described both storytelling and Spiderwoman Theater’s method of creation as “circles upon circles upon circles” (qtd. in Haugo, “Circles,” 228). That metaphor shapes our theoretical approach to Native theatre throughout this book.

Native Dramaturgy

At the center of our methodology is Native dramaturgy, which develops from Indigenous worldviews. Critical Companion evaluates all theatrical moments and movements, as well as specific examples of Indigenous drama and performance, according to the aesthetics and values of Native worldviews and cosmologies. Native dramaturgy privileges the historical and contemporary experiences of First Nations and Native Americans with settler colonization, and it emphasizes Indigenous efforts to decolonize Native peoples through transformative artistic practices. Consequently, many of the plays and performances analyzed in this study include reimaginings of ancient cosmological truths, storytelling that transverses multiple eras, the careful unraveling of master narratives, and the utilization of the metaphorical and literal power of the circle to create ceremony.

Storytelling and the power of language enrich Native theatre’s potent expressions of Native worldviews. Native concepts of language are based on orality: through the act of speech, our thoughts physically enter the world as they ride along our breath. These spoken words then circulate upon the winds connecting us to one another, the natural world, and the spiritual world. Because spoken words circle the earth upon the air’s currents, they are viewed as permanent: once spoken, words exist forever, uniting living beings across time and place. This power of language exists in storytelling, theatre, poetry, prayer, song, performance, and film. Indeed, the term “story” can refer to fiction, nonfiction, history, news, performance, conversation, literature, and literary arts. While the power of speech weaves interconnections across all forms of Native art that rely upon language, Native theatre, with its reliance upon the embodied presentation of spoken words in a communal setting, allows Native worldviews to become manifest in a material form that possess great potential for generative, transformative action.

The three of us—Jaye Darby, Courtney Elkin Mohler (Santa Barbara Chumash), and Christy Stanlake—are humbled by the opportunity to explore some of the most creative and transformational Indigenous artists of the past century. From this place of gratitude and wonder, we draw from the teachings of our elders both in Native theatre practice and in Indigenous Studies, such as Paula Gunn Allen (Pueblo/Métis), Vine Deloria, Jr. (Standing Rock Sioux), Yvette Nolan (Algonquin), William S. YellowRobe (Assiniboine), and Hanay Geiogamah (Kiowa/Delaware), to assess and describe the significance of the works covered in this book. Throughout the book, we engaged in a collaborative circle of writing. Thus, our names appear in alphabetical order, not a hierarchical one. We imagine them as printed in a circle, since we are co-equal authors. We also recognize the contradictions present as we contribute this book in a world that reifies the written word over orality. Indigenous peoples have passed down wisdom orally through expressive and performative arts since time immemorial, which is why even the theatre of today is not “new,” but rather an extension of ways of knowing and living in the world that predate the writing of scripts. Theatre is an exemplary medium to honor Native traditions because, like oral narratives, it both requires and creates community. While readers cannot expect to fully understand these complexities simply by reading this or any book, they will get the most out of this Critical Companion by keeping Indigenous ways of knowing and seeing the world, as well as the ways in which each example of Native performance advances sovereignty and cultural determination, in the forefront of their imagination.

In “Connecting Indigenous Ways of Knowing in the Native Studies Undergraduate Classroom,” Mohler offers conceptual visuals she regularly uses when she teaches courses on Native theatre and history in university settings that are predominantly non-Native. These figures pay homage to the wisdom of Paula Gunn Allen’s influential book The Sacred Hoop, which transformed the field of Native American literature by calling critics to examine Native cultural arts acc...