INTERVIEW: ‘Desert Stories for Lost Girls’ focuses on Genízaro identity
Photo: Desert Stories for Lost Girls stars, from left, Katie Anvil Rich and Carolyn Dunn. Photo courtesy of Grettel Cortes Photography / Provided by Lucy Pollak PR with permission.
Lily Rushing (Genízaro) has a new play called Desert Stories for Lost Girls, and thanks to a collaboration between the Latino Theater Company and Native Voices at the Autry, the show is being presented through Oct. 16 at the Los Angeles Theater Center. The protagonist for the play is 18-year-old Carrie, according to press notes, and she recently moved in with her grandmother. While staying with her, Carrie learns about the family’s Genízaro identity and history.
DeLanna Studi (Cherokee), artistic director of Native Voices, has been a champion of the play for some time, and she’s so happy to be partnering on this new production with the Latino Theater Company, which is overseen by artistic director José Luis Valenzuela.
“Basically, like many theaters of color, COVID really took a toll on us, and so we were recovering from being shut down for two years,” Studi said in a recent phone interview. “We were very lucky that during COVID, we received a Mellon grant that we were able to create intergenerational theater with a cohort of other theaters of color, including the Latino Theater Company. And it was through that relationship — meeting with José Luis and getting to know their company and them getting to know our company, and of course the other cohort members as well — we were able to create this relationship. And when José Luis found out we were having trouble because of our budgetary concerns, they opened their space, their resources, their hearts, their minds and invited us in.”
Studi finds the narrative of Desert Stories for Lost Girls important to tell. According to a press release for the show, here’s some background information on the Genízaro: “Beginning in the early 1600s, Spanish colonists sought to ‘reeducate’ (some say ‘detribalize’) the Native people of the Southwest. Funded by the Spanish Crown, the Spanish first abducted and then later purchased war captives from surrounding tribes, including Apache, Comanche, Kiowa, Navajo, Pawnee and Ute. The colonists took these individuals to their households, where they were taught Spanish and converted to Catholicism. They were forced to work as household servants, tend fields, herd livestock and serve as frontier militia to protect Spanish settlements. Many endured physical abuse, including sexual assault. The Spanish called these captives and their children ‘Genízaro”'(heˈnēsǝrō). Today, Genízaros comprise as much as one-third of the population of New Mexico and southern Colorado.”
Studi appreciates that Rushing’s play centers this history and provides a space for “our ancestors” to be with the characters on stage.
“A lot of Native storytelling is very circular in nature where the ancestors are active participants in our lives,” Studi said. “That’s also a way of our cosmology. It also tells this untold story of our shared American history. Not many people are familiar with the Genízaro experience, and for a long time, they technically were without tribe. They only recently got their federal recognition, so this story of these people that were forcibly removed from their families and enslaved by the Spaniards, for me, it was something I didn’t know about. And I’m Native. I think other people didn’t know as well, so to tell the story so beautifully and poetically, it’s just gorgeous writing, I had to do this play. It was one of those plays where it stayed with me.”
Co-presenting Desert Stories for Lost Girls, which is directed by Sylvia Cervantes Blush, is an important milestone for Native Voices, a theater company housed at the Autry Museum of the American West in Los Angeles. Studi hopes that this production will continue the company’s mission of spreading Native Voices around the country.
“What’s frustrating to me is that as of right now Native Voices is the only equity theater in the country that is devoted to developing and producing plays by Indigenous writers,” she said. “I’m OK with us being the first. It’s 2022, and we should not be the only theater doing this. And so for a long time, Native playwrights saw Native Voices as being the apex. This is where you go. Once you get there, your play is produced, and that’s the only time your play will be produced. And it shouldn’t be that way. What we want to do, and what I’ve been trying to do as the new artistic director, is turn Native Voices more into a launching pad where we help new playwrights develop their plays and teach them that they have power in the room, and hopefully we can connect them to other theaters so their play lives long after Native Voices.”
Desert Stories for Lost Girls and other Native Voices productions work on many levels when considering the audience. For Native people, the shows can provide representation, the authentic sense of being seen and heard with real characters on stage. For non-Native people, the shows can provide a point of engagement and education, an invitation to converse.
“Obviously representation matters, and for Native people, we haven’t seen ourselves portrayed in an authentic way very often,” Studi said. “And of course what I discovered during the pandemic is people want to know these other stories. They’re interested in finding out the history of this country that we call America, and also they want to complicate the narrative. They want to know the other side that has never been told, and so I find that when we do these plays, especially outside Native Voices, we are usually selling out. We have a lot of non-Natives that come just so they can experience Native theater, but also so they can learn something that they were not taught in high school.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Desert Stories for Lost Girls, by Lily Rushing and directed by Sylvia Cervantes Blush, is presented by the Latino Theater Company in partnership with Native Voices at the Autry through Oct. 16 at the Los Angeles Theater Center. Click here for more information and tickets.
