INTERVIEW: Native Voices celebrates new plays in annual series
Photo: The three playwrights part of Native Voices’ Festival of New Plays are Ed Bourgeois, Dr. Carolyn M. Dunn and Frank Henry Kaash Katasse. Photo courtesy of Native Voices / Provided with permission.
Jean Bruce Scott seems to live and breathe theater. As the producing executive director of the exciting initiative known as Native Voices, Scott is tasked with finding and shepherding the best voices of the Native American theatrical community. She works alongside producing artistic director Randy Reinholz (Choctaw), and the two plan a calendar of events at the Autry Museum of the American West in Los Angeles and La Jolla Playhouse in La Jolla, California.
Their latest project is the 24th annual Festival of New Plays, which features the work of native playwrights presented in the form of free public readings with audience talkbacks. This year’s offerings will be featured June 6-7 at the Autry and June 9-10 at the La Jolla Playhouse.
On the bill are River of Blood by Ed Bourgeois (Mohawk), Soledad by Dr. Carolyn M. Dunn (Muskogee Creek/Cherokee/Tunica-Choctaw-Biloxi) and Where the Summit Meets the Stars by Frank Henry Kaash Katasse (Tlingit).
Recently, Hollywood Soapbox exchanged emails with Scott about the latest edition of the Festival of New Plays. Questions and answers have been slightly edited for style.
What can fans expect from the 24th annual Festival of New Plays?
This is an especially exciting year for Native Voices Festival of New Plays. The three plays set for readings this week are incredibly different from one another in terms of structure, storyline and characters, but memory and the past inform them all. Place, music and language figure heavily in these plays, making them unique and distinct to the cultures they explore.
River of Blood by Ed Bourgeois (Mohawk) takes place in present day, in the world of dreams, and in the historical period of 1704-48, in Montreal, Canada, and the Mohawk village across the St. Lawrence River from it, Kahnawake. Like the time itself, the people and their languages and mores are comingled — French, Canadian, Mohawk, American. It’s an exciting mix shedding light on what is a current theme of finding one’s identity through tracing one’s ancestry. But, can we ever really know who we are or what has informed our DNA and psyche?
Soledad by Dr. Carolyn M. Dunn, PhD (Muskogee Creek/Cherokee/Tunica-Choctaw-Biloxi) sits in the present moment but looks back at the recent past through the music of pow wow and the memory of a missing mother. In the land of California Indians and Pow Wows, a young girl finds her way into her father’s heart when she secretly learns to sing the songs he once sang with her mother. It’s a play that’s also a love song — full of music and longing. Contemporary, funny and charming, Soledad will have you singing all the way home.
Where the Summit Meets the Stars by Frank Henry Kaash Katasse (Tlingit) lives in the far North — in the cold, misty waters of Southeast Alaska and the towering mountain ranges that surround it. A place where everyday lives, predictable and mundane, can change in an instant, and in that instant, we experience the full gamut of emotions — love, regret, loss, tenderness, understanding,and wholeness — a place where Tlingit people have lived, loved, sung and danced from time immemorial.
What goes into the selection of the plays for the evening?
All submissions are read and scored internally by artistic staff and externally by a professional reader, and a short list emerges. Playwrights on this short list of plays [are] then asked to submit a formal proposal detailing their developmental goals should their play be chosen for a development opportunity. Then the plays are sent to a National Reading Panel without any identifying information. The panel reads and scores these plays and selects three to five based on originality, execution and form. The panel looks for plays that speak to the Native experience and explore issues and questions of Native people today.
Why is it important to highlight the work of native playwrights?
Native plays tell unique stories — seen through a lens that hasn’t been explored in the American theater. All theaters in America are built on Native land — do you know whose land your theater is on? Have you ever heard the story of the people who first inhabited the places where you live, work and play? The real story of America — all of it?
The Native American story is not in your history books. Native American stories don’t tell a national story, but rather one that is specific to a particular place and group of people. According to the National Congress of American Indians, there are 573 federally recognized nations — individual tribal, language and community groups, and within those smaller family groups and clans. 500 Nations says there are close to 100 additional state-recognized tribal groups and many, many others who are not recognized. We need these stories — contemporary and historical — to better understand who we are as a nation.
What’s the connection between Native Voices and the La Jolla Playhouse?
Native Voices and La Jolla Playhouse [have] had a wonderfully collaborative relationship since we did a reading of Diane Glancy’s Salvage there for the Literary Managers and Directors of the Americas national conference in 2008. We continued to bring our annual Festival of New Plays to LJP audiences through 2016 when we became LJP’s resident theater company for two years and added Native Voices Annual Short Play Festival and the rolling world premiere of They Don’t Talk Back. For 2017-18, we’ve continued our relationship with Frank Henry Kaash Katasse in residence fall 2017 and April of this year, and our 2018 Festival of New Plays this June. We are looking forward to exploring new ways to collaborate as we move forward.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Native Voices’ Festival of New Plays will be presented June 6-10 at the Autry Museum of the American West in Los Angeles and the La Jolla Playhouse in La Jolla, California. Click here for more information and tickets.
