Advisory Committee Bios

The Public Theater worked closely with the Advisory Committee to plan the field discussion portion of the festival. Its members include:

SHEILA TOUSEY (Menominee and Stockbridge-Munsee/ Native Theater Festival Consultant) has acted in movies, television and in theater in NYC and regional theaters across the U.S. Some of the directors she has worked with include Joanne Akalaitis, Joe Chaiken, Linda Chapman, Kennetch Charlette, Liviu Ciulei, David Esbjornson, Ron Van Lieu, Hanay Geiogamah (American Indian Dance Theater), Lisa Peterson, Betsy Richards, Sam Shepard, Tony Taccone, Paul Walker and Robert Woodruff. In 2006 Sheila was Artist-in-Residence at the Public Theater. During this time she, along with Maria Vail and in collaboration with Sam Shepard, adapted Bottle House, a play based on the short stories and poetry of Sam Shepard. Sheila is also the 2008 recipient of the Lloyd Richards Fellowship for Acting Teachers of Color. She is spending the 2008 fall semester at the Yale School of Drama. Sheila is about to direct the world premiere of Salvage, a new play by Diane Glancy, which will run at Native Voices at the Autry in Los Angeles during the month of November.

HANAY GEIOGAMAH (Kiowa-Delaware/ Director of Native Studies, UCLA) is a professor of theater in the School of Theater, Film and Television at the University of California at Los Angeles. Geiogamah is also the director of the UCLA American Indian Studies Center and for the past 10 years has served as principal investigator for Project HOOP, the national initiative to promote development of Native American theater and performing arts. With an extensive background in the theater as a director, playwright and producer, he is actively involved in American Indian studies and research and serves as the founding artistic director of the internationally-acclaimed American Indian Dance Theater. Geiogamah is the author and editor of a number of books and articles on Native American theater and performing arts and serves as series editor for the Native American Theater Series of the UCLA American Indian Studies Center Press. His first collection of plays, New Native American Drama, is published by the University of Oklahoma Press and has been in print for 27 years.

TERRY GOMEZ (Comanche Nation-Numunu/ Playwright, Director, Actor and Educator) is a published and produced playwright, published writer, theatre director, actor, painter and educator. Her play Inter-tribal was produced as a staged reading at The Public Theater in New York City and published in the anthology Plays by Women of Color. Other plays produced in various New Mexico venues include Numunu Waiipunu: The Comanche Women, Inter-tribal, Reunion, The Antigone, A Day at the Night Hawk, Carbon Black, Rain Dance, Melanin, and The Woman with a Mustache. Tobacco Leaves, a collaboration with Red Eagle Soaring Theater Troupe, premiered and toured Seattle, Washington and the surrounding area. Gomez has been an adjunct faculty member teaching theater arts and dramatic writing classes at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and faculty for the I.A.I.A./ABC/Disney Summer Film Program. She has been artist in residence for the youth troupe Red Eagle Soaring and has given workshops at the International Workshop Festival in London, England. She is a recipient of the 2007-2008 American Indian College Fund/Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship. She recently directed a series of staged readings for the 2008 Two Worlds Native Theater Festival in Albuquerque.

ALANIS KING (Odawa Nation/ Artistic Director, Saskatchewan Native Theatre Company). Her playwriting credits include: Bye Bye Beneshe, Song of Hiawatha: An Anishnaabec Adaptation, Order of Good Cheer, Gegwah, Lovechild, Artshow, Heartdwellers, Manitoulin Incident, Tommy Prince Story, When Jesus Met Nanabush, Storyteller and Step by Step. King was Playwright in Residence at the Centre for Indigenous Theatre in Toronto from 2005 to 2007 and at Nightwood Theatre. She was a past Artistic Director of her home theatre company - Debajehmujig Theatre Group and Native Earth Performing Arts. She has also produced, toured, directed and developed numerous plays on many First Nation communities, a highlight was Lupi the Great White Wolf for the children's tour to the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

DANIEL DAVID MOSES (Delaware from the Six Nations Reserve/ Playwright and Poet) was born at Ohsweken on the Six Nations lands along the Grand River in southern Ontario, Canada. His plays include his first, Coyote City, a nominee for the 1991 Governor General's Literary Award for Drama, (in Necropolitei by Imago Press), Almighty Voice and His Wife (Playwrights Canada Press) and The Indian Medicine Shows (Exile Editions), which won the 1996 James Buller Memorial Award for Excellence in Aboriginal Theatre. He is also the author of Delicate Bodies, poems (Nightwood Editions) and Sixteen Jesuses, poems (Exile Editions), co-editor of An Anthology of Canadian Native Literature in English (Oxford University Press, third edition 2005), and Pursued by a Bear: Talks, Monologues and Tales, essays (Exile Editions). Exile has also just published his play Kyotopolis (October 2008).

YVETTE NOLAN (Algonquin from Kitiganzibi/ Artistic Director, Native Earth Performing Arts). Her plays include BLADE, Job's Wife, Video, Annie Mae's Movement, the libretto Hilda Blake and the radio play Owen. She is the editor of Beyond the Pale: Dramatic Writing from First Nations Writers and Writers of Colour. Directing credits include Death of a Chief, Tales of An Urban Indian, The Unnatural and Accidental Women, Annie Mae's Movement (Native Earth), The Only Good Indian..., The Triple Truth (Turtle Gals). As a dramaturg, she works across Canada, most recently as the Festival Dramaturg for Saskatchewan Playwrights Centre Spring Festival of New Plays (2006, 2007). She was the president of the Playwrights Union of Canada from 1998- 2001 and of Playwrights Canada Press from 2003-2005. She is currently the Artistic Director of Native Earth Performing Arts, and the President of the Indigenous Performing Arts Alliance. She was one of the National Arts Centre's Playwrights-In-Residence last season.

JENNIFER PODEMSKI (Saulteaux/ Israeli/ CEO and Executive Producer, Redcloud Studios) is recognized for her roles in Bruce McDonald's "Dance Me Outside," CBC's "The Rez," "Riverdale" and "Degrassi: The Next Generation." She is the co-founder of Big Soul Productions (1999 - 2003) and most recently Redcloud Studio's Inc., an independent film and television production company. She is the co- creator and executive producer of "Moccasin Flats," North America's first all aboriginal produced, written and performed dramatic television series, now in it's third season on The Aboriginal Peoples Television Network and Showcase Television. Podemski is currently producing the National Aboriginal Achievement Awards which will air nationally in Canada on Global Television and APTN. She can also be seen on the new Showcase comedy series "Moose TV", "Rabbit Fall" Season Two - SPACE channel and APTN, and The National Aboriginal Achievement Awards 2009, hosted by Adam Beach on March 6, 2009. She has done workshops with aboriginal youth in theatre, film and music throughout the year and produced the closing ceremonies of the North American Indigenous Games in British Columbia, August 2008.

RANDY REINHOLZ (Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma/ Artistic Director, Native Voices at the Autry, Director of the School of Theatre, Television and Film at SDSU) has directed close to 50 plays across the U.S. and Canada. He was the director and executive producer of Urban Tattoo and the critically acclaimed productions of Jump Kiss, The Buz'Gem Blues and Please Do Not Touch the Indians and was the executive producer of the 2005 world premiere of Kino & Teresa. In 2006, Reinholz produced and directed the world premieres and tours of Stone Heart and The Red Road and the staged reading of Wild Horses at The Kennedy Center's New Visions / New Voices. In 2007 his Native Voices at the Autry Equity production of The Berlin Blues premiered in Los Angeles. The last three Native Voices productions have been remounted at the National Museum of the American Indian in New York and Washington, D.C. Reinholz has co-sponsored showcases and Native American diversity workshops for ABC and NBC and is an annual guest artist for the FOX American Indian Summer Institute.

EDWARD WEMYTEWA (Zuni/ Playwright, Performer and Visual Artist) is a former Zuni Tribal Councilman, and his connection to his Zuni cultural heritage is through art and language. He is a founding director of Idiwanan An Chawe, a storytelling theater. He is a playwright, performer, and visual artist whose prize-winning paintings and sculpture have been exhibited in museums in Arizona and New Mexico.