Cultivating the Artist: Field Discussion Transcript

Field Discussion
Cultivating The Artist
November 13, 2008, 4pm
Moderator: Alanis King
Panel: Terry Gomez, Christopher Hibma, Jennifer Podemski, Randy Reinholz, and Rose Stella

Alanis King: Welcome everybody. Welcome to the ‘Cultivating the Artist Panel’ here at the Public Theater in New York City. My name is Alanis King and I’m the Artistic Director of Saskatchewan Native Theatre Company, I’m also a playwright. Beside me Terry Gomez, Comanche playwright…(see bio); Christopher Hibma (see bio) from Sundance Theater; Rose Stella is the Artistic Director of Center for Indigenous Theatre (see bio); Muriel Miguel, Muriel is the oldest Native theater artist living (Laughter), thirty years ago she founded Spiderwoman Theater with her sisters and I’d say she reached a far net throughout the island; Randy Reinholz, Artistic Director of Native Voices at the Autry (see bio). So welcome panelists. Thank you for being here and thank you for letting me be the moderator today. And the topic for today is "Cultivating the Artist" and I’d like to pose to the panelists a question of what that title means to you? And I though maybe if you could give it some thought, I’d have you share one by one what cultivating the artists can mean, and in your experience has meant. So no particular order, but Terry do you want to start?

Terry Gomez: I knew you were going to say that. "Cultivating the Artist"—I think I can separate that for myself into two divisions. I’m an educator, I’ve worked with a lot of students, and I’ve worked with the Institute of American Indian Arts for four years as a theater instructor, including playwriting, acting, and theater production. And it was a very hard job because there was no department, so you had to fish the students out of their individual departments and, what would you call it, not convert them but recruit them, and convert them, to where they could understand that theater would be a good way to express themselves and for the playwrights to see their work up on stage. Because that wasn’t being done. The playwrights were writing it, and then their plays were being put away and forgotten about. But they had, there were students writing about the environment, the KKK, white supremacy, abuse of Native women, and I thought that they all deserved to be heard, their voices needed to be heard, and that’s a big part to me of why I like theater and why I got so involved in it. I really didn’t plan to be involved in theater, I was going more toward being a fiction writer, but after I saw my play up on its feet and I had an audience, a lot of Native people were coming up to me and saying, “that’s what I’ve wanted to say forever; that’s how I feel about that, thank you!” And I thought, well, I kind of like this and I think have more to say. So I wanted to do the same thing for my students, and there are some that continue to—there’s no theater department there—they continued on working either in playwriting or in acting. So I think a big part of what cultivating the artist means to me is giving a hand to our up and coming students and encouraging them and then showing them the way so to speak that they can have their voices heard. And then, personally for myself, I think it’s been very difficult. I finished my degree, but I’ve had a very hard time finding an academic position in my-- I can’t leave where I am right now, I have a mother who’s an elder and I have a son who’s wayward, for lack of a better expression. He just turned eighteen and I’m still holding onto the reigns a little bit and making sure he’s going to go the right way. So I can’t just up and go, even if there’s an open position, so I’m having to find other ways to get my work produced and to keep myself motivated to write. And that’s happening, but it’s very slow and it’s hard going, but it’s possible because I really think it’s important that we continue to speak up and speak out, and-- Okay I’m going to stop right there because I feel like I’m rambling. Okay.

Alanis: Thank you Terry.

Christopher Hibma: Well first of all, let me just say what an honor it is to be up here with all of you and to be here. I work at Sundance Institute in Los Angeles, actually here in New York now, but it’s really a pleasure to be up here as the only person from the non-Native nation here. I did grow up on a farm in Iowa, if that counts at all—sorry… (laughter) Anyway, I feel really privileged to be working at a place like Sundance, where 30 years ago Robert Redford began what has grown into quite a mechanism for supporting artists of all kinds. And I have a wonderful position there. In theater I don’t have to sell a ticket, or find any real funding, I just get to support artists like all of you. So that’s what I’m doing here this weekend, is to find out what Sundance could learn from you and do for you. So I welcome all of your thoughts. We have a year round program at Sundance supporting artists, and we have laboratory and workshop experiences in places that happen outside of major metropolitan areas. We have the mountain in Utah, in the Wasatch Mountains, where the Indians were originally there and we welcome their blessing at the beginning of each of our labs to honor the traditions that have become before us. So that’s a three week lab that you all are welcome to apply for, you can all go online and apply for that. The way we support writers there is the playwright is given every other day off from rehearsal to do rewrites. And that’s a rarity in the theater, especially in major metropolitan areas especially when you have to turn over the pages the next night for the copying the next morning. So we accept 700 submissions each year for about seven slots. It’s highly selective. But what we heard from artists was that that working environment wasn’t perfect for some genres. For example musical theater, they like to rehearse everyday, there’s a lot of music to learn, so we’ve created a new lab for them down in Florida, at a place called White Oak, which is this fabulous nature preserve with giraffe, and rhino, and zebra, and antelope, and artists. We get to go down there for two weeks, I just came back from there a couple of days ago, and we support a musical there and a piece created by an ensemble. Ensembles are different in that they already have a working vocabulary and language with which to work with each other. So they like to rehearse everyday. We have no public performances of any kind, which also creates a sacred place for that work to take lots of risks. We don’t care if you come in with a play and you leave with one act. We don’t care if you took a risk and it didn’t quite work out. It doesn’t matter, as long as you as an artist were able to try something new. We give you a dramaturg, we give you some actors, and we give you some feedback from creative advisors in the field to respond to your work and we allow you to answer questions, to ask questions, of your work. Instead of us telling you what we think of your work, it’s what questions do you still have about it. We have a playwriting retreat that happens in the wilds of Wyoming, outside of Sheridan, in this seventy-thousand acre cattle ranch, and we send six playwrights and two composers up there each winter for 18 years to put pen to paper; to give them the space and time to get away from their everyday life. So that’s another way in which we support artists. And this is the second year, I’m proud to say, that we have started a whole initiative in East Africa, supporting artists in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Ethiopia. There we’re doing much the same as you’re doing this weekend, is that we are getting to know the community there, of artists, by asking them who they are, what their issues are, what they’d like to see happen, and what could Sundance play, if any, in the development of their work. And so, in one way that’s how we’re getting to expose American artists to artists from other cultures. Just one of the things we’re focusing on in the next couple of years. So cultivating the artist, at Sundance, has a bunch of different connotations, from a place to write, a space away from your everyday life, somewhere in nature, and then after you leave hopefully there’s a relationship, and some sort of community of Sundancers, able to help you on your journey towards full production.

Rose Stella: Hi everybody. The Centre for Indigenous Theatre, I’m the principal, I design the curriculum, I’m the artistic Director, I design what’s going to be presented. I wear two hats there. I was an actor and a writer before I started my job, and it’s been a real learning curve about what I really need to know and how to go about doing what I’m doing to cultivate these young artists. How to give them what I think they need, how to figure out what they need, and giving them both without spoon feeding them everything. Like helping them become adults in a very competitive field but also giving them really solid training. So as an artist myself, I understand what it takes. In order to cultivate the artist it’s really important to be an artist yourself so that you understand how difficult it is. You really know how hard it is to be an artist so you know that they need to be really good at what they’re doing in order to be successful. And even then you’re not always successful in the way some people call success. Margo’s been doing this a long time, you know what I’m talking about. So cultivating an artist, you have to figure out how to get them in the door to understand that they need training. And then once they’re in the door, to understand how to be a student again. We’re a three year training program. We’re not a two week workshop. In the summer we have three weeks, a three week training program, but when we’re doing from September to April, a full time training program, and we need them there at nine in the morning to six o’clock at night, helping them learn that there’s a discipline involved with being an artist, there’s a whole retraining of a mindset that happens that I actually wasn’t sure that I was prepared to do once I saw that that was what I needed to do. But I’ve, it’s five years now, I’ve been there five years. And a lot has changed, and I’ve inherited a lot of—there were people in there before me that did a lot of work. And I’m really grateful for them because they laid the ground. Alanis was a really important part of our faculty before she moved on to Saskatoon. She wrote a really important play for our students, that was translated in the Odawa language by her father, and that was huge for cultivating the idea that language and theater—that you can take that language, and learn culture through theater. We toured it. It was the first time we’ve toured in years and years. So, it’s a really important place for young artists right now. And we have committed young people, but we’re a tiny school. We’re tiny. We have nine students in a three year program right now, and they get lets of attention. They’re getting very very good training, and sometimes one on one training depending on what we’re doing. Cultivating the artist is, for us, understanding how to hear them when they come and sit down with me and say we’re scared. A lot of them are so scared. We have four young men from Alberta who were all excited to come to Toronto, and as soon as they came to the door and were in Toronto, you know, were scared young men. They never left Leftbridge before, they never left Alberta. There’s a lot to cultivating an Indigenous artist that’s beyond the studio. So there’s a lot of challenges, and we do have support from the community, we could use more, but we do have support, and we have strong teachers, and I have flyers here, and I have pictures of shows that I’m happy to share with people. But cultivating the artist is first making them feel safe for us and having them trust us so that we can go to the next step, which is, you know, allowing them to be vulnerable enough to take in the work.

Muriel Miguel: I was thinking just now, when Christopher was talking, that many of the piece that I have performed and Spiderwoman’s big theater pieces, that really have been cultivated by many of the people that are either here in this room, it happened through Marrie Mumford at Banff, it happened through Weesageechak at Native Earth, it happened with Urban Ink, going there, so a lot of my pieces have really been supported by the communities around me. I was also able to perform at the community house when I had ideas, and I was able to just show my idea, sometimes just in a reading, sometimes a staged reading, so again this community here in New York also has supported Spiderwoman. So that to me is very important that the Native community, all around me that surround me, really supported me. I also work for CIT, and I go into CIT with a very strong purpose. I come in as a teacher in the beginning, and then I change into a director; that’s when the kids are scared of me. But as a teacher, to really pass onto these young people that where you’re working is a safe area, and that’s really important, that this place where you are working now is a safe area and you can fail. And that’s scary, you know, and you really have to continue with and continue with and talk to them about it. That all their experiences are valuable. And the type of work I do in storytelling is to do many of these themes and weave them together; so you’ll not only have one person’s story, but you’ll have many persons’ stories in one elaborate tapestry. So I come in in many ways. I come in as an elder, as a senior, a teacher, I come in as a director, but I come in as a person that has been working for 31 years in theater, and I can still get on the floor; and if I can do it, you can do it. And so that’s really the basic thing, that’s where I start, and if I have to get down on the floor and do something I tell the kids, don’t make me do it again—as I crawl off. That is one section, so you know, the communities that have supported me, the way I try to support the communities that I am working in, we are also asked to go into communities, like Tohono O'odham, many communities in the States, and a lot of them in Canada, to work the same way. So sometimes we are just working with teenagers, sometimes it’s a mixed group of elders and teenagers, we’re going to do a piece here, with elders and teenagers that my sisters made a reading out of. So again it’s cultivating those stories, and listening to those stories, and talking about the stories. I work with young women, and encouraging their one woman shows, which is very important for me, to get those one woman shows out, and so someone said, god I feel like I’m in therapy, because I want to know where are they going? What’s their ideas? What’s in their head? So now I am 71 and it’s time to pass on a lot of this now to the next generation. These young women that I’ve been talking to, these young women that I’ve gotten one woman show out of, these people that would have had all these exchanges, it’s time to give it to them. It’s time for Spiderwoman to go on, which means that--I have a 501C3, that’s what it means. And that I can, if I can give this to the next generation of women, if I can pass it on and see it change. It may not be the way I think, it may not be the way I would do it, but to see it go on is very important to me. So I’m really that here in New York City, Spiderwoman should start its base, from that Native base that we can branch out into many other bases, many other fields about what a lot of us are thinking about. So that’s where I’m going, and I’m also thinking that we should work now in language, because I’ve been doing that, I was talking to him about language.

Edward Wemytewa: That one.

Muriel: That one—that man over there! And so I’m thinking of bringing in young women. A young Navajo woman who wants to tell her stories in Zuni, a young Zuni woman who wants to tell her stories in Zuni, and start a new Spiderwoman. So that’s where I am in cultivating artists.

Randy Reinholz: I would like to echo Christopher’s idea here, with such esteemed company, and it’s really nice, and Rose’s idea that our work does come from those who preceded us and, certainly, we’ve all benefited a lot from Spiderwoman, and I see Hanay’s name there, and I think a lot about Daniel David Moses and Margo, who have done so much work along the way before I was really involved. So I always like to start by thanking. Native Voices, our mission is to develop and produce new work for the stage by Native American writers and to elevate the status of Native theater artists nationally. We work on new scripts, we have a number of different programs, sometimes we work with new scripts, sometimes they’re stand alone readings, sometimes they’re festivals, like this festival, several readings at once. Sometimes it’s a playwright’s retreat where we go away and we’re in residence for five/ten days at a time with a company of actors and what we call friends of the playwright, sometimes directors, sometimes dramaturgs. We work simultaneously at developing writers and actors. We had a nice pool of talent both ways, when we started in Los Angeles in ‘99, and these both groups have grown and it’s really exciting to see them thrive well beyond what we’re doing. Rhiana has a Jerome Fellowship in Minneapolis and is producing work on her own, doesn’t need Native Voices at all anymore, she’s on her own. And we’re watching that happen on so many levels, with young artists that we’ve invested in, and it’s exciting! It is terribly exciting actually. We do produce, try to produce one show every year. The last few years we’ve been producing two plays a year, and we felt it’s very important to produce on an equity contract, and we pay artists, we pay on an equity contract, so we pay artists. We pay about 150 artists per year. And that’s been a big goal, to try to produce-- not try to, we do—under the equity contract because people can’t dismiss the work. People will try to dismiss the work, but we’ve worked very hard to help the artist not do dismissible work. LA Times, Backstage, Variety, what else, the Reporter, LA Weekly, I mean we really are in all the major periodicals in Los Angeles. So there is a written paper trail of these ten Equity productions and these writers are actually able to take these reviews and use them in other places. The actors, I’m starting to see, you know, “I’m a Native Voices company member.” We haven’t really formalized what that means yet, but dogonit I love it that it’s their company, they’re taking ownership of it, and in some ways they’re defining what it should be. That’s our most, that’s most of the programming we do to cultivate artists. We have a radio project that’s three years old that Betsy helped us initiate. Actually, Betsy and my wife—you know, people who say, you’re pretty good at this, learn how to do this—so with that we’ve project three shows a year. And it’s been exciting to be in different communities, sometimes we were with Eastern Cherokee youth, a couple different times—Rhiana had a show she did recently, a variety show—we’ve had Super Indian in Los Angeles, a comic book hero about a super Indian. So there’s been all kinds work coming out of this. Lots of comedy, lots of drama—as my Canadian brothers and sisters would say—so that’s what we do at Native Voices.

Alanis King: Thank you Randy. Well I thought maybe I could share a bit about Sas’ Native Theatre Company, and how it’s working out there. It started in ’99 with a program for youth at risk, and it was called the Circle of Voices Program. And through four components, of culture, life skills, performing arts and career management, we would put the students into this program of being first time theater practitioners. And we hook them up with a senior playwright during that time. And in a circle, because all of it’s cultural activity, we work with elders out there as well. And it’s really awesome, culturally strong, land base. And there’s so many urban youth, and where we’re situated, in Saskatoon, is in the heart of the inner city, so if you just go outside your door, you’re gonna see a lot of tragic lifestyles. And I think for a lot of these young people, who joined the theater, they kind of come in there as a safe haven from everything that’s going on back home. And some of them are 18/19/20 and then their moms are all messed up when they go back home. So we kind of provide a haven for them. But I know, when they go through this program, they’re being cultivated to discover themselves and I think that’s what’s important to draw out. And from that, the ones who really want to pursue the performing arts and stay in the theater, we have another program, a more senior level program, and it’s called the Red Spirit [Performing] Arts Training Program, and it’s a two year one. The Circle of Voices is a six month. So for me, it’s kind of like a three year program because the COV go into a more intense two year structure after that. And that one, we’re putting quite a bit of emphasis on different aspects of their training. We do the basic stuff of, you know, voice, movement, dance, singing, traditional singing as well, traditional dance as well, all of the normal activity you’d expect in a theater school, and then on top of that we get, not daily but it seems like it sometimes, commissions from different bodies, like Saskatchewan Government Insurance. They ask us to do a play on road safety, and we create this with those students and then they take it out on the road. So I just feel like—the people who are commissioning us want to turn their issues and have them portrayed by the very people they’re trying to reach. And the only way they can do that, and some of the most successful ways, have been through the use of theater. So these young people are getting right out there, right away, with their own work, being collaborated and collectively created. And after that we have a young company, and it’s called the Fire Spirit Players, and we put on an annual Christmas play, and it’s called the Kohkum's of Kiweetinook, and it’s Rez Christmas Series. And this play has become so strong, within the community response, that it’s been, it will be instillation 7 now, and we’re keeping it going annually, and it’s already sold out, and it already has it’s tour booked, about sold out as well, so I guess I mean, there are some that we have that are very well known, and others, when we start brand new work, we have a tougher time getting a mainstream audience. And I guess, the University of Saskatchewan, allowing us to use their theater—rent their theater—was a first historical; and I had no idea, we just needed a space. We have two huge buildings, one is dormant because we are trying to renovate it into a black box studio, which it was years ago but the fire inspectors came and realized a few things. So we’re doing a major capital campaign for it, and it will be just beautiful when it happens, and it will be, you know, a long time dream come true to see an actual Native theater in Canada that’s really operating. And the square footage that we have throughout the year, in the other building, is where we offer all the training. And sometimes we feel we still don’t have enough space, but we want to invite you all to a future festival and have another gathering of all our artists just so that we can show you what’s going on the Prairies, and with young people, and some of our alumni. So this company I’m working with was actually founded by Tantoo Cardinal and Gordon Tootoosis who were in Big Bear, in Saskatchewan, way back and then they decided, over the fire, wouldn’t it be nice to have an art’s center and wouldn’t it be nice to have something for youth to go to. And, you know, there’s common programs in the visual arts, but this one was theater specific. And I think when I got there, it was kind of like…Native Earth and CIT all in one and that was my job. And there wasn’t like a charter or something to follow, so we kind of hit the ground running and do all we can and try to create it from a model of CIT, a National Theater School, but always Indianizing it and Aboriginalizing everything that we do, to give back these young people their own sense of purpose. And out of that we’ve had many writers and I think that’s really where the cultivation begins. Because I don’t think we have enough plays, and I always emphasize that to them, that there’s not enough Native plays, and that’s why I became a playwright, because there wasn’t a play to produce after the one we had just produced, so we had to write another one. And then we’d act in it, and then tour it to 90 communities in three months, and sleep on the billet’s floor and all this. And nowadays we have hotel rooms, and it’s a major luxury and huge transitions for the humble beginnings so to speak. But I think that all of that, creating a venue for an artist, is really the most important thing to do period. So long as an artist has venue, and it could be small—a rock on a beach, it could be grand. I think that’s what the purpose is for, with the community. And it think in terms of Native theater, it’s always been, my approach anyway, it’s always been that my work is for my community first and that if the wider society comes, and they’re all welcome to the reserve or to where I’m at now, I think that’s a real bonus. And if they come back, and again and again. Saskatoon population, and I don’t know if it’s approaching 50% Native, but it’s the wild wild west out there still, so, all the things you’d expect are visible. So you’re always dealing with that kind of thing. But the support is there, with all different levels of government funding, that’s always the big, you know, how are you going to operate. And the Canadian Federal Government thankfully does have a little of arts funding still, so I think that historically we’re, you know, we have to be great with so little. And Stratford got everything in ’53, and here we are getting funded in ’86, you know, so we need to catch up and we need to get the same amount, and why are we so invisible, and why doesn’t anyone know that Native theater happens. It’s really just because of that. And, I guess the final thing is that all the young artists, like Muriel says to, you know we do need the next generation of young ideas and have a real solid base of where they are going to go, and some of them do create theaters, go back home, but some of them are going to take over, you know, take over the whole company or the young company, or what have you. So I just wanted to ask the panelists if you have any other thoughts, or we could actually open it up to the audience for questions.

Rose Stella: I just want to say one thing because it was connected to what you were saying, and I think when those young people, I think opening them up to understand that they’re worthy. That was one of the things that I was surprised that I would have to help to get past the lack—the students didn’t feel worthy to grow. They were there, they wanted to grow, but there was so much shame and suppression and it’s, making that space a place where they are worthy of growing and worthy of becoming an artist, to be called an artist, and it doesn’t happen magically. That they can take their life and still be worthy of being an artist or a person that still has a career. So it’s one of the things that it’s really important, to let our young people know they’re worthy, because they are all coming from a place where—a lot of broken spirits and healing those spirits in kind of the first steps for us.

Terry Gomez: I’d like to talk a little bit about someone who’s not here. Martha Brice was here last here and she works in Seattle with a youth group called Red Eagle Soaring, and they’re from anywhere form 8 to about 18. And she had about 12 students. And she asked me if I would come out for the month of January, she’d pay me $1500, and I would stay with her family and we would put a play together. So I was a little apprehensive about it because I told her, what tribe are you in, and she said, I’m adopted Tlingit. And I thought, hmm, well, I don’t know her. So I kept talking to her last year while were here, got to know her, and we were started hanging around together, and she’s an elder, and she’s very proud of the fact that she’s adopted Clinket. So, I thought well, I have that month and I’ll take it—she wanted me to stay two months, but I told her I only could afford to do one month—but, for somebody that cultivated, she bought food for that youth group, she made sure that they were there, if they weren’t there we there. If they weren’t there, we, she had one of those navigation things, she’d put it in her van, and she kind of scared me with her driving on the Encino, and we would go all over, out of her own pocket, and pick these kids up, and if they couldn’t make it she’d call them, on the day that we were supposed to be there twice a week, and she would pick every one of those kids up, and go way the heck out of her way and take them home. And to me I was just really in awe of her, because of her intense dedication, she’s really dedicated, and I don’t know if I could have done that, because she put everything to the side, she didn’t get paid for it, but that’s what she did. And I thought, well, I was pretty proud and I hope that I’m wiling to do stuff like that. And I think a lot of times that we don’t get paid for our work, or we have to volunteer and do things, but it’s worth it, especially when you work with young people because they need the help, they need the attention, and I just wanted to say that, she called me and wished she was here, but she couldn’t make it this year so she told me to say hello to whoever knew her. So I just wanted to put that in there for her.

Alanis: So if anyone has any questions for our panelists, we’re totally open to that.

Mandy: Rose, did you say you had 9 students, from September to April.

Rose: Yes, yes.

Mandy Hackett: How did they find you, or how did you find them?

Rose: Our first year students, this year, one young woman came through one of our graduates, so she was a friend of one of the graduates, so she’s Iroquois, she’s from Ontario, and she already graduated from Concordia in Montreal. So she’s come to this school with a real strong sense of purpose. And is really helpful to those young men, because they look up to her like she’s an older sister, and she’s helpful to them because she’s been through school. The young men came from our summer program that we had in Leftbridge. They were so excited about the program that they decided to come—we had about three other students that were enrolled, but lost the funding. So we would have had seven—eight in first year. But basically we recruit. We go out and we do recruitment tours and we have summer schools that we hope will bring in new students and get people excited about training and understanding that theater isn’t just about acting. Part of the program is the technical part, so that we hope that we can inspire people to be writers, or lighting designers in general. We hope that we can create our artistry throughout the whole gamut of what theater is, but it’s through recruitment. It’s very hard, because there’s money problems for the students. We’re not a diploma program, we’re a certificate program, so funding is an issue, but—so that’s one of the reasons why it is a small school, but we persevere.

Diane Glancy: I had question for Randy. How do you handle playwrights who come to your workshop thinking that their play is just finished and ready to go.

Mandy Hackett: Christopher should answer that too.

Randy: You know, I think it’s a long process, and I think a lot about setting expectations. So in the beginning, I think we probably hurt people’s feelings by not talking about that right up front, so now we try to set, in the call for scripts. Why would you want to come here and work on your script, so there’s not a judgment from me, they’re saying from themselves, this is what I want to accomplish, this is what I want to do, so I think that’s real important to get the playwright to define what their job is. And again, we often match them up as you know with directors or dramaturgs, and we find out who they might be able to vibe with or have a relationship with, and I think that’s really important.

Christopher Hibma: Yeah I conquer with that. We also require a playwright and director’s statement in all the applications, and when we have gotten burned by playwrights—we say burned—who come and want no help, it’s because we haven’t read those—who aren’t open, to change or take a risk-- it’s because we haven’t read those statements quite as closely as we needed to. But I think it becomes obvious when you are in a community of people who are all engaged in creating a better product; where the holes in something are. We’ve also, however, instituted a program where our dramaturgs are able to meet ahead of time, ahead of the Lab experience, with an interest in playwrights, so that they don’t come to the Lab experience on a blind date, and it’s not just a stranger advising you on your work, but there’s a conversation that’s already been put in place. That’s where we try to head off those wall before the bricks are laid.

Betsy: I have a question about, to all of you who spoke about the safe space you’re trying to create for artists to create the work, whether that’s the actor training, particularly the playwright and directors in training—is there, I’d just like to hear you different perspectives. Do you feel any responsibility, and there’s nothing loaded in here, I just want to hear your different perspectives—any responsibility in cultivating the artist, besides giving them that safe space and helping in the safe space. Linking them to a place to that think that they’ve created, when what they’ve created is done. Or are you cultivating—helping them cultivate the relationships? Is that part of the work, or is that up to the artist and is that… Because that’s another space where people—are you going to produce me?

Randy: Right.

Muriel: Are you going to produce me? Is that what she said?

Randy: Yeah, you know, artists come with a certain expectation—if I do everything you want will you produce me—is a tough question. Well one of the things we’ve been doing is cultivating a national reading panel, so that we have about eight different people around the country, a mix of Native and non- Native, sometimes literary managers, that way we expose a lot of people to the plays. Last year we partnered with Literary and Dramaturgs Association of the Americas, because they have a national conference, so Salvage was a play that was read in front of that group, so 200 literary managers and dramaturgs saw that work. So we work strategically to get people involved with artists that they might be interested in later. We have a little network of people coming together who have said: well I’m interested in Native theater, I’m interested in Native Artists. Then you just try to see those relationships. And certainly that’s a great idea of putting dramaturgs and directors in touch before. And we’ve noticed, what’s happened, is that the dramaturgs tend to stay invested; The dramaturgs we’ve been using. We also have a pool of actors that are really good at reading. So they’re very fast, and they’re fine with, you’re reading today, and you’re the lead, and you’re the support, and the next day it’s like, ah, let’s switch it around, and you be the lead, and you be the support. And the actors are totally cool with that. SO that safe space is a company idea. It can’t just be sort of one person’s idea. And the actors are really good about that. Actors know how to give notes now, and they’re not like give me more lines, they’re more like: ah, I don’t know what the characters are doing right here, or it seems like I’m doing the same thing for three pages here, what’s going on with my change. And it’s a very giving group that way.

Christopher: Yeah I think, this is the question that I think, in development organizations, we need to wrestle with more deeply. We of course do all we can to talk to literary managers and artistic directors when we, when there’s a project that’s ready for production. One of the things that we’re actively doing this year, one of the things that Sundance does really well is bring people together. And this December is, we are convening the people who do what we do in the world of new play development. I liked your word new performance instead of new play, I liked that, because I think the definition of play is limiting. We’re bringing together in the US the people who do primarily development, like New Dramatists here in New York, or the Playwrights Center in Minneapolis, the Playwright’s Foundation in San Francisco, the LARK, the O’Neill Theater Center and Sundance. We’ve never all met together in the same room, so we’re meeting together in the same room, for two and a half days, to talk about issues just like this. What happens when a play has been in one of our development programs, is there something that we need to be doing together, communally, to make that happen, what—primarily we need to figure out what our core values are, because we’re all very different organizations, just as each and everyone up here has a different core value, and what’s interesting is to figure out what we have in common and what we don’t, and how that informs our work, and our process.

Betsy: What did you find out?

Christopher: We have not yet done it. In December we’re meeting. So, I’ll let you know.

Vickie Ramirez: Could you more clearly delineate the difference from an artist perspective, when we approach a producing organization vs. a development organization, what our expectations should be, what our, what the point of the process is, because I know a lot of my colleagues, who are playwrights, when some of them are like, but they didn’t do it. And I’m like, but didn’t they give you all that feedback and give you some—so, can you delineate what the mission is, with a development organization vs. a producing organization? Anybody?

Alanis King: Well I think some of my experience on that level is that, you know, development is extremely important and if it’s your first play, but you could have written 20 plays but it’s your first play again, first draft, and I think those forms are so valuable. You know, like Weesageechak and other places, but to really have professional actors and a dramaturg and director, I think that gives the playwright so much more than what they arrived with. Because before that it was just stuck on the paper, and now when it comes to life, you are going to be so much more deeply informed about it, and walk away, and hopefully, sometimes, if you’re lucky and there’s a lot of resources, you can come back six months later, or six weeks later, or something, and have another go at it, you know? And that is its own thing, and when you really feel that its ready, than its ready for the theaters to receive it, for script calls and such. So then you take your opportunity there. But it think if you’re in the milieu, and people know what’s coming down, and what’s recommended, I mean that’s part of it too. So then the producing side I think is a very special, very special limited place. You know, you could have a vision until 2012, and you’ll only have the opportunity to do six plays, and that’s sad, but really we should be doing one play a month, producing one play a month, you know, and even, dare I say, have a longer rehearsal period, you know? But, so the producer part, that’s where our chances are a bit more limited with the companies that exist out there, but that’s where I find a lot more Native theater artists are becoming self producers and starting their own companies. And you just have to go in those steps and stages all along, really, and that stick-to-it-ness, because if your script is something that you really see and I give the students a list what makes constructing a play, so just with things like that, I mean that once you’re on the production side, you can do a lot of that self producing, or by mailing out it will be read and maybe it’s all luck and timing, it really is. I mean, you know, someone’s script for me may be well loved, but cross country down south, it doesn’t work over here. It doesn’t mean it’s a bad play, a bad playwright, a bad idea, it just means that at that time, for that location and person, it just didn’t fit. So, I think of musicians, how do I get into music and get a gig and get a CD? And the answer is always, go out to a concert, with other musicians, and show your support, and you’ll start networking, and they’ll give you ideas. So there’s a lot of really, you know, tactical strategic ways to do it, but I think it’s really—you just can never ever give up on the baby, right? And that, if you have that vision and dedication to the craft itself, the very essence that this play I have to see come to life, it will. It just will. And that’s what it takes, will.

Randy: Sometimes I think too that being around development processes is really important, because seasoned artists know how to take advantage of the opportunities. And there so, they happen so fast, the opportunities. And as my mom said, you only get one chance to make a good first impression, you know, those kinds of things, those opportunities. And it think just being around the process and watching how people work, you can pick up stuff so fast. I mean I learned so much at Weesageechak, just going there for a couple of years, and then someone said, well we’ll let Choctaw boy direct one. And then I started to learn a lot, what was going on.

Muriel: I think, what I like, is that little place, that small place where someone comes to me with and idea and that’s all it is, it’s just a little idea, and we talk about it and we talk about it, and then… Or then somebody comes with a story, and it’s one page, and then something happens, we talk about it and we talk about it. And then, we did evening in Paris, I don’t know if you saw it, and a young woman came to me, actually I met her, I was performing with her in Marie’s play in Vancouver, Michelle Olson, who was a dancer, and she started to talk about this woman that a lot of us know, Molly Spotted Elk. And we were talking about it and I told her I knew her, when I was a kid I met her, and we started to talk about it, and she was really interested in the idea of that iconic woman, the Josephine Baker of the Native world. Fringe instead of bananas. And so we started to talk about that. Then we went back and she started to talk about her grandmother, and how her grandmother loved Evening In Paris, which was the five and ten cent store perfume, yeah, with this beautiful bluebottle. And how her grandmother lived in the North. So we took that and then we started to talk about starlings and sparrows and we took that, and she started to write these stories about—there not starlings, what are they? There’s a certain, there’s a bird that comes and goes, but—Yes a swallows. That’s what they are. And she wrote these swallow stories, of how a woman turns into a swallow, how a swallow turns into a woman, and they all started to connect together into Molly and who Molly was. And big discussions about Molly, because who is Molly? Is she a sell out? Do we think of her as a sell out? Because after all she was the first show biz woman we know and have in our world. And out of it all came Evening in Paris, our dance theater piece that came out of it, but it just came out of this little thought, this little idea that she approached me with. And that’s what I like, and think about when I think about cultivating the artist. It’s those little thoughts that happen, that little thought becomes this thing. That’s what I’m interested in, that’s how I think about cultivating.

Rhiana Yazzie: You know, I was really struck by something that Rose said, about when you’re working with Native artists that they have an issue with worthiness and trust, and it makes me think a lot about the community that I’m living in. I’m living in Minneapolis right now, and everybody knows there’s almost a hundred theaters in Minneapolis, but there are so so few collaborations that happen between the Native community and the theater community. And the longer I live there, and the more I get to know the community, it becomes more apparent to me that there’s this tangible, historical trauma that seems to get in the way of Native artists being able to produce there work. Because if you’re not able to understand the world that this young person is coming from or this writer or this actor is coming from, you might push them away, but really they’re going through this cultural/historical trauma. It’s like how do we as artists or producers get through that, or it feels to me like it’s something that I always have to talk about when I’m working in my community with Native People and non-Native people trying to bring things together. Because I know a lot of examples that have happened, like even in the past year, of Native artists trying to work with non-Native artists, and they’re becoming this huge rift between them because they didn’t talk about this historical problem. And in Minnesota, it really doesn’t get talked about. You know Native people, they’re not even in the tourist brochures, so I mean it’s something—I was wondering if you could talk about that?

Rose: Well, I think any group that’s working has to begin from the idea that you need to make sure that everyone is feeling they understand that they’re worthy. It has to be asserted, no anyone you’re working with, who has not been produced or worked, or they’re beginning. Because their trauma may not be spoken about, but shame is one of those insidious evils, you know, that stops people from growing, it stops people from working in a way that’s larger than what they’re doing. It keeps people down, it’s designed to keep people down, and designed to control people. So now, what we need to do is find a way to allow people to understand that that’s what happened to them. There’s so much, all peoples we deal with, it’s all kinds of people who deal with this, but in our world, we have—there was, my very first year doing this work, I had one student who’s sister was murdered, and her two people in his family had a murder and a suicide, in that person’s family, another person was dealing with a friend’s suicide, I had 9 students this year, and I was dealing with that little group. What the hell? I’m thinking, what organization of people in training deals with this kind of trauma? That’s like 1 in 2 trauma, or less, you know, 1 in 1?

Randy: isn’t that who becomes artists?

Rose: But to be an artist, to be a living and working artist you have to survive it. That’s what I’m saying. Al this chaos, drama, trauma creates art, if you can survive it to make the art and be stable enough to survive until you’re a senior and do the work and continue to pass it on. I’m just saying at those morsel times, those times when you’re just beginning, those young people, or even if they’re not young people, beginning artists, or they don’t have to be young they can be fifty years old and begin to be an artist. They have to understand that their legacy, their history—face it and tell them that they’re worthy of being an artist. And help them and encourage them to get help. I tell all of my students, get help, so that you can access your emotional world. Because art demands to access your emotional world. You can’t be an actor if you can’t access anger, love, innocence, you can’t be an actor if you can’t access that in a safe way. And you can’t be a writer if you can’t access those things in a safe way. So I ask them—we provide counseling, but it may not be the right counseling for everyone, so I ask them to tell me when they’re in trouble, to trust me enough to tell them when we’re in trouble, so we can keep finding them help, but so that they can begin from a slate of understanding that there is a legacy of trauma, and begin the healing work so that they can move forward. And be artists, or whatever they want to be, so that they feel strong enough to do it. I don’t know if that helps or answers your question?

Rhiana: it’s this systemic societal issue. I mean I will…think about it, because why aren’t there that many Native people doing theater and accessing it the same way, and it all comes down to who can get help, where is the access to that?

Rose: It’s even feeling worthy of getting the help. Feeling worthy enough to get help is a real big issue.

Muriel: I also think that, we’re talking about these institutes that we work with and how we take care of people and care for these students. Well if you go to a big institution, if you go to a big university, you’re out! If you don’t show up for the week, if you fail, you’re out. And so that’s it. Or you can swallow it, and if you swallow it you either drink or take drugs. You know what I mean? That’s it! So these places are places, sometimes they’re over protective, sometimes they over indulge, you know I want to slap them upside the head and say get real now—you know that’s my reaction! (laughter) But the other thing was that in Minneapolis, there was a place called Foot of the Mountain, which was a feminist theater group that started in Minneapolis, that brought Spiderwoman in. And we worked from Foot of the Mountain and we had a group of about 10 women. They were Mexican, I think we had 3 Natives, one Black woman, one Jewish woman, so I think there were like eight of them and three of us. And we produced a piece at Foot of the Mountain called Neurotic Exotics - something like that - "Erotic Nexotic" [laughter] - but talking about being an exotic, and being a neurotic because you’re an exotic. And we had all these women, and we did it, but the thing was, we really wanted Native women, but they said, "we sent out brochures, and we sent out flyers, and we sent out audition, and no one showed up" they said to us. And we said of course they didn’t show up. So we went out to every powwow, you know we gave out things, we talked to people, and you know, five Native women showed up. And we took every one of them.

Betsy: I think that’s a really interesting question about—you ‘re talking about cultivating the artist and using, kind of farming language. You’re talking about soil, what you’re trying to grow folks in, and nobody talks about the G word in the United States, you know…

Muriel: What’s the G word?

Betsy: Genocide word. Those folks in Minneapolis, those women and children were marched to Fort Snow and shot, had garbage thrown at them as they were on the march. The men were hung in town, but nobody says that, and I just feel that we have to say that. That hey don’t teach that in the school books, and they don’t—when they have the centennial celebration, the bi-centennial celebration of the state, they don’t talk about that. And that is really hard, being in that situation, and folks act like there’s an even playing field, like it’s just an inclusion law, you know we invited you , just come, and if you don’t come that’s your own problem. And I guess for me the question is, does something else need to happen, or are there questions for theater artists. How do they take part in that? Is it just about doing work that you’re just uncovering the stories, or is there something else? I don’t know, I mean I feel like I wrestle with that all the time, with this kind of length between memory, not just memory as a guilt trip, but memory that activates you to change your behavior, and how other change their behavior, and memory that’s shared. Memory that people have ownership of, other than you like, oh yeah yeah that’s somebody else’s problem. I think actually that’s the realm, partially like what Muriel was talking about those things are…of here.

Muriel: It’s not necessarily that they’re good memories, you know, but they have to be shared. You know, we’re here and we know this much about our lives as Native people, but we know them because of our grandmothers and grandfathers and great greats. They may not have been great people, but somehow we’re here, we survived, somehow we’re here because of them. And so I always thought of them as the unsung heroes, the whores, the pot heads, the ones that maybe had the wrong choices and the wrong ways of trying to get us someplace, or trying to not get us someplace, but they did leave us some kind of a legacy, you know, those people are to me just as important, and those memories are just as important when you talk about, you know, how did we get here.

Alanis: Margo?

Margo Kane: I just want to talk a bit about—for me I wrestled with it my whole performance l life, because as a performer, here I’m safe. Going into a world whereby you have to play every ethnic role that’s there because there are no Aboriginal plays, and you’re lucky if you get the roles for the Aboriginal play anyway, and so the unsafeness was too much for me. I began to find my own way. So part of what we wrestle with, in our training program, is that, and the way we establish the training program, was to create a circle of safety for the work to proceed. So I developed it through creating my own work and the way I created safety for myself, and created safety for other people, or at least to set up the possibility was that I turned to my teachings, and my elders who said the circle is a sacred circle. We are sacred and when we sit on that circle, every voice and every perspective, is important to it. And so it didn’t matter how much training they had, or how old they were, or what kind of trauma they lived through, in creating the working space we set up the space up together and I made the suggestion that this is how the teaching of the circle worked. So I welcome your perspective and we set up the guidelines, based upon the principle of our teachings, and—just—you know you all know them: you love and respect everybody, even if you don’t fully agree with them or understand them in that circle. And so we work from that model. And it doesn’t mean that it solves the problem of, like working with other non-Native companies, or with people who don’t fully grasp what you’re talking about, you know all of that, but what it does do in cultivating an artist in our training work, is that it cultivates, they learn how to speak their truth, from wherever it is. So they learn how to participate in the development process. They learn how, that some days they come in and they’re—in the morning, we have a kind of ritual that we do every morning when we open and when we close, we always open and we close. And we’re not dogmatic about it, because everybody has different religious, or doctrine, or teachings, and so we don’t try to say you all must smudge everyday, and you know all that. You know it’s like, we created this place of silence and a meditational time and then we pick up the drums and we sing. And we don’t even have to sing a song, if you don’t know a song you don’t have to sing a song, but it’s kind of an openness of an acceptance that our elders keep reminding us, is that we’re all very precious, each one of us, and that we all bring certain gifts, and maybe your gift is to listen that day, and maybe your gift that day is to pour your heart out, because something traumatic has happened with a child as you’re a single mother and you’re trying to come to acting class. And so that kind of sense that, we’re creating a place so that we’re learning how to live with the trauma that they’re living with. They learning—we also have some very skilled teachers who also assist them, and respect them, and support them through the development as they begin to develop all the wealth that they carry. And so it’s also in the supporting of the people and their voice, that it’s going to create a piece, actually. We’ve had some wonderful students who are very active in the world, and eventually it’s those voices, combination of voices, that are going to stand up for your voice in a respectful way. And that’s the other thing, is respect, that you might not agree with me, but I must say this, you know. Even though it’s learning how to reconcile those difference too. And there’s going to be challenges working with people who maybe say they want to produce your work or want to work with you, but then you come up against stuff, right, and maybe you don’t feel safe. But what I think we’re trying to do is maybe lay the ground work so that we are strong together, even if we are separate somewhere else, that you can actually call upon each other and the knowledge that this is a sacred work, this work must be spoken, this thing must be approached, you might not resolve it all in one play or two plays or anything, but I think that’s partly what we’re trying to do, its recognition, it’s recognizing our artists, what they’re going to do and saying, yes we acknowledge you, we support you, and there’s nothing like that, like you go out into the world by yourself, you know that people are standing behind you, even if they’re not with you.

Victor Maog: I’m Victor Maog and I’m a theater director, and I just want to touch two points. The first one, I’m very happy to hear these point of views today. I’ve worked with different groups, victims of war torture, and Cambodian Genocide, and I’ve been invited to go to the Monacan Nation in rural Virginia to let these stories begin to emerge. I think what I’m taking away from this session, and the previous session, is if you put yourself on the line, try to put yourself where you are in the world today, on the line. It takes a lot of bravery, and I know—you were talking about how you take care of someone who says, here’s my story and I own up, and you actually go, alright everybody, I’m out here now. That’s really important. And what systems do you have to create a frame so someone doesn’t get hurt from something like that, because it’s very powerful. Because the more people feel comfortable in telling their stories, I guess the more chances you will have, if the goal is Broadway, or whatever it is. People are just not going to shy away from that, and that’s really important, I’ve given that away. Number two, on the idea of cultivating the artists, I wanted to say that it’s wonderful to hear all these training programs that are coming into play, and I think it’s beautiful—I also run one, in Colorado, called Perry Mansfield, it’s a 95 year old performing arts school. And I’ve just taken over and the most important thing is that, I think comes into play, is the idea of diverse energies coming in. And so I’d love to talk to any of you, you know, people who have young artists, people who really want to go for it, or you think they have extraordinary potential, I have some scholarship money, I scholarship a portion of most of my students, and I’m happy to hear who you think is an extraordinary person, or who needs an extraordinary chance, to be able to train with some world class people. Because I think that’s part of what my job is too. So please, I’m Victor, come talk to me and I can tell you more about the program and this scholarshiping, and I want to find the best, most exciting—all the different stories that I can. So I just wanted to add that to this artist conversation.

Alanis: Thank you.

Dianne Reyner: I think when you’re talking about cultivating the artist, I want to be very clear on a couple of different things being said on the panel. One is the presentation—being a development organization and I appreciate that whole heartedly, but I’ve been to a lot of those, and I’ve spoke at a lot of those, from Los Angeles to Washington DC, to—and we talk about the same thing, over and over again. And I think slowly I’m seeing the development of a partnership that we continue to talk about , but it never really materializes. And, you know, in cultivating the artists, we can develop an enormous amount of work. There are millions of stories that we can write, and interpret, but if no one hears those stories, what have we accomplished? If we don’t open that up and share them. And, you know, I appreciate Randy and the Autry for what they’re doing, and I see the slow development, but is it time that we start talking about, when we develop these works, and when these artists in developing these works, and looking at—what do you do with them? You have representatives from across the United States in Canada here, you know, and you have representatives that have theater programs. You have theater programs in Kansas City, you have theater programs in New York, you have theater programs in Colorado, you know, if we take small steps and once works are developed, why can’t they be read across the country and opened up to the public, where the public can experience them. Because it’s not only cultivating the artist, we’re also talking about, in this conversation, cultivating the audience, and showing them something different, and retraining them, and having them look at different cultures in different ways. And we present these stories this morning, I talk about telling the stories from these eyes, and what I have experienced, and what my ancestors have experienced, and how I move within the world. When we were talking about the piece that we just did, Re-Generations, how does that particular Athabascan move from an ancestral world to a contemporary world and how does that life reach into the future. Well that’s a perspective that most audience members are very unfamiliar seeing or hearing. So, you know, as we’re cultivating artists, shouldn’t we also be cultivating the audiences? And we’re talking about retraining our people to see the history, to feel the pain, experience the pain, go through it, get over it, move on, find strength in everything that’s happened before, and part of that is retraining the world at large. I don’t know, I began to talk in circles... so…

Suzan-Lori Parks: One of the best things I’ve learned, from an…artist, and I don’t know if this is the same for Native peoples but, one of the best things I’ve learned is that you have to…diversify your portfolio. So you have to—because for a lot of artists coming up in the world, we love Sundance and programs like that, honestly, a lot of people I know come out saying development sucks. It just sucks, because there they do—there’s the carrot in front of you, and they take you along, and then there you go. And you’ve had a lot of people talking in your ear about your play, and whatever, you’ve lost your play, or maybe you’ve found it, but it’s kind of difficult. And what I’ve learnt early on is that, if you get into a development program, great, but you don’t let it stop there. You can have your play, you can self produce, like Alanis was saying, a lot of people self-produce, and...it’s fantastic. It doesn’t have to be a huge show somewhere. The first show I had in New York was downtown, in a garage—a gas station actually that no longer is in use because they tore it down—but it was self-produced too. You can do that too, while you have a play in development at a fantastic place like Sundance. And you also are, in a way, as much as you connect to your specific community, whatever that is, you also liberate yourself from that one connection, by knowing that you can send your play to any theater out there. You don’t just—cause a lot of years I spent trying to get my play into the Negro Ensemble Company, trying to get my play into the Negro Ensemble Company, they wouldn’t have anything to do with me, all right! So then I started to send in my plays to people like the Public. I mean, they were are White theater, but I didn’t care, because the afternoons that I thought I was going to be walking in—aesthetically, it was an aesthetic thing, I just wasn’t their cup of tea, which is cool. So you can just spread your—I mean not spread yourself thin, but just realize that a wonderful thing like Sundance doesn’t have to be the be all end all for your work. And you can re-educate yourself. You are audience number one! As a writer, as a performer, you’re audience number one, you’re the first person to see through, and you can go up from there.

Rose: I just want to say that the clear thing about development, which we don’t do, we do training for—we don’t develop playwrights at CIT. But I mean, any opportunity I’ve ever had to do development work, I loved. And so I take the opportunity for what it is. So I don’t want to cool down what you said, but I’m a person who really enjoys development work, but I never expect from the development work that it’s going to be produced. But I just want to go back to self producing, because it came up from somewhere, is that one the things we do in the senior classes is that we are now training students to self-produce. Because it is the only way to do your own work. They must produce their own one person show in third year, and they are learning how to self produce it. That is the only way to feel confident to go out in the world with your work. But it’s, you know, nobody knows how to self produce. I mean, I didn’t know how to do it before. They have to learn how to write a grant, they have to learn that language is attached to it. And so it is part of the training, they’re no just in the studio, they’re learning how to do the process of producing. And some are coming back to do an internship, after they’ve graduated from third year, to continue their training; and we offer that as well, we offer intern work.

Muriel: And dramaturgs.

Rose: And dramaturg work. And it’s a very—we’re growing and understanding what they need to actually work, after they’ve been trained. And if they have the ambition, than they will, then they will. But I love that kind of work.

Suzan-Lori: I’ve seen millions of writers, they do it constantly, they just—you talk, you know, it sucks.

Rose: I’m not a main playwright, so I’d understand if I was a playwright.

Suzan-Lori: I think there’s so—I think the work that comes predominantly from the directors and dramaturgs and people, you know, yeah it’s fun—but for the playwrights, that I talk to anyways, it’s difficult.

Christopher: I think there’s a difference too between bad development and good development and hopefully we’re continually finding the model what it means to develop in a healthy and wonderful way that is supportive to you and it isn’t a drudgery, you know?

Suzan-Lori: No, I’m very happy to go… I just want to say one thing about the Sundance thing. You said you got burned? I would just wonder if you could just have a little par for the possibility of the playwright coming who actually doesn’t want any feedback. You know, who just comes to sit in the room or…

Christopher: Sorry, say that again? You would like to come—

Suzan-Lori: No, no, no I don’t want to come. I’m just saying that you said you got burned, that one thing, and I’m just wondered if there is a possibility for the development model to include the playwright who just wants to come and have fab actors and not have a lot of feedback. Because a lot of playwrights don’t work well with a lot of people talking at them. I mean that’s just one more way for you guys to work, in a way that you won’t feel like you got burned. You’ll feel like--

Muriel: Well maybe they shouldn’t go to Sundance then. They feel that way, maybe they shouldn’t go there. Well yeah, but I think Sundance has been very receptive to a lot of models and there’s lots of playwrights out there who work in thousands of different ways. That’s all.

Alanis: So maybe we have time for maybe one or two more questions. Did you have a question?

Larissa Fasthorse: Well I just have one more comment. I just want to say, quite a few of us have worked with Randy and his company, in the room here… cause I just went through the experience in one year, developing two plays with Randy and one that was produced and one that was not going to be produced. But for me I didn’t find any less value in the development. Like I feel like I got just as much on both of them, and I’m sure that has to do how Native Voices does their development, which isn’t for everybody. It was a shock to me, I’d never had, like, we had a lot of public input, which was a real, you know, and…it’s shocking, because every step has public input, which is—talk about overwhelming, you’ve got 200 crazy people just telling you stuff, they just showed up, you know? So it’s a funky process, and I don’t like all of the process, but overall, I felt like as an artist—because I just go into it, like, I’m a rewriter like crazy—so I go into it wanting to make good work, make the best work I can and I’ve never had any heart in my work getting seen, my work has gotten seen and I don’t feel like I’ve had any heart in it, expect creating it, and then I’ve been fortunate enough that people need a…network, and producers were talking about that they need…like Randy and other people and taken it and done their part in it. And I think that you really have to—as far as fellow artists in the room, that you’ve been talking with the few people here about figuring out this development, production thing, because with me, I don’t approach them any differently, you know, I don’t see production as an end, it’s just creating good work. And I think that’s what we keep coming back to, and we should come back to it, especially with artists, giving us the opportunity—you said a carrot of production, and shouldn’t be. To me it should be the carrot of creating something amazing, that you’re proud of. I don’t really care if …produces it or sees it, I want to see something incredible that I’m really proud of that really meant something, and sure I want something that’s nice, if someone else sees it, but I think that’s where a lot of artists get lost, especially Native communities get lost, because there are so few opportunities to get produced. The crumbs are so small that people end up just fighting and fighting like crazy for that and forgetting about all that gorgeous and beautiful roads there. Anyway, I just want to compliment Randy and their program for being so fluid and so supportive and so—and for all the plays, you assign me a dramaturg sort of person, and I didn’t want them to be my dramaturg, so forty-five minutes I switched to someone else, and it was fine, because that was the person who we connected and—I just think, I don’t know, anyways, I probably had another point but.

Alanis: Thank you.

Mandy: Yeah I just wanted to respond to that. I think it’s great to create work for the sake of creating work, but I just wanted to echo what Dianne was saying, is that, you know, theater is a collaborative art form, and I think anyone who is an artist in the theater knows that the true magic happens when your work is in front of an audience, I mean, that to me—a painting doesn’t really become a painting until someone looks at it, you know, until there is that connection between the creator and the person who’ll be seeing their work. And just to say to Dianne and everyone, what you’re talking about is not only Native issue. I mean you have that issue whether it’s non-Native, brown and white, the background is, you know, there’s an issue in the American theater today that there is a tremendous amount of development work, we do a lot of development work here at the Public, and there are never enough opportunities to do the amount of plays that should be produced. I mean we could produce, we could have produced, you know, ten Native theater festivals without thinking, we could produce five seasons of work here. Right now I could list 15 plays that the Public Theater would want to produce Native or non-Native, so I think it’s a crisis facing the entire field, so I don’t you to feel burned. I know that it’s magnified, and obviously there are specific concerns—

Dianne: I think what I’m referring to, you know, I realize that and completely—but when I look at Native theater, and stories that are creative…I look at tons of stories that have not been told, in history books, text books, and stereotypes on television. And we have these fabulous artists and these wonderful stories, and wonderful plays, but they have got to be heard, and they’ve got to be seen if we’re to fight those stereotypes, that still exist. So it becomes a larger issue than simply an artist who… I don’t know, I just take it to another level, because of where we’re coming from in the story.

Mandy: Absolutely, but I think there is a solidarity among all of us that, you know, that’s good. And we should hold onto it. And I agree, I feel like for mainstream theaters to present Native work, it’s the theater at its most powerful because there is a real transformative potential to bridge the gap of a broken history. You know, what I’ve learned about the Native experience, in my textbooks in history, is not real. And experiencing a theater arouses me as an individual—forget about the fact that I work at the Public Theater—to literary rewrite history together and be able to move forward. So there is something very real with that, absolutely.

Alanis: Well thank you everybody. I don’t know if the panelists have any closing comments. Don’t forget the fringe, the fringe is always available.

Christopher: I just want to say that the people of Minnesota need you to raise the voice loud. I grew up there. We need you to say those tough things to hear—please. And it’s about creating a relationship so that there’s a context for receiving as well.

Alanis: Great, so thank you all for being here and I’ll see you tonight.