A Conversation with Oskar Eustis and Sheila Tousey

Where Do We Go From Here?
A Conversation with Oskar Eustis and Sheila Tousey
by Tom Pearson

In a short dialogue with Public Theater Artistic Director Oskar Eustis and Native Theater Festival Consultant, actor/director Sheila Tousey, our conversation cast a critical glance towards the historical lack of supporting mechanisms needed to generate a national Native Theater Movement in the United States, at the current model of the Native Theater Festival at the Public, and a call to action to foster a sustainable integration of Native Theater into the programming palettes of the larger production houses, thus realizing the potential for a broader and more accurate definition of American theater.

Tom: [to Oskar] What is your vision for the Native Theater Festival? And how does that fit into the larger vision for the Public Theater and for theater in general?

Oskar: Well, vision may be a bit grandiose. Listen, I think it’s a very specific thing. When I look at the field of American theater there are a couple of things that stand out. One is that it feels like there is an astonishing quality and complexity and diversity of work by Native theater artists, but the second is that there has never been a national wave or Native theater movement that is powerful enough to permanently change or alter our sense of what the American theater is, and there should be. There should be, for all sorts of reasons. There should be because the Native experience is essential to our understanding of what America is, that its history is essential to all of our history, to who we are as a nation, but also to the diversity of nations within the continent that are so rich and complicated. It’s a huge cultural resource that should find expression within the theater, and the role of the Public has always been to try and be some kind of crossroads or liminal zone between uptown and downtown in the broadest sense, between the nascent and emerging movements of theater artists from different communities, from different aesthetics, from different views of the world, to the mainstream, to more public visibility, broad visibility. That’s what we do. And when I look at the theater as a whole, I feel like this is a contribution we should be trying to make by supporting a movement.

Tom: I like the way you stated the position of the Public as a liminal zone between uptown and downtown, which is both geographic and aesthetic, and maybe outside of New York people don’t understand as much what that means. But something I was thinking about the other day… you know, Spiderwoman Theater, which has been in New York forever, not only affected Native theater but has really, in a lot of ways, has helped define what a downtown aesthetic is and what it means to work in the ways that a lot of avant garde theater since the 70’s does, and of course, lots of groups like Split Britches comes from that same place… and a lot of these traditions that are happening at La MaMa, the Kitchen [Theatre Company] and PS122 [Performance Space 122], even now, are influenced by that. I was trying to form that into a question and didn’t. But I think there is something about the liminal space that I’m interested in hearing more about.

Oskar: One of the things is that if you take the Public out of the mix, there’s an awful lot of work that will still happen. There’s a lot of work, but what’ll tend to do is balkanize and ghettoize. Without the Public, experimental theater work tends to stay in experimental theater houses, and commercial works stays commercial. Musicals are music. Shakespeare festivals do Shakespeare festivals. Latino, Native American, Asian-American work, it all tends to stay within its niche, and the Public, the raison d’etre is to say, “We don’t let anybody stay within their niche.” There’s no such thing as a niche that excludes being part of the broad dialogue of what America is. So, if you have a voice that is speaking to the issues of American identity, if you have a set of experiences that are part of the fabric of what makes up America, it’s our job to make sure, not just that you get a theatrical expression, but that your theatrical expression is seen along side everybody else’s, that we, in a way, weave the fabric of the country. That’s why I think it’s a deeply democratic institution. That’s the heart of it. Another way I put it, is that if at any point we find ourselves competing to present a play, then probably we’re not doing our job because the point is, we should be doing work that isn’t going to get done in this kind of platform, isn’t going to get done in this kind of space. I certainly feel when I look at Native theater in this country, I think the challenges are huge, but least of which, for instance this morning, we’re talking about 500 nations. There isn’t such a thing as a “Native experience” or a “Native theater,” [not] a typical Native theater. There’s just a huge variety of experiences and expressions and aesthetics and yet there is also a commonality of something we would call a Native theater, and figuring out how to make the most dynamic relationship between the diversity of the Native experiences and the unity of it as a potential movement is a tough job… a fun job.

Tom: In a panel yesterday one of the things that came up is the idea of powwow, that it is now recognizable by almost everyone and has become a kind of pan-Indian movement, a place for sorting out and expressing identity through codified social dances. But I wonder in doing that with theater, do we then get into issues of codified forms, and is there danger in codification and canonization that could then put pressure on the expression of individualized experiences?

Oskar: Sure, but it’s a danger I think we should be willing to court right now for the sake of getting greater impact and visibility for the field as a whole, and I think it’s a little premature to worry about whether we’re churning out all these Native playwrights that look alike. We just have to make sure we have a place for Native writing to happen, and again, I think its part of the Public’s job is to say that this is important. That this is worth paying attention to. We don’t have enough institutions in the country saying that this matters, and part of the job is that you say it matters long enough, and it becomes true. You say, “Take this seriously, care about this, invest in it,” and people start to do it, and everything can begin to coalesce around that. If you don’t pay attention, nothing good happens. You know, again, once we’ve succeeded, then we’ll worry about becoming too narrow a model, but first we have to succeed.

Tom: What would some of the indications of success be? What would that look like?

Oskar: For me, it would be much more consistent production of Native work in non-Native specific theaters across the country. It would be the greater health of the Native theaters around the country. It would be more, this is subjective and it would be hard to quantify, but it would be more Native artists and Native young people thinking of the theater as a viable thing to do with their lives, as a reasonable life path rather than a path that belongs to somebody else. It would be artistic directors of mainstream theaters worrying about whether they had enough Native representation in their season and feeling self-conscious about having to justify not doing Native plays or not having Native work. It would be simply making the Native voice present enough and powerful enough that it’s an ongoing part of the dialogue at both Native and non-Native tables.

Tom: Sheila, from your perspective as a working artist in this field have you seen the landscape change?

Sheila: Just since I’ve been working?

Tom: Yes, your own experience of it.

Sheila: I hate to say, truly the only change I’ve seen… but I’ve just been working as an actor with the exception for the last couple of years… and the only change I’ve seen has come from Oskar.

Oskar: Its sad.

Sheila: Its sad. Oskar, I don’t mean to do this to you, but truly here’s a champion, you know up at Trinity, is it Voices from the Four Winds?

Oskar: It’s Theater from the Four Directions [laughter] close but not even close.

Shelia [laughing] I’m sorry.

Tom: The numbers were right.

[More laughter]

Sheila: Anyway, Oskar continued that from Trinity [Trinity Repertory Company] to here and that was the first time. Now Canada has more action going on, but just speaking specifically about the United States, it’s the first time that I have been involved with an established theater, regional theater, in the United States recognizing Native playwrights and actually doing their work. When I started out as an actor, I didn’t do a Native play until New York Theater Workshop did The Rez Sisters which unfortunately closed two-weeks after we opened. So this is a big deal. And it’s very precious and very fragile right now. So, I haven’t seen a lot to tell you the truth. It’s always been that way. It’s been that way in film and television, too. Hopefully… my main concern is that it will sputter out. That sometimes happens.

Oskar: Yeah, that’s absolutely the biggest worry. And it’s funny. Canada is sitting there as both an irritation and an example, and what you have is that the Canadian government was established [as] one of not absolute genocide. There were some actual kept treaties, not many, but more. Because there is some aboriginal representation in government, it’s a whole different climate that the Native theater movement came out of. One of the results of that is that there actually is a genuine Native theater movement over the last thirty years. You can see that; there are Native theaters. There are Native shows at non-Native theaters. And again, nothing to be satisfied with, but so much more than what we have in the United States, in a country with objectively far less wealth, and a country with somewhat less to atone for than the United States. And it feels that if we could figure this out, and it doesn’t take a lot, you know it just, I think it takes persistence. You used the example of Spiderwoman, and I can’t tell you how many people in the reception this morning said, “What I do is possible because I saw Spiderwoman do it.” And you know, that’s as literal as people deciding to go into the theater because they see that it’s possible to make theater [as] a Native person, and if we can strengthen that and we can make more examples of that, if we can find people... There’s a thing that happens in most playwright communities, and honestly it happened with Tomson [Highway] in Canada. His Rez Sisters was a breakout play. Rez Sisters. That suddenly made the white theater go, “Oh my God! There is a play that we are all going to pay attention to.” That can change everything. Eugene O’Neill did it for the American theater when basically no one took American playwriting seriously, until this weird Irishman wrote these plays and suddenly, “Oh we could do American theater.” And in a way, I feel like part of what we’re doing is tilling the ground and preparing the way, and hopefully one of the things that will come with it is hopefully more plays that catch the imagination of the field and make everybody reorder their thinking. But the only way you do that is you support enough artists and create enough possibilities. You give them enough work, you allow people enough. You give people enough resources so that they feel that they are part of a life that isn’t completely isolated, that there’s some point to what they are doing until we can gather enough strength to make a difference. And again, it’s dangerous in the sense that it’s fragile, but if we keep sticking to it, I believe that we’ll make a difference, and that’s the fun part, that we can make a difference. I believe that if we keep this up for another decade, it will be a different field. I don’t know exactly how, and I don’t know how we’ll keep it up without all the money from Ford, but we’ll figure it out, and we can have an influence. It’s fun.

Tom: One thing that really struck me about this festival is the idea of seeing. Like you said, when you see something you recognize as a possibility for yourself it’s galvanizing, and it’s an incredible experience to be in a room where you see this many Native artists who are doing such deep work, all together. I got that feeling at the Gallup Ceremonials. You go, and you just see it all, that it’s here and it’s happening, and just that act, in and of itself, is so powerful. I had no idea who many of these artists were from around the country, and they are doing all of this great work in all these different places. There’s a wide geographic net of activity, and bringing people together in New York is a really interesting experience, but it’s maybe a very different experience than bringing them together in Toronto, in Montana, on the West Coast, or elsewhere. I’m wondering with the example of the Native Theater Festival that you’ve established here, whether there are opportunities with peer organizations to have that move around and happen subsequently in other places.

Oskar: I hope so. I would love to, and one of the things I’m sure would help is if we could establish a touring circuit. If we could get some kind of repeatable circuit where, if we put up a good show, a good Native show, we would know that we had four or five places to take it to, and therefore, be able to provide six to eight months of employment for a group of artists that was actually dependable and repeatable. I think it’s one way of coping with the geographic dispersity of the Native population. You have to move out and get around. And you have to find a way to provide enough employment for actors so that there’s, again, some idea of a life that’s possible. So that’s part of it. The big thing that I’d like to do, that I’ve yet to be able to do, is find some other big theater, some major regional theater, that I can convince to partner in this whole endeavor, long term. Because it would be great, for example, if we had another theater where we could alternate years of the Native Theater Festival. If we had somebody on the West Coast or Midwest, if we had somebody we could partner with, we would reach different populations with each festival. We’d extend our reach. And the kind of thing I’m thinking… if you had a theater like this, someone like the Guthrie, that was willing to be a full partner, and then you anchored a production, being that it would open in that theater and close at the Public and in the meantime go to a couple of places including colleges or on a rez tour, using the big theaters to support the performance, you could really start to make a difference. And again, it seems big, but what it boils down to is that I just have to find one other person in my kind of position who I can convince to make this a priority, and I think that will happen. It hasn’t happened yet. But the thing is you spend time, spend time with Native artists, spend time with Native work, and it really is addictive. It really is incredible. It’s so fascinating, so rich, so complicated. I’m sure there will be other people who will think that too.

Sheila: I hope so.

Tom: … and the model and the infrastructure for a festival like this is now in place.

Oskar: What’s scary is that the missing link that we don’t have, and that Canada has, and that other movements have, is we don’t have anybody who is a long-term stakeholder in this idea with any money. We don’t have rich people who are long-term supporters of Native theater we can count on. We don’t have relationships with long term investments or with the government providing long-term investments–and even the tribes themselves–we don’t have any long term investment in culture, this kind of belief… so that’s what we are sort of having to [find]. And, in that way, what Betsy Richards has done at Ford is irreplaceable. Invaluable. I hope not irreplaceable, because that would be a bad sign, but we’re going to have to find some other people. And I think we will.