Panel: Darrell Dennis (actor/playwright), Yvette Nolan (Artistic Director of Native Earth Performing Arts) and Randy Reinholz (Artistic Director of Native Voices at the Autry)
February 22, 2009
This conversation was part of the Public Lab Speaker Series following a performance of Tales of an Urban Indian.
SHEILA TOUSEY: I would like to know if you see a certain theme that is particular to playwrights being from the reservation or from the city and maybe what some of those topics are. I’m curious about the percent from that certain… Their work is based on where they’re from, and I would like to know what you guys see. I mean, I know what I see sometimes, but I’d like to know what you see.
YVETTE NOLAN: It’s interesting because a lot of things that Darrell talks about in Tales of an Urban Indian, which is a piece that was developed at Native Earth and premiered at Native Earth, a lot of the things he talks about are exactly the things that drive young Native artists to the city because they can’t actually make a living. They are very isolated, in a way, in their own communities, on the rez or even rural communities, and so they come to the city. And then the first work they start writing, they find that they’re struggling with being an urban Aboriginal. Like having moved to the city and being disconnected from their communities. So, we see a lot of sort of those artists arriving at Native Earth, because they can’t work in their communities. And that’s very often the first writing that they do. And then I find that as more and more of them are coming into the city and going into training organizations, they start finding other things to talk about. But there’s always this sense of so much what Aboriginal work is about, we find, is it’s about connection to the land, the land that we’re on or the land that we come from. And so, yeah, it’s a theme that’s going to keep coming up in work over and over again, whether or not we’re urban Aboriginals or we’re writing from our communities. A lot of what Darrell talks about in the play is so true, like having to be shipped off the rez to finish your schooling, to go to high school; that it’s kind of antithetical to the creative process, being a reserve Indian.
RANDY REINHOLZ: You know it’s interesting. It’s hard to shift gears and have a conversation that’s not about the play. Cause I’m wanting to be with the play. And I’m thinking of parallels, and I think I see a lot of artists in that life of “wanting to go to the city.” You know, like country mouse and city mouse almost. And then as soon as they get to the city, there’s that “fish-out-of-water” thing happening. And so they often are going back to community to try to connect. You know we might hear film artists or film actors say “I’ll go back to the theater and charge my batteries” and I feel like a lot of Native artists go back to their communities to charge their batteries or get in touch with the same fear that drove them out in the first place. And then as far as the theme: in the plays you read, there a lot of issues about who’s an Indian. That’s a big, big question right now. And who gets to say who’s an Indian. Is it a federal thing? Is it a tribal thing? Is it a community thing? Is it something you just know? So, that’s a big set of issues that seems to come out of the community. I hear that a lot out of the community. Whereas, probably the urban writers, they’re all over the map. I mean, they’re writing about a bunch of different things. And, so, I don’t see the themes as connected with them as much as like elements. So the spirit world is always present in most Native plays. There’s always some spirit that’s part of the narrative. And so those are some things that I’m seeing a lot right now.
SHEILA TOUSEY: Do you see -- There seem to be a lot of identity issues. Do you find that there are more identity issues from artists from the city or from the reservation?
RANDY REINHOLZ: I think, you know, good artists are actually reflecting society often. And I think there are so many identity issues now, because of gaming and resources, being part of a thing worth fighting for it. So I think that the artists are reflecting that. And then that’s a great conflict to put in a show.
SHEILA TOUSEY: I’m actually going to ask Darrell a couple things. One: maybe you could share with us how your piece came to be. And two: You live in the city now, you’ve moved, right? In your perspective, has being there changed your work? Or -- But being, living in the city for a while, has that changed your perspective as you work on.
DARRELL DENNIS: Yes. [laughter] The play came about because of this woman right here [Yvette Nolan]. The very first production was because of that woman. For that the writing of it was -- It’s gone through a bunch of changes, in my life, some issues I was going through, [laughs] as you can see. And the way I know how to deal with changes in my life is by writing it down. So, I’ve always used writing as a way to purge, to get it out. So, I actually started writing this as a novel, and it quickly became clear that this is another one of those whiney little novels that nobody’s ever going to want to read. But since I’m more use to theater and to film/television, I decided to start writing it as a script. Because the characters I was writing were so huge, so big and I thought it would lend itself well to a play. I think, when I first wrote it, it was… how long? [to Yvette] Do you remember how long?
YVETTE NOLAN: Two-and-a-half hours.
DARRELL DENNIS: Two-and-a-half hours. It’s ridiculous. So there was a lot of cutting. There was a lot of purging that happened to get to that two-and-a-half hour play to about that much. Yea, so there was a lot of cutting back that I had to do. From that point, we came to Yvette and she worked her magic, gave the production a trial, and since then it’s gone across Canada, back and forth across Canada, early on it went to Minnesota, Wisconsin with another actor playing the role. It’s been translated into French and was performed in Quebec. It’s also been developed slightly as a cut-down, sort of, teen-piece, which was performed once. And I’m just finishing a TV pilot based on this. And there’s a feature film version in the works right now. So, this play’s been my bread and butter for quite a while. What was the second question?
SHEILA TOUSEY: You’ve been in the city now for a long time.
DARRELL DENNIS: Yeah, yep.
SHEILA TOUSEY: Has that changed your work? I mean, I know you’ve worked a lot as a writer; how does that change your perspective on your work?
DARRELL DENNIS: Well, I mean, I’m very fortunate that I’ve been able to work in a few cities. So, I have different perspectives from different cities. I’ve lived in Vancouver. I’ve lived in Toronto. I’ve lived in New York. And each city lends a different perspective. For example, Vancouver is a little smaller-town of a city. What I found was that maybe in the city there was still -- racism is still very prevalent towards Aboriginals. In fact it’s radically affected that portion of my work, my experiences in that city. Toronto is a lot more sort of multi-cultural, I found. And there isn’t as much racism; or at least that’s what I’ve experienced in Toronto. And then New York, where the Native community is very -- it goes unnoticed a lot, in this city, I find. People are very surprised to understand, to know that there is an American Indian House. And you know, that there’re these programs at the Smithsonian and stuff. So that’s also flavored my understanding of my work as well. From being on the reserve and from being in the city, most of the stuff I write now is urban. I don’t really touch on issues about the reserve as much any more because this has very much shaped who I am as an artist and as a writer. So, yeah, it has sort of changed my work in a way.
SHEILA TOUSEY: Does anyone have any questions?
Audience #1: There’s one thing that I have from watching and it bothered me a little bit. There’s a stereotype of Native peoples with substance abuse, whores, and things like that; and that was so much a part of this play. A part of me felt like it emphasized it so much that it almost was reinforcing the stereotype. And that bothered me.
RANDY REINHOLZ: You see a ton of abuse issues in Native plays and I think that’s because it is such a big part of our communities. And for a long time it was hidden, as though it couldn’t be talked about because if it were talked about that would somehow be exposing a weakness. And so there was a lot of Victorian kind of hiding everything away. So I think this generation of artist is actually looking at lot of those issues: how does that happen? What are the side-affects of abuse? And what effects do they have? And I think for a lot of young people its “how do you break that cycle?” If you come from three or four generations, how do you break that? And I think a lot of the art is exploring that. Not to speak for Darrell.
DARRELL DENNIS: No. I mean, yeah, absolutely. That is a huge stereotype in our community because it is such a huge problem. I think though what I really -- what I hope came across in the play was the element of choice, and the choice to choose to go down this path or the choice to live with a better thing. Whereas before so much of the stuff was about -- because especially when you live in Canada, you read so many scripts when everything is about “Oh, the white man did this to us, so I’m going to drink.” Or “I’m going to drink because I can’t control my alcohol.” And very rarely is the theme that Native people actually have a choice, they actually have the intellect, the willpower, to have a choice in the choices they make. So, yeah. It was really emphasized, but I hope that it was emphasized that Simon Douglas is not victim. He’s not a victim in this nor is he willingly doing this to hurt people. But I think that that’s a really important thing too. A lot of the stuff that comes out of the Native community is about victimization, as well, be it mental, physical, sexual abuse, stolen land. All these things. It’s very much about the victimization. What I try to do when I’m writing is look at Aboriginal people and say “Okay, yes, we are in a situation where substance abuse is such a huge part of our community. Let’s examine why and let’s also see what we as Native people are doing to contribute to that stereotype, and what we’re doing to fix and solve that.” As opposed to “white man made me this way” or “Daddy made me this way.” What I really want to focus on is: Yes, it’s an issue. Yes, we have a history. What are we as Native people doing to change it? So, hopefully that came out of it.
SHEILA TOUSEY: There are people on the reservation, I mean -- just to play the devil’s advocate -- you know sometimes I’ll tell friends of mine or when my parents were alive, I would say I was working on something, and often they’d say “God, do you have to do another movie about either you’re an alcoholic or your family’s falling apart?” There’s a sense, with our people, there’s a sense within Indian people themselves, that I think they’re looking for some art form to reflect perhaps how they want to be seen. I just wanted to add that.
RANDY REINHOLZ: No, I think you’re right about both. As you said, about the Indigenous or Aboriginal population in New York City, people are not aware that they are their next door neighbors. Certainly, if you’re not aware of the Native population, you can’t be aware of the Native problems that they may have. So, it’ll publicize the reasons behind drug abuse, without casting cause on victimization. If that is the situation, we’re not aware of it.
DARRELL DENNIS: Yeah, and there’s lots of cities across North America too where a lot of times you would go into an office building or a Starbucks and somebody will be behind the counter and they’ll be Native American. They’ll be that. But because they don’t have the long hair and the high cheekbones and dressed in buckskin, you wouldn’t know it. Or on the other hand, because they’re not, you know, with a substance abuse problem or begging on the street, then a lot of people won’t recognize them as Native either.
RANDY REINHOLZ: The waitress we had.
DARRELL DENNIS: Yeah, a waitress we had. We just walked in there -- so Native American people, and this is sort of what my newer work is focusing on, is the fact that Native people are beggars and lawyers and doctors and very successful or they’re serving coffee at Starbucks or the waitress at the end of the day. But because people have a certain idea of what Native people are, it’s very very -- you could be walking past them every single day when you walk around in New York City, but unless they fit into a certain category, it’s really hard for people to recognize them. Yeah, we just had a waitress the other day who just came from -- Randy and I came from this thing at the Smithsonian [National Museum of the American Indian], where the whole discussion’s about what does an Indian look like. And then we went to this restaurant and our waitress came up and we said “What nationality are you?” “Native American” But we didn’t even know that. We thought we had a nose for smelling our own.
Audience #2: I was wondering if you related to some kind of Native tradition of storytelling from your culture or from the reservation, when you were thinking about how you were going to tell your stories or thinking about form or structure of the play, if you thought consciously about whether you wanted to do it in a particular -- tell the story in a particular way that would connect with your heritage or whether you were more influenced by some other theatrical ways of storytelling?
DARRELL DENNIS: The choice to do this as a one-man show is very much reminiscent of the old storytellers of my people way back when. There’s amazing solo pieces you see and see footage of the West Coast people and their magnificent costumes; huge magnificent thing where they just tell a whole story through movement and dance and the whole history of people. I think this form lends itself the closest to the traditions of my people. But for the most part. I’m awful fond of -- that there was a discussion about that -- about how this is a Native form, that sort of thing, and how do we mold that into uniform.
[pause]
And a hush fell over them. Eh, my last statement must have hit hard.
[laugh]
Audience #3: How hard is it for you to identify yourself as a Native artist? Do you think that’s important, or do you just happen to identify yourself as such?
DARRELL DENNIS: Do you mean do I consider myself a Native playwright or a Native actor?
Audience #3: Yeah, I mean, is it hard for you to say “I’m Native” or whatever?
DARRELL DENNIS: I think the industry has sort of done that for me. I think all Native artists -- I’m very, very proud of being Native. So I absolutely have no issue with people calling me a Native playwright or a Native actor, because that is what I am. What gets to me is when people go “Wow he’s pretty good for a Native actor or a Native playwright.” That’s what kind of bothers me. But, I mean, we would all hope that no matter what we are, no matter what color you are, or what, I think we’d all love to just be considered the best at what we do, as opposed to the best at what we do within our own community. How important is it? It’s become just such a part of my career now that I don’t even think about it now. But I’m lucky in that, especially in acting, I’ve been able to branch off and play other things other than Native characters. Unfortunately, they’re usually an ethnic character.
RANDY REINHOLZ: I think it’s important for the young people to know “Oh I can do that.” Like they can see themselves and pictures themselves, particularly if they go see a play with one of their Native people onstage, and say “hey, that’s a story I can relate to, that I see myself in.” And I think -- I don’t know if that plays a role in Native theater.
YVETTE NOLAN: Yeah, I also think that there’s no way as Native people for us to not be Native. I think that when we come into the room to do work, whether it's writing or acting or whatever, Native artists bring all of our history with us; we bring our ancestors, we bring all of our stories with us into the room. And I think, certainly in our community, there’s an awareness that we are doing this for those who come after us. So, that may be true of every other community; I can only speak for what’s happening in my community and that is we bring all of this to the room. So it’s a very different experience in an Indian rehearsal hall because everyone brings all that, all our history from our people as long as we’ve known them, and that informs the work. So, it’s hard to -- and it gets us into trouble sometimes, in studios, where we may be the only Indian in the room and our experience is quite different from everybody else who just wants to be Hedda Gabler or whatever. We can’t put down being Indian. For the most part I can’t put down being Indian.
RANDY REINHOLZ: But don’t you think that touching on universal themes -- don’t you think that in the production you touch on universal themes? -- The theme of oppression of minorities, of race and that transcends being of any one particular group? Or, in another way, Philip Roth considers himself a Jewish writer, Norman Mailer considered himself a writer that happened to be Jewish. How does that fit in? Are you an Indian playwright, or a playwright that happens to be Indian?
YVETTE NOLAN: The brilliant Oskar Eustis [Artistic Director of The Public Theater] once told me once in a cab, and I think it says this again in the program, universal is specific, like we get universality from very, very specific circumstances. And I think the real specificity of this story and lots of stories that Native people are telling, the way it has resonance in the mainstream, in the larger and dominant culture, is because of how specific it is to our experience. That’s how we achieve that kind of resonance. I don’t think we can aim for that. I think we have to tell our stories as truly as we can to who we are and then hope that it lasts for -- certainly for our community in Toronto, there’s a lot of flow through between all of the communities that are not mainstream. So, the Asian-Canadian community, the African-Canadian community, and the queer community, and we’re very much a community of our own. We’re like a margin which is bigger than the mainstream. And we’re speaking to each other, and then the mainstream comes in and if it’s resonant for them, then great. But, I think that the only way to be universal is to be specific.
RANDY REINHOLZ: I would also say that having Native stories is part of a bigger conversation of what it means to be a person of this country. I think there are bigger conversations for us to have than we’ve been having, this social discourse for the last thirty/forty years. I think we’ve been having very small conversations so that people in power remain in power. And I think this is much bigger conversation that I’m interested in. And I like knowing more about what’s actually happening, what people’s real experiences are. So I think that the universal’s in there; but I think there’s also -- theater’s a great place for social discourse. And here we are and we’re part of that conversation. And that’s exciting and we’re happy to be invited. But, Darrell’s the representative.
Audience #3: I have a question. I was wondering where the God dream came from? That was so nice, that it was like that moment of transformation, but also it’s very funny.
DARRELL DENNIS: That’s the, the thing about God is the question I get the most. I get asked the most about the God sequence, “Where did that come from?” I’ve always sort of, I mean, I’ve been examining religion for years now, and you know, studying different types of religion. I find the subject fascinating. My own beliefs are my own traditional Native beliefs, that’s what I follow. But I just, I love the concept of how much human beings have warped really wonderful sort of scriptures, of all types, to warp it to their own human end. And so, it’s just something -- I think I was -- I was watching some of Jackie Mason’s stuff one day and just the stuff he said was laughable. I think that’s what God would be like, actually. Not this big ominous god that you go to church for and that sort of thing, that’s going to zap you down if you think a dirty thought. But yeah, I was just watching and I was giggling and I thought “That’s what I want God to be like.” It was just so, just such a funny thing. So, in my own belief, that’s what he was like.
Audience #4: Can you talk a little bit about how audiences in different parts of Canada or the US received the play? Could you tell the difference?
SHEILA TOUSEY: You did it on the reservation, right?
DARRELL DENNIS: Yeah, small communities.
YVETTE NOLAN: After Darrell toured, we took it across the country. We did an Ontario tour, just our province with another actor because Darrell said he was never going to do it again. [laughter] I’m just saying. And we went into really small communities, Native communities and reserves, and it plays completely different to an Indian audience. It’s hilarious; and everybody -- you can’t hear because everyone’s laughing so hard. And it’s a real, sort of -- when we play to young kids on the reserves, we play to young teenagers, and nobody doesn’t bring their kid, even though there’s lots of swearing in it and drug abuse and prostitution. We play to really young Aboriginal kids. For them, it so reflects their experience. So many of those kids are going to leave the reserve and come to the city, where the temptations are. Because it’s really easy to come to the city for school and be sucked in to how easy it is to not go to school. How easy it is to hang out at the mall. How easy it is to get drugs. Like the scene where is like everybody’s friendly, asking “do you have something?”, “do you need something?”, “do you want something?” It’s like that in the city and it’s so easy for our kids to be disconnected and become sucked into that. So, in Aboriginal communities, it plays like a raucous comedy and like a morality warning, really. That’s the smaller communities.
DARRELL DENNIS: Yeah, I mean, you’re talking about universality. It’s been really interesting doing the show in as many places as I have, but I’ve found when it’s usually a non-Native audience, people don’t know if their allowed to laugh. The audience is like “Ooh, he’s talking about some serious racial stuff.” And that makes people nervous. So, I found, if it’s mostly non-Native, there’s less laughter. If there’re Native people in the audience, they’re just like “[laughter] That’s my cousin Ricky!” So, yeah, it has to differ. But one thing that I’ve really, really enjoyed about doing this play is there have been everybody from incredibly poor Native people to incredibly rich non-Native people who have all come up to me at one point and said “That’s my story, as well” too. We’ve been talking about the themes that are universal. It’s a play that I think a lot of people -- just because it’s about the Native experience does not mean that people haven’t gotten their heart broken or shunned by that girl they wanted to call up or, you know, lost someone that they loved. These are really universal themes, I think. And that has really reflected in what’s there.
SHEILA TOUSEY: Any other questions?
Audience #5: I think that the rocks really worked for me. I thought that was so --
DARRELL DENNIS: Thank you. That tells a story? That tells a story. That’s good, I love that. So, the Sunday matinee. A lot of people said that’s a very powerful moment for them. There was a woman on Sunday who was watching it and a friend of mine was in the audience and they were sitting behind them. And she just turns over, in a very New York accent, I’m going to try to do it, “What are the rocks for?” He goes “They represent death.” “Well, why doesn’t he just say it?” [laughter] So, we were rehearsing the rock stuff today, and as I was going for the rocks, as I was putting the rocks down, all that was going through my head was, “Why won’t I just say it?” [laughter]
Audience #6: Yeah, I think it’s clearly a personal story. And I wanted to ask you, does it feel very personal when you’re up speaking?
DARRELL DENNIS: You know, when this play was first done, I was still, sort of, I guess, dealing with a lot of those issues. You know, stuff about identity, what am I, where I came from, that sort of thing. Now, I’m finding, it’s interesting, because I am so not that person anymore, that now there’s other stuff that I find personal. I find this play -- I’m doing this play after taking a break, as Yvette said, I had to take a break, because it was killing me. Well, not literally killing me, but it’s just so exhausting for me and I was away from home for a while; but I took a bit of a break from it. And now I find that even though I am not that person any more and I don’t have those issues like I used to, I’m finding new stuff now that is personal for me. Like, this play is actually emotional for me in a different way when I do it now. So, yeah, it’s really interesting. I’m finding new things, and maybe it’s just, I don’t know, maybe it’s because I have a lot more hope now, in my life. So, I find the pain of that is so sad for me, as opposed to anger, which is what I was before, I think. I say in the play, Indian pride or anger, and is there a difference? Well, yeah. There is. There absolutely is. And I think I am now able to distance myself a bit more. So, it’s interesting.
SHEILA TOUSEY: So, thank you for staying and chatting with us. And, I suppose, we didn’t quite talk about what we were supposed to [laughter] but thank you for coming.
[applause]
