Chasing Honey Post-Show Discussion
Contemporary Native Playwriting
November 14, 2008
Moderator: Mandy Hackett (Associate Artistic Director)
Panel: Eric Gansworth, Diane Glancy,
Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl, Laura Shamas, and
William S. Yellow Robe Jr.
Contemporary Native Playwriting
November 14, 2008
Moderator: Mandy Hackett (Associate Artistic Director)
Panel: Eric Gansworth, Diane Glancy,
Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl, Laura Shamas, and
William S. Yellow Robe Jr.
Alanis King and Laura ShamasLaura Shamas: The first thing I wanted to do was to have seven Native actors, and--
Mandy: And why was that?
Laura: I just wanted to put as many Native actors in a contemporary play as I could, and I’m always thinking about what it means to pass on ancestral memory, and what it means to young people today to kind of navigate fluid issues of identity. And so that was really what I was trying to show -- them as a community, and to show the different stresses on all aspects of the community. The play, to me, is also a defense of the maternal, and the stresses that we put on the female in our culture. And using the metaphor of the hive and what’s happening with Colony Collapse Disorder, and trying to expand that metaphor throughout the play, and show that in each colony without the maternal, that they’re breaking down. And I’m very upset about Colony Collapse Disorder.
Mandy: Well, you really captured the spirit of that in the play. I thought that was really great – and this great humor, and humanity. Vickie, I wonder if I can turn to you, I mean, when you hear “contemporary Native playwriting” for yourself in that sphere, that world, what does that mean to you? Where do you see yourself fitting in there?
Victoria Kneubeul: Gosh, that’s a really large question – especially because among the Native Hawaiian playwrights, I’m the oldest. So I guess I have dealt with some contemporary themes in some of my work, and you know, it’s piece by piece. I find myself, even when I’m examining a contemporary issue, like, you know, the proper treatment of human remains, which you know I did a few years ago with one of my plays, I still find myself trying to pull into the contemporary world what came before us. So I think as a playwright, that’s a pretty repetitive theme, or happenstance, in what I’m writing about.
Mandy: And when you’re thinking about what you want to write about, do you feel like you’re focusing kind of exclusively, or are really interested in writing about, the Native experience, or is it Native experience and the non-Native experience? How do you kind of wrestle those two?
Victoria: You know, it just depends on what the piece is I’m writing about. In a couple of plays, it’s just been something that I’ve felt so passionately I had to write about, like violence against women. In another instance, I was really really interested in a mother-daughter relationship between two historical non-Native women that I felt I really wanted to write about too. So I think every play is a different journey, you know, with different people in your canoe.
Mandy: Diane, do you want to talk a little bit about this? You’re a professor, you teach creative writing and Native American literature. And what are some of the things that you start off teaching, or are some of the ideas that you really want to stimulate your class with?
Diane Glancy: I taught Native American literature – I have for seventeen years – and I’ve always taught in a small liberal arts college in which most of the students are of European descent. And they come to Native American literature, and I think it’s for some sort of spiritualism or connection to the land, so we open the four classics, and they’re all about alcoholism, disenfranchisement, poverty, you know, just one problem after another. House Made of Dawn, N. Scott Momaday, who won the Pulitzer in 1969, Leslie Silko, Ceremony, is number two, James Welch, Winter in the Blood, number three – I see some of you writing, I can repeat this later – and Louise Erdrich, Love Medicine. Each one looks at how you recreate meaning from nothing. And it goes about in four different ways. There’s been a lot of subsequent growths, but they sort of go back and repeat the same thing. But anyway, the Native American students are disappointed – I mean, almost immediately, “What’s wrong with these novels? This isn’t what we want to have as the reality of Native life.” And I think you have to face it head-on, and then discuss what happened: why can’t the Indians get their act together? That’s a question that comes up right away. I said, “Well, if you had to go along without your language, your driver’s license, your library – everything you knew, probably, you would be in the same fix.” We just don’t do well against the vacuum. We need that meaning, that scaffolding, or that spine, structure of meaning. So I think in a lot of Native American work like the… what do you call it? The Colony Collapse Disorder, the disappearance of the queen bee, the disappearance of the mother, the disappearance of a family, the disintegration, again, of meaning. And yet the wonderful attempt of the Native – didn’t you love the Native American Awareness Club, with its agenda, and its committees, four different committees? There was such wonderful humor in that, at the same time while it was breaking your heart, because I’ve been in organizations, too, where there were three of four people, and, you know, what is the point of all this? But nonetheless, you struggle on.
Mandy: Thank you. Bill, I guess my question for you is, you’ve seen your work performed in front of Native audiences and non-Native audiences, and I wonder if you can talk about the experience of seeing the work in front of different audiences.
William Yellow Robe, Jr.: It’s interesting because starting in Montana, it was more difficult to bring a play to the Native audience. And when we did a play for a non-Indian audience, it was complete shock. And it was a reminder that, one, these realities have difficulties in coexisting. And it was amazing to me that we still go over this, because the whole question of who do you write for as an audience, I think, that goes along with that same question – who do you write for? But it comes down to if you create art, you create art. And whoever can see the art is really not your responsibility; as an artist your job is to create the art. In other words, as my mother aged, she would do feasts. If we lost a family relative, she would cook for two hundred people by herself. And it wasn’t because she was playing martyr or playing victim, it was because it was her responsibility to feed people. So when people came to the house, the first thing she would say was, “Eat. Feed yourself. Eat. Partake of this.” And the thing with Native art, when we talk about the sacredness of that, that’s similar to that same aesthetic as that – we create art. As far as an audience – I’ve always been amazed, because at the time I was writing plays back in the 70’s and 80’s, it was considered a novelty, in that our voice wasn’t significant. In fact, when you mentioned Winter in the Blood, I was actually in a theatrical production of Winter in the Blood when it was made into a play. And I talked to N. Scott Momaday about his work not long ago. And it’s amazing because I think what happens is that you have two audiences: one that has the privilege, and the one that is just trying to gain the right to have privilege. And it’s a huge contrast. I was at the Minneapolis Playwrights Center, as the Jerome Fellowship, and I had a chance to meet with members of Penumbra, which included Marion McClinton, Beverly Smith-Dawson, and we would go over this, because the white playwrights in residence at the Minneapolis Playwrights Center were usually foreign to the community. They had no responsibility or relationship to the community at Minneapolis/St. Paul. But with Marion and those folks, they had an immediate response to the question of community. So when they saw audience, they saw their community. But you see, in my work, it’s always been amazing to me that I’ve never had a chance to have the luxury or the privilege to say I’m writing this for just one audience. I think that’s a luxury. That’s the reason why when people try to pigeonhole me and say, “Well, you’re writing for a Native audience,” but the reality is, Native people can’t afford the tickets. And if you look in the state of Montana, you could see seven major state theater companies, in Billings, Montana, Great Falls, Montana. And you have seven major reservations in Montana, but still no Native theater on any of the reservations.
Voice: Why do you think that is, Bill?
William: Why do I think that is? In the beginning, the Lord… no, I’m kidding. Maybe there’s not enough funding. No, I think it’s because of realities that we’re just becoming aware of. See, it’s amazing that I told this to Muriel Miguel this afternoon – when I was twenty-six, and a student at the University of Montana, I was horrified at – well, not horrified, but shocked – to hear the names of professional Native theater people like Hanay Geiogamah and Muriel Miguel, and Spiderwoman. I was just amazed because in Montana we didn’t have these things. In Montana, the art form belonged to white people. But you see I had this mission, and at the same time, we’ve always been given this honor and I kind of get tired of it because it’s pathetic; it’s like the first Native person to do this. I was working with the Salish and Kootenai one year, we did a play, on what is known as the Flathead Indian Reservation, but they’re called the Salish and Kootenai Confederation, we did a play in St. Ignatius, and I was told by the Native community, “This is the first time we’ve ever had this, and this is the first time we’ve ever had access to the theater.” But, see, times are changing. We’re at a pivotal time where there is a sense of change. I’m not cynical, to a certain extent, but I have to deal with realities as they exist – especially in this country, because this country has such contrast; we want men of peace, but every man of peace, we’ve assassinated -- Dr. King, Malcolm X, people who talked of peace. And now we have something very interesting and I mentioned this earlier. I grew up reading the treaties of our reservation, and they would say – Chief Redstone would say, “I signed your papers, now take it back to the Great White Father in the East.” Those days are done. So, that’s a symbol of change. But, can we really reconstruct all this change? Because people see Native people – in even our own communities, they hate their own people, but that’s due to colonization. And, see, we have to address that, too. We have to address that. So, what is the change? Change starts within the many various Native communities. It’s just not – the other example, too, in this country, we really need a national movement to bring about that change for the Native community, because we don’t have it. I’ll end.
Mandy: So, many people may not know that Eric is dabbling in the form of playwriting for the first time, pretty much, with the play that we’re going to hear tomorrow night. Mostly, would you say you’re most comfortable in the novelist form, fiction?
Eric Gansworth: No, I…
Mandy: No, you’re not comfortable anywhere? But do you want to talk a little bit about what is inspiring you to want to write for the theater, in this form as opposed to the other art forms that you’ve explored in the past?
Eric: I started as a painter, and moved into fiction and poetry around the same time, in high school, and I’ve really enjoyed working in both of those areas. And in the last few years, have been working in non-fiction as well. And part of the wrestling match for me is always trying to make it in some very significant way my own, rather than trying to follow what somebody else is doing. It’s actually the second play I’ve written – first, I tried to do a very traditional three-act play, and it just sucked. It was awful. It was a play, and so I re-wrote it as a novel, and it went out there in that way. When I got the call for work, actually, for this particular program, I had written this piece as a lecture, but I didn’t think it was a particularly good lecture, either, and it seemed to be very much about the delivery. It didn’t seem to exist as a piece formally on paper as an essay, a piece of novel literature. And it also was a terrible lecture, and I thought, well, I’m going to go back to the idea of theater, but to forget the idea of the three-act play and to take it where my work generally takes me, which are these kind of eccentric, more circular narratives, which editors at major houses hate. But fortunately I found university presses have been compassionate to my ideas, and thus I’ve remained in the non-profits. So I guess this is a long string.
Mandy: Well, we’re excited. Why don’t we open it up to questions? If people have questions for the writers, or Laura in particular. Any thoughts or questions? Yes. Randy.
Randy Reinholz: Laura, what was it like to have such wonderful actors reading your play?
Laura: Let me tell you! Phenomenal. I think we should applaud them again.
Mandy: Thoughts, questions for any of our amazing writers we have with us tonight?
Audience 1: Laura, how much research did you do?
Laura: A lot. I have a bee keeper expert – he’s a Cherokee bee keeper who my brother found, a friend of my brother’s, and he helped me with that part of it, and I read a lot of books, and interviewed scientists. Every aspect of the play I’ve tried to research some. Maybe just two years of research, which, I mean, those of you who have written a dissertation, that’s not that long!
Mandy: Yes.
Audience 2: I was really intrigued by the idea of the Shadow Wolves and that whole… the idea of using indigenous people as a border patrol. Is that a group that actually exists?
Laura: That’s real. That’s true. Almost everything in the play is true. That was created in 1972. After 9/11, it became a part of Homeland Security, and everything that’s in the play about them – the helicopters and the violence that’s going on there, it’s very controversial and horrible what’s happening with building a wall there, and dividing people. All of that is true. It is also true that we went the Shadow Wolves around the world. If you Google "Shadow Wolves," you’ll see that there are a lot of headlines about the Shadow Wolves going in for Bin Laden, too. That possibility is real. I could tell you more about the Shadow Wolves, but there’s a lot out there. But they’re real! There’s about seven different tribes right now that make up the Shadow Wolves.
Audience 3: Are they on the Canadian border?
Laura: No, but it’s true that they are trying to establish a Shadow Wolf pack up there.
Audience 4: A friend invited me tonight and I had absolutely no idea what I was coming to, and --
Laura: Are you still friends?
Audience 4: I found it extremely interesting, something that I knew nothing about, and so, eye-opening for me. But what happens to the story after tonight, and after it was right here? Is there anything in the future for it, or is it just for this audience? How does this work?
Laura: If you know anyone who has a theater, all of here would like you to talk to them about our work! Playwrights live in hope. I think I can speak collectively for us that way. But this could be the last time I ever see it. I’m not trying to be pessimistic, but could be. I’m going to rework some scenes, based on… where is Alanis? Oh my gosh, everybody, one of the greatest people in the world, fantastic, she should be sitting here. Anyway, Alanis gave me a lot of great feedback too, and so I’ve learned a lot this whole week with these brilliant actors and brilliant director, so I hope to do another revision of it based on some things, and, you know, hopefully a lot of cuts – that’s my favorite thing to do
Mandy: One of the goals of the festival, certainly, from our end at The Public, is to raise visibility and raise exposure, for, obviously, such an important dynamic coming from Native playwrights today. We’re hoping it will be the catalyst for something down the line for all the writers, and not only for the work itself, but for the whole discourse around where Native theater is today.
Audience 5: Would you elaborate a little bit on why you had the mothers in both families as failures? What does that mean?
Laura: Well, they weren’t failures to me. It’s a defense of the stresses that we put on women. That’s to me, what, really, the play is – a defense of the maternal, and the extraordinary stresses that Native mothers go through. And I’m also trying to show that I believe it’s the same metaphor with Colony Collapse Disorder, where the queen bees go crazy because of the stress on the hive, for all the reasons that were – you know, the myriad of reasons we don’t even know for sure why that is – but the compounding of all of the stressors are killing the queen bees. And I worry about our families, based on that, and so to me the mothers are not failures at all. They’re very strong and this is what we do to them. But I’m really trying to show that without them, we don’t work as well without them. We need them. Our world is dying without them, I think.
Diane: Now I think your metaphor even deepens to Mother Earth, the stress that’s put on that. I have a son who lives in Texas, and I go down and babysit with my grandchild, and he lives out in the country and they’re drilling for natural gas. And I can hear the cattle; they’re always disturbed, there’s always this crying out in the pasture. And I told my son, just listen to the cattle. So I think it’s the same, whether the bees or the people or whatever. We really need to pay attention to what we’re doing to the earth. There’s just a disturbance, you can pick it up in your feet, sometimes.
Mandy: Oskar, do you have a question?
Oskar Eustis: No, but, a comment. I just really want to say that I thought the play was gorgeous, and one of the things that feels really striking about it, and kind of… I’m sitting here meditating about how you pulled it off, the number of metaphorical and thematic levels that you had operating, and yet at the same time the overwhelming impression is of a very un-hyperbolic, naturalistic, sweetness of connection among people. You really do both of those things simultaneously. Really, that’s a huge thematic apparatus. I mean, from Bin Laden and the Shadow Wolves, bee collectors, that’s an enormous amount of metaphors, and yet that’s not what it felt like watching. What it felt like watching was very low-key interactive. That’s beautifully acute.
Laura: Thank you so much.
Oskar: One other comment on what happens next. Theater is so hard, and it’s so heartbreaking for playwrights, all the time, all the time. But the thing that makes it, I think, special as an art form, is that it involves both the private lonely process of writing, which poetry and novels, painting, other art forms do, which fundamentally are solo activities. But then, it has these layers of social interaction that are required in order to complete it. And directors, and actors, and ultimately audiences, and really what you try to do when you put together something like this is you’re just trying to increase the social interaction around the work. You’re just trying to say, the more people we can gather around – and it’s partly the theaters by producing, but it’s also the actors, it’s the directors – you create the possibility for a kind of synergy that lets other things happen. You can’t predict exactly what they are, but I think our experience is that you do it patiently and persistently enough, good things spring from that. That’s what the theater is supposed to do. So you being here is crucial to that.
Mandy: One last thought, or question from anybody?
Audience 6: This is actually going off of something that was mentioned a little while ago, but when you said that colonization has made so many people to hate their own people, do you mind elaborating just a little on what you mean by that?
William: In the 50’s, a lot of people were taught to hate the fact of being Native. When you went to boarding schools, there were stories I ran into, where there were students that were actually bathed in bleach to make their skins white. But even Malcolm X talks about that in his autobiography, the essay on conking his hair, where he was trained to hate everything about himself: the color of his skin, the way his hair was. But Native people went through the same process as well. And then the 60’s, it’s amazing, because you see the assimilation process going on, where Native people start to dress white, look white. Then in the 70’s, you have Native people wearing braids again. Ceremonies are coming back. They’re still quiet – kept in quiet – but they’re coming back, especially in this country. But you see, one of the other issues at hand that’s never been addressed in this country is race, and the blood quantum for Native people. And see, that whole issue of not being whole, it’s really an important issue for Native people. It’s not a punch line. But I actually have a book coming out in January that deals with four claims about the blood quantum. It’s an interesting process because part of colonization, after you’ve been introduced to racism, you’re taught that process of self-loathing and self-hatred. And it’s amazing because I grew up with cousins who were full-bloods, but hated the fact that they were Indian. I’ve met breeds who were – people who are of mixed blood – who didn’t pass as Native on the blood quantum, but were very active in their community. But because they didn’t have the look, they wouldn’t be considered Native. It’s a sharp contrast. But it’s interesting, too, because then when you throw in the other racial elements, we also have Native people who are part black. And right now the greatest experiment is in Connecticut where you have the Pequot tribe, who is part black and part Native, and the Mohegan tribe, which is part white and part Native, and to watch the state compete – make these two tribes compete against each other – because one’s mainly part black and the other one’s part white. But you see we get into these inter-tribal wars as far as when we introduce other races as well. Does that help?
Audience 6: Oh, yeah. Totally, yeah.
Mandy: Okay everybody, thanks so much to our writers.
