Field Discussion
Bringing Native Theater To A Wider Audience
November 13, 2008, 1 p.m.
Moderator: Randy Reinholz
Panel: Betsy Theobald Richards and Charles Weldon.
Randy Reinholz: My name is Randy Reinholz, I’m the Artistic Director of Native Voices at the Autry, I’m the Director of the School of Theater, Television, and Film at San Diego State University, and I’m joined by Charles Weldon right now, who’s an actor, company member—
Charles Weldon: Company member, and I’m now the Artistic Director of the Negro Ensemble Company for the last—going into my fifth year, and I’m doing it to save the theater because it was leaving us, and I was the last person standing. But I’m still basically an actor, that’s standing in as an artistic director, and I’m finding out how that goes too. So, I thought when I got an invitation to come here and talk to the Native American panel, it was part of me in a lot of ways, but we’ll get to that later.
Randy: Well our topic is Bringing Native Theater to a Wider Audience, and probably what’s going to happen is Betsy Theobald Richards is going to join us, she’s from the Ford Foundation, a lot of you met her earlier today or last night, she has a radio interview right now so as soon as she’s done she’ll join us later. So, when we saw half the panel from this morning eating lunch, they were going in as we came out so I suppose they’ll be joining us too. So here we are talking a little bit about bringing Native Theater to a wider audience, and it was funny because we had a chance to talk a little bit, I hadn’t met Charles before, and I had been sort of enamored by the Negro Ensemble Company for a long time. I mentioned, it was my first professional audition up on 55th Street.
Charles: At Theater Four.
Randy: Yeah, and I just have so many fond memories. Actually there was a woman who met me in the basement, I have no idea who she is, but she gave me this speech before I auditioned and she talked about, “you’re going to stand on that stage, do you know who’s been on that stage?” And she went through this litany of people and experiences and then she said, “now your turn, you go be an actor.” And I thought, wow what a gift! You know, and I went upstairs and I killed, I got a job out of it. So that was my first experience there. And I’d love you talk to about how the ensemble, kind of, came together, you said you were there in the early days.
Charles: Yeah I came here—actually I came to New York from California, I was raised in California, but I born in Oklahoma. I was born in Wetumka Oklahoma, by a midwife, an Indian, it’s like a reservation town, a little small town, I probably have about an 8th of Indian blood in me, Choctaw, I saw that in your thing, and Jauverni was the name that the midwife that birthed me gave me that name, Jauverni, J.A.U.V.E.R.N.I, and I always—and my mom died when I was young, so I never really questioned her about it because I never used it, it’s probably like Barack never uses Hussein, and now after she passed away I always wondered what is Jauverni, because everybody thinks it’s like Italian. But it’s not, it’s Indian, so I think it has a meaning and it’s probably not pronounced the way I pronounced it, you know, I would have no idea, Jauverni, it probably means like pig headed kid. Anyways, that’s, I started out in San Francisco in
Hair, because I was a singer, and in the early Sixties right out of high school I had a hit record and, to make a long story short, I got into musical theater. And what brought me to New York was when they took Mohammed Ali’s belt, the championship, because he wouldn’t go to Vietnam, he had to work. So we were doing a play in San Francisco called
Big Time Buck White, and he—the producers or whatever got him to do the lead role and that brought me to New York. I had been an actor every bit of nine months and I was on Broadway, with Mohammed Ali, and that got me to New York. The play at the time didn’t last long, about three months with rehearsal and previews and opening, it lasted maybe three months, because at that time, after the people who came to see Ali, because at that time, every body was down on him, he was like a Piranha at that time. Somebody told me that there was a black theater company, down here in the village, right over here on 2nd Avenue and St. Marks, and I auditioned. I went over there, it said Negro Ensemble Company, it’s 1970, early part of 1970, probably February, something like that, and I went upstairs there and there happened to be a musical, because I really didn’t know how to be an actor yet, I was still just this—in musicals, if you can sing well, you get the job—and I got the job, but it happened to be musical. And the people who were in it, I had no idea who they were then, but they were the cream of the crop, as far as black actors were concerned, they were people that you maybe won’t know their names, but it was like Ester Rolle and, it was just the best black actors in the world. I didn’t know who they were, and I’m glad maybe I didn’t because I was not in awe of them, you know? But they taught me how to be an actor. So I never went to school to be an actor, I just fell into it, but thank God I learned from the best, and that’s kind of what got me started in this business with the Negro Ensemble Company. And I was telling Randy, did I say that right? I was telling him that I knew Joe Papp very well, because you know I was always in and out and around here because Morgan Freeman was a good friend of mine, but I never worked her and the one chance I had to work here at the Public Theater was when James Earl Jones directed
The Cherry Orchard. And I auditioned, I go the job, but before I really started rehearsal Douglas Turner Ward, who was the artistic director of the Negro Ensemble Company, wanted me to do a play called
The River Niger. And I ended up doing
The River Niger, and I chose
The River Niger over
The Cherry Orchard, and as luck would have it
The River Niger turned into a, we went to Broadway with it and I ended up doing the film. And so I had little angels on my shoulder here. So that’s kind of how I got started in this business; basically. So I go way back, I mean, when he said the whole thing about the people that came through The Negro Ensemble Company, and the people that are still out here now, who I have worked with on and off the stage now, it’s like Denzel Washington, and Samuel L. Jackson, and Angela Bassett, and you could go on and on and on. Anybody who was anybody, at some point, came through the Negro Ensemble Company, and the ones that didn’t they said they did, so. We were like, hey that guy never worked there! But it ended up being where, you know, people started passing away. Rosalind Cash, Moses Gun, Adolph Caesar, who was really my mentor and my best friend. Adolf Caesar was—he came along later because Adolph Caesar was a great actor, but he basically made his money with voice overs. And let me—if you’ve ever heard the commercial, “a mind is a terrible thing to waste,” well that was Adolph Caesar. He had that voice, and he did all the black Exploitation voice overs, and he didn’t really want to be on camera because he felt like he would lose jobs. Because at that time, he felt like if they identified with his voice, that he was a black, that he would not get jobs. So he didn’t really want to be on camera until
A Soldier’s Play came along, and he played Sergeant Waters in
A Soldier’s Play. And when they did the film he demanded a million dollars. And they were like, hey were not giving this guy no million dollars. So they started auditioning people and they knew—but he didn’t have to worry about it because he was making a lot of money anyways with his voice. But he knew that they had to have him. And they ended up paying him that million dollars. And this was long time ago so you can imagine. And he was very adamant about it, you know, they was going to give him his money. He was my best friend. And he was the one who taught me about acting. Adolph was the person that would say, if something would happen to you in life, if you were walking down the street, you know—I don’t want to relate this story because it’s really very morbid—well I will, you guys are grown. We were sitting one time here on First Avenue and Houston, and there use to be a shoe shine stand there. And we were getting our shoes shined. And there was a squeegee guy on the corner. And he was stopping cars and doing windows. And we were sitting there, and just kind of shooting the bull, and a truck turned the corner. A semi truck with a trailer turned the corner. And as it turned the corner off of Houston, off of First Avenue going uptown, something scooted out from under the trailer. And it came in the middle of the street and it rolled around and rolled around, and as it stopped wobbling you could see that it was a skull. Evidently this guy had fell and the wheel had popped the skull, and it scooted out in the middle of the road. I almost threw up, and Adolph looked at me and went, “use it!” Use it. That’s the way he was. Anything that happens to you in life, if you’re going to be an actor, use it. You know I couldn’t eat for three days and he’s telling me use it. But this was the kind of guy-- he was a great actor though. Things like that happened to me, that’s how I started in this company.
Randy: Did you ever use it?
Charles: Yeah, I did. It took me a while to catch on. It took me a while to catch on to, when something traumatic happens to you in life, where you can hold onto it without making you go crazy. But at certain times and on the stage, or in whatever you have, you can go and get it. You pull it up. But I didn’t do it right then, of course, I was the rookie. He was like use it, and I was like—what do you mean use it? But yeah, I’ve learned to use it. But what made me relate to what made me want to be apart of this panel is, at that time, and I found this out early on, at that time, and I found this out early on, was that the Negro Ensemble Company, there was no black theater to speak of. In 1967—I came on in 1970—but the Negro Ensemble Company’s first season was 67-68. And there was really no black theater at that time…there really wasn’t. And Douglas Turner Ward wrote a play called
Day of Absence, and it was a play about all the black people disappeared.
Randy: A day without a Mexican.
Charles: Yeah. It’s based on the same thing. And they produced that. One of the founders, his name is Robert Hooks, who wrote on the walls in his apartment and they got together with a few more actors and they started performing this piece. Eventually they found the St. Marks Theater, which is not there anymore but it was right there on 2nd avenue upstairs. They produced it there, and they got such great revues that the Ford Foundation gave them a million dollar grant, and that’s what started the Negro Ensemble Company. And then for like probably the first four to five years the Ford foundation funded us. And I thought that was very interesting because the Native American theater, when I started—even when they emailed me and my office called me and asked me if I wanted to be apart of it—I hadn’t heard of the Native American Theater. Not to say that that means anything, but I thought that was very interesting, because when I first came to the Negro Ensemble Company, I hadn’t heard of a black Theater. In fact when I auditioned for Douglas, and I started singing the song, and I started too high because I was singing a cappella, and I stopped and I said, “Can I start again?” And he said, “Yeah, yeah, go ahead and do it again.” And I said, well “I was kind of scared because I ain’t ever auditioned for no niggers.” And they started laughing, the people in the audience started laughing, but when I said it, it just came out of my mouth. And I said, wow, I aint got that job! But he always relates that story because, I don’t know, it made him laugh and he realized I was very nervous. But I hadn’t! I hadn’t ever auditioned—when I did Hair auditions and I did the other play, I hadn’t only done two plays, and they were only musicals. I thought that was very interesting, and I want to know more about the Native American theater, and I would like to see some of the work too.
Randy: Well thanks. That gives us great context for this conversation in-- you think about—you know, a very Native American thing to do is thank, first the traditional caretakers of the land, people that were here before us, and then thank our elders for allowing us to be here. You know, we stand on their shoulders. Here we are in a, well, I guess you’re my elder. And I just think that it’s really beautiful, we’re all in the Public Theater—
Charles: That’s right, I am an elder now. It’s really weird when you change over, people started going: “Mr. Weldon.” I used to be Charles…
Randy: Well I’ve got grey hair too now.
Charles: Well I’ve got grandkids, I got proof!
Randy: Well our conversation is about bringing Native theater to a wider audience, and it occurs to me, this topic can go in all kinds of different directions. And it occurs to me, one thing I’m interested in knowing from people in the room, what are some of the audiences who might define—who enjoy Native theater; who is watching Native theater? Because it sounds that taking Native Theater to a wider audience kind of implies that there already is an audience. And my guess is, depending on where we’re from, our audiences are pretty diverse already. And I’m just curious, people who are producing, directing, acting, writing—who are your audiences? And scene…
Nicole Joy-Fraser: I’ve just come back from living in London, from living in the UK for the last six years, and I would say that there’s a definite—because London is very similar to New York, so many people call it a transient city, you know there’s people coming and going and they don’t really stay there for a long time, but it’s such a fantastic opportunity for being introduced to a new group of people, an ethnic group, whether it be an ethnic group or an organization, whatever it may be, because there is this—there’s so many different sub-cultures. And in terms of theater, it’s the opportunity to communicate and expose them, and expose the demographic to your product or your stories or your subject, or your message. And there were so many people there, just because of the way I looked, obviously I represent at first glance a number of different ethnic groups. So I always get that question, when I meet people on the bus, or, they’re curious, and they say: “are you American”, and I say “no I’m Canadian”, and they say “well isn’t that the same?” And so that brought up all of these identity things, and I sort of felt like, when I come back home, it’s sort of my mission to figure out what that all means. Because they wanted to know. What does it mean to be Canadian, what does it mean to be Native, what does it mean to be a Native here in London—what sort of obstacles do you come across? How have you discovered your place here? And so that’s when I sort of thought—wow, there’s a lot of people who don’t know. And I suddenly felt a responsibility to know more and to come home. And connect again with my roots. And my mission is, my bigger mission, and as an actress and as an artist, because there are people who do want to know and don’t have these facilities for theater, it’s something that a group of audience can attend, and learn, and share. And I had never-- while I was there I would keep my eyes and ears peeled for anyone that would come to town, if it was a tour or something, and there was very rarely any Indigenous group that came through, and I thought: oh, we’re missing a group of people here, who probably don’t realize but would probably benefit from learning about it. Because they still use some very old terminology over there, once I would tell them where I was from--and it is incredible how Americanized they have become, because of what they watch on TV. They have very similar programming and, so it’s that exposure thing and realizing that this global center could benefit from Native theater and Native stories. Definitely.
Randy: So, just to put that questions on hold, so who are your audiences, to introduce Elizabeth Theobald Richards.
Betsy Theobald Richards: Betsy.
Randy: Betsy. And Charles gave the Ford Foundation an amazing plug just a second ago.
Charles: Yeah, our first donor was—that’s how we got started was a million dollar grant from Ford Foundation. Back in the good old days.
Randy: So while Betsy a funder at Ford, she’s also a theater artist from way back. She was gracious to come to the very first Native Voices in 1994 and direct a play.
Betsy: I had to get my own plane ticket.
Randy: Yes, you had to get your own plane ticket! Welcome to my world.
Betsy: You said you can sleep at my house but you have to get your own plane ticket.
Randy: And Joseph got the dog. But anyways, tell them a little about yourself Betsy.
Betsy: Okay I said my name, I’m a member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, I’m the first Native American...
Charles: We’re all Okies up here!
Betsy: I’m the first Native Program Officer and the first Indigenous program officer globally at Ford, and—Ford hires the program officers generally--not philanthropy. They hire people who come from a particular field. They have a belief that they want people that are inside a field to be giving funding to a field; not some funding expert that has some outside set of rules. So I have a Masters from Yale School of Drama, but I specifically wanted to study theater administration, because I’d studied directing undergraduate acting, and I felt like I wanted to be able to change things. And I don’t know how much you want to hear about me? So I have this kind of directing, administration, but a real dedication to the voice of Native playwrights and strengthening Native theater and Native arts and culture in general—and that’s what I’m doing at the Ford Foundation.
Randy: Great. And then our topic, "Bringing Native Theater to a Wider Audience"—the question I posed to the audience is…what are your audiences when your shows are performed? So we kind of heard an international take, I wrote down cultural tourists or explorers, and I heard you talk about yourself as an ambassador in some ways.
Nicole Joy-Fraser: Yeah, I’d like to be able to do, becoming an advocate of some sort.
Randy: You are, you’re here, that’s it!
Charles: Something that happened, and I remember when you were talking, is that when I first joined the Negro Ensemble Company, and over time I heard the stories of how it all started, because I wasn’t there then, but one thing I think that Douglas did, which I thought was very wise, was that after they got the grant, instead of going and right away doing black theater, he chose to do a play called
Song of the Lusitanian Bogeywhich was written by a white writer and they had to adapt it to make it work for black actors, and it worked! What Douglas always used to say was: find your audience—and it’s generally if you’re a black theater than you’re going to have a black audience. Generally what happens is if you do three or four shows a year, if one of them is a success, the reviewers review it, then you’re going to get the other people to come in to see it, because they read the reviews. And then that’s how you start building your audience, is because—but you always have that base audience. If you’re Latino, or—you always try to keep that base audience. And then you build from that. At least that’s what we did in the early days.
Randy: What are some other audiences? Margo, you’re producing all the time.
Margo Kane: Finding your theater audience. I’m Margo Kane, I’m from Vancouver, Canada, and I have a company called First Nations: Full Circle Performance, and I’m primarily a performer who got tired of waiting for writers to appear, and in the seventies I started creating my own work. And so some of my first works were so diverse, and I toured with them like a suit case show because I didn’t have any money and I didn’t apply for funding or anything like that. I had just worked. And I worked in TV and film and radio and that kind of thing and I eventually found the company because—I got tired of waiting for non-Native theater companies to develop our actors and our playwrights and produce our work. And I became that kind of person that people called on—“oh, we need to work in that community, can you help us, la la la la…” So I would do all of their community development work, which really started to tick me off after a while, because then they would feel all puffed up because they had done this big thing. But they hadn’t really developed the relationship in the community, to really sustain and support the development of artists and the work—and it’s still happening. So after forty years, this last year, I was uh---the long and the short of it of all that is—not much has changed in some ways. I think we have to do it ourselves, and I think time now is—it’s historical that we’re at a time where there’s much more interest and openness to reach across, or walk across the room and shake the hand of someone you don’t know—and in my life, up to this point, there hasn’t been that. There’s been a lot of, kind of, I kind of look at the theater system in Canada as a feudal system—every man out there for himself. But we’re also kind of at a point in Canadian history, where we just celebrated, over two years ago, 50 years of public funding of the Canada Council of the Arts. And so in those 40-50 years that was Nation builders. So they funded theater, which was a lot of non-Native artists because, you know, what were we doing—First Nations people, we were just trying to survive—and so they funded theaters and the building of theaters, therefore arts administrators and designers and writers and whole teams were given theaters and support from the Canada Council. So the big institutions were developed then, you know The National Theatre School, The National Ballet School, The Winnipeg Ballet School, and all of these big companies were supported: The Stratford Theater Festival, were really supported. So we’re kind of at a different era. And everybody’s been examining this for maybe the past ten years or so, trying to figure out—the pie is this big and we’ve already divided it up. How do we support the development for emerging artists, cross-cultural diversity artists, Aboriginal artists, you know that sort of thing. So I’ve been becoming apart of that think tank off and on. I walk away regularly because it ticks me off—it’s hard. You just want to create and do the work. So, I founded Full Circle because I wanted to gather a number of artists and playwrights, and whoever, to begin to work together and train together. We started with some small workshops, training regularly together, there was hardly anybody actually. And I wanted to develop a vocabulary around our own work and creating our own work, our own voice. And not just taking our playwright’s form, you know the well written play text form, as something that we would use. I actually wanted to develop voice, self-determination, self government principles, based upon the teachings of our people, and I try to make—to build an infrastructure that could support that development. So fifteen years later, we at the point where we have an Aboriginal ensemble training program, in which we attempt to do that very much. And we’re just into our seventh year, so we’re learning lots about the development of that. It’s a two year program, it accepts people—you can come from dance, or music, or theater or whatever. And we’re just tweaking that program, it doesn’t achieve quite what we need yet. And another thing that we did, in order to get an audience—which is really what were talking about here—is not only—we developed the Talking Stick Festival. And it’s a multidiscipline festival. It occurs in February every year, it’s an annual festival, and we’re just going to do our ninth. And really we’re struggling with the same problems, there’s not enough administrative help, there’s not enough project help, I’ve had to learn how to do a lot of things, and delegate, and help guide a lot of people to make it happen. But the kind of cool thing about it is the arts community, because the arts community in our region are not working in playwriting per say. There’s a lot of music, there’s a lot of performance art, there’s a fair number of novelists and poets and spoken word people. In order for us to develop new play development or new performance development as I prefer—we’re starting to have conversations that—this year, Native Earth and Yvette Nolan and everybody, we’re talking—they’re going to come over again, in the festival, and we’re going to have some conversations. So we can actually begin to build a new play development, right within the festival. Because the festival itself right now maybe brings in mixed audiences, maybe half and half, a lot of the artist come to a lot of the events—we keep the ticket price really low or free. We have to work in a lot of venues, we don’t have our own venue. We have to therefore rely on the fact that Vancouver is just really tight with venues, we just don’t have anything, and so we have to make our own steel, but we manage to carve out maybe four or five different venues that we work in for this festival, it’s a week long festival, and we present a variety of different kinds of performance. So this year, last year something happened—very interesting—I lost performers two months before, and I had to scramble to try and program. There’s no new play, new performance being developed. After 40/50 years of public funding, last year one of our colleagues, Kevin Loring, got the assistance from a couple of residency grants. So he worked with Vancouver Playhouse, big established company, they helped support him administratively and creatively to develop his piece. But he also had the alliance and assistance from Sharon Pollack. He had a very fine dramaturg/playwright working with him and the play was workshopped over a long period of time. It took him a while to do it. And then they produced it and fortunately I got to perform in it in May/June, and so there was kind of, after forty years there’s been a few playwrights, and you have a couple in the room like Daniel David Moses who’s been very prolific, and you know…
Daniel David Moses: And Kevin won our playwriting prize at Queens University. He won second prize at our annual contest and we workshopped the play there again too. And he got to work with John Lazarus, which is how he started working on the play.
Margo Kane: So it’s kind of those alliances that spread across that are going to help build our ability to create work so we can have an audience. And I guess what I’m always struggling with is the festival brings in an audience, but because—like last year, as I said, we had a number of very community based and improv and scenes that we ended up plugging into the cabaret, because we didn’t have any plays or performances like that. Things had dropped out. And there was a real keen interest and there’s a nice audience for that now and I think it partly because we built this festival to attract people and we have an opportunity now develop. And with things like, just historically last year, Kevin’s play opened at the Magnetic North [Theatre] Festival, a Canadian theater festival that moves around every second year in Vancouver in June, and the play opened on the day of reconciliation, when the Prime Minister announced to the world and Canada and apologized to First Nations People, for the dreadful history of the residential school system. I guess what I’m trying to say is that there’ s a whole history that’s happened and right now is a really prime time I think because things are changing and shifting. We do need to develop but we also need the alliance of others, of theaters, that have people in places that get assisted developments, and we need to work together. That’s what I’m feeling very much. I can’t do much more. I’m spread pretty thin, but if I can work with Native Earth and if I can work with you guys and various people, that eventually we can begin to have a touring network and plays can get second and third productions. And I toured a lot and I have a nice little network in British Columbia and I know how to tour, and I know how to make things happen that way, but now we need the work. And I guess that’s, kind of, the audience can expand. It’s hard to get our own people into the theater, we don’t have theaters in the area where our people are living in Vancouver, so it’s hard. Anyway, we’re developing alliances with people in those regions to see if we can even begin a small—Lepress Sparks starting a theater for young audience, which you started last year—Joe and Donna Cross came out from New York and worked with some of our team members here and began to develop family audience here, and it was like a success in a minute and a half - and it was like - whoa, this is a no-brainer. But now how do we create that when you do have space, when you do have ongoing funding, when you don’t have that kind of thing. So it’s thinking amongst several of us.
Randy: Larissa?
Larissa Fasthorse: Well I just, and this I apologize because…I’m like sitting here and I’m already struggling on what wider audience means, especially as a Native American person. Because, you know, I’m a playwright so I don’t have a theater or a home like yall do, and I’m from the States, and I’ve only worked with two theater companies. You know Randy’s [Native Voices at the Autry], it’s a Native American theater company but your audience is very mixed, it’s a very mixed audience.
Randy: We survey out at about 40% Native, and we’re often described as looking like Los Angeles. You go in there it looks like LA, there’s old people, there’s young people, there’s multi-ethnic, but we survey out at about 40%.
Larissa: Yah, so we, I represent these kids, our school group radio, and then I work for a mainstream theater, which is a fully white audience large theater, which is primarily white. And we were working so hard in Minneapolis, trying to reach out desperately to the theater company, trying to reach out desperately to the Native community there, and I was there for six weeks talking to every community group, trying to—I’m from South Dakota, and I’m Lakota, so I wrote it based on the Native people in that area. And just trying to get to—…for CBC they have great audiences, but for me I was so frustrated, both of those experiences, because what I want is I want me to write about reservations in South Dakota, to see that quality of work. I want all those kids that I know, those 200 kids that tried to kill themselves last year, I want them to see this work—you know? So for me, I’m really struggling through this whole topic of, you know, what is a wider audience? Earlier we talked about mainstream. I’ve been fortunate enough to work with people in mainstream theater, which is great and I loved it and it’s wonderful, but to me it’s like what’s important about that. To me, wider audience is such a loaded word. To me it has to go back to…to me it has to do with the heart audience, that’s who I write for. I write for that one kid who went to one of our earlier workshops on disco, and he was like, he came up to me and said: “I just realized I’m not the only one.” You know, that’s all she said to me… You know, that’s who I write for. …anyways, that’s it!
Tamara Podemski: I’m interpreting wider audience, not necessarily as mainstream, but to go beyond—to open up the possibility of who can have access to your story. And I quite like the idea and I just came from Toronto, where our very big theater company, main stage company, is suffering from major budget cuts, and so they would have to close down their small alternative space, which is called Berkeley Street Theatre, it is the most beautiful, alternative theater space. And so what they ended up doing, and I think alliances is one way that you can get a wider audience, and I think the other one is just innovation. And what they did was they allowed small theater companies to piggy bag on them, it’s called the Berkeley Street Project, and I did a play with them with Nightwood Theatre, which is sort of a feminist woman’s theater, and they would never get the Can stage [Canadian stage] audience, but because they wound up in a Can stage theater, they are getting and audience who would never see feminist theater, or woman’s theater, or, it’s very different from what their regular audience is. We had people walking out, we had a great shock to—it was culture shock because people like their theater in the way that they like their theater. And they know what theater they would want to go to, and relying on who’s safe to watch and relying on having a good time, and this just really shook up—and this is still going on. It’s a whole year of programming where they have small little theater companies going in and—I like that idea of wider audience. It’s not only a chance for us as artists to be exposed to the audiences, but audiences themselves only know what has the biggest add in the paper. And they’re looking to us to tell them what’s good, what’s interesting, and they have very limited ways to find out what’s good and interesting to go and see. So this piggyback thing and the ways that, even how you get in their to the schools, and how do we create—there’s not enough venues. So what are all the ways that we can make the park a venue, the classroom a venue, the school bus a venue? And that’s our job as artists, to deal with these problems and say: Oh my gosh, imagine the school bus, imagine that half an hour ride where you have to bus your kids into school—imagine that being a performance space. I think that’ s our job, I think that’s …what’s has to happen to bring it to a wider people.
Vickie Ramirez: I just wanted to address that question that you had, that moral conundrum about the wider audience. I’m a playwright as well, I get it, I totally get, because especially when you talk about appealing to a mainstream? There’s that tang of it means, oh I’m selling out, I’m doing this for money, I’m not doing this to tell the stories of the people that we grew up with, that you see in non-Native based plays that Native people depicted like these weird—and who the hell, that’s not my uncle Frank! So I get that, but I think we’re missing the fact that, finding a way to weasel our way into the mainstream is a way of taking back our images for ourselves. I think, like, with black theater, you know, they have a great sort of...they did it. How they started off sort of just taking their roles, and taking this, and playing the game, and then going in there and establishing enough of a presence that people were in there and you get these characters coming out. And then people start claiming them back for their own. And, I think that’s eventually what…I mean, I see no reasons why these plays can’t be taught in universities, you know, not as Native plays but as classic plays as a—I feel like it can be done. And especially with kids on the rez, well the ones on Six Nations that I know, I know we don’t know the same ones but—to get them to a theater I might have to lasso them kicking and screaming. And especially, a lot of them, Native theater. I’ve tried to get my niece and nephew and watch Native movies, Native plays, and they’re just like, “quit annoying me, all right eh?” And so I think if it filters through the mainstream we’re actually are addressing them, that, for people who trail in and the mainstream audiences who sort of sit there quietly saying, well this is…well hold it. Because a lot of…to go along to get along, we have to fit in, day to day, with the world outside us. I mean there’s a few of us blessed enough, well I don’t know if it’s always blessed, sorry, from where I grew up, to live a rez life, but—you go along to get along to get something, then something from your culture hits you, and it’s like: Oh my God. And we have that moment, and it’s like, what you said, okay I’m not alone. And it’s something as little as seeing Sheila on "Law and Order." My niece and nephew were so thrilled to see Sheila on "Law and Order," they were thrilled. It was like, okay so we’re not freaks of nature, and we’re not so other. That’s my take anyway.
Diane Fraher: My name is Diane Fraher, and I’m the Director of Amerinda, and I’m a writer also, and I’ve been directly involved with the Indian arts community for my entire professional career, and I feel like that we as artists, that we have a great responsibility because what, I feel like in modern society that our writers defend us in courts and I feel like that we, the artists, in all disciplines, that we defend our right to a cultural sovereignty in the work that we do. And by the stories that we tell that are in our hearts. And following and having the courage and conviction to follow that, that we— Well first of all, that demythologizing the images of Native people, thereby making them more accessible and I feel like, we are breaking up a very static presence because we are stepping up. Making ourselves know, making ourselves visible. Probably the two core issues that we all face as Native people on every level here are lack of ownership, because the governments—we can in the United States politically exile the Indian people so we have our reservations, we have our nations, and we no have our ownership in the society. So we face—when we have no ownership it’s very difficult to accomplish anything and it’s very difficult to even consider some of the things that have been discussed. For example, if you say it is a good idea, yes that your work is reviewed and talked about because it’s important that your work receives attention, then you have to ask yourself the question: who’s writing that? Is the person who’s writing that, have they ever even met Native person, have they ever had genuine dialogue? So how can they write something that’s really informed? And how can they really have a really interesting commentary and dialogue about what they’re seeing or hearing—yes they can talk about their own feelings, that’s for sure, but there’s a level beneath that. So I think about that a lot, that based on this issue about lack of ownership, lack of sovereignty, and exercising by being really true to the stories that are really in my heart, you know, that I just have to tell. And I think the other think is also, our invisibility for all of us, the Indigenous people in North America, that how many times have we faced that, where someone’s told you: Oh we wanted to do this, or that we wanted to dialogue with you folks, or that we wanted to partner with you, or we wanted to do this… We sort of, because we have been exiled, we haven’t had the visibility. So again the work is a way in which we can have an idea that’s recognizable and at the same time, for people to realize that their identity is rich and very, and the identity of folks from the North West Coast is very different from the Plains Cree, is very different from the Micmacs and the Nova Scotias, is very different from the folks down in Florida. And that’s just as rich and as varied as the idea of all the folks that came over here, from the different nations. So I think we have a real important role—we have to turn it around and feel empowered about that role.
Randy: Betsy has a comment, I think Charles has a comment too.
Betsy: Charles do you want to say something first?
Charles: Well I think, to go back to her, I think a good story has no ethnicity. And so you stay true to yourself. I’m not a writer but I feel like what happens is that when somebody write a good story it doesn’t matter if it’s black, white, Native American, whatever—it’s a good story. And if people see that good story then they bring in that wider audience. The wider audience just means to me, and this is to me because I see that as helping you to sustain. It helps you to sustain. A black theater—all theater is a struggle, but especially minority theater. It’s a real struggle. There is no national black theater. There is no theater, anywhere in America, that is black-run black-owned, that you can make any money, that you can live. The closest that’s ever been was when we were in the 70s and 80s with the Negro Ensemble Company. And then we were on a real nice level. But that’s when, I think they thought they were doing a good thing—Congress passed a law that said, if the established theater companies, that were the big companies, didn’t do a minority play, than they wouldn’t get any money from the federal government. So they just would do one black play year, or one Spanish play a year, and generally that was in February, so…if you were black and you didn’t work in February they would say: you’re in the wrong business. But I think any minority theater is a struggle, it’s a real struggle, so you have to really love it. The lady here, she was talking, you can tell that she really loves what she does.
Betsy: I just wanted to add two things. One, I was just a guest on Native American Calling upstairs, and a question that Harlan asked me was: Do you loose your Indigenaity when you come into a space like the Public theater? And my response was, well, I think you carry your Indigenaity wherever you go. But you when you have those moments when you think, I wish I would have said that, and you kind of go back and rehearse, but it already happened—So I’ll say it to you guys. What really strikes me about all this, same thing about reaching wider audiences or making change, I have to think about this all the time, is how do we invest money into the Ford Foundation, to make change happen, that’s what we’re talking about: change. What we have is good, but we want some change. Is that, we can say there’s Indian Country and then there’s here, there’s Indian Country and there’s here, but isn’t really what we want to say is: actually this is Indian Country? Right here underneath us? My Haudenosaunee brothers and sisters, my Algonquian brothers and sisters that are in here in this room, this is your land.
Charles: Yes, this whole country is Indian country.
Betsy: And we need to be standing in the Public theater, not just because this is the Public theater and they’ve invited us here, but if we’re going to re-write this paradigm, if we’re going to rewrite this history, we have to kind of stand on the history and claim it. And to that, I also have the privilege, I’m a great respecter of you work, I kind of leaned a lot of my—My last name is Richards, my married last name is Richards, and I’m Lloyd Richards daughter in law.
Charles: Oh wow.
Betsy: And how I met his son is, he was my dean while I was at Yale Drama School and I got to witness a lot of August Wilson’s work, he made, he worked with August, and see black theater go to Broadway a lot, and start winning major awards. And I went to work for Lloyd, just to sit at his knee and say, you know, you were the first African-American director on Broadway, you directed
A Raisin in the Sun, what happened? What happened in those moments? How did you make this change? His answer to me was, it was about the work, it was about the play. And I don’t know if that’s all that it is, but for me it’s like, the training and the administration and the producing and the direction, I feel like a lot of artists worry about writing something that will reach a large audience. But what need to do is maybe have more producers and have more administrators and more folks around us that can move those campaigns, that can kind of shape the message so you can do you work, so you can do really good work. Because what reaches people, like you said, is really good work.
Charles: it’s the story.
Betsy: It’s just really good stories and really honest and really clear work and what—I’ve heard some stories of people that have felt thwarted and in their good work, by producers around them or systems around them that don’t support that good work. Or don’t support that world view. And I think it’s the system that might have to change. And part of this is to encourage the Public to, why the dialogue and not just the work, is to have a The Public here, like what does that mean to support this?
Randy: I would say tenacity plays a huge role in this too. Somebody was talking about the reviewers and what they know, and we spent a long time, in Los Angeles, speaking with the press trying to educate them about what we’re trying to do. So our early reviews were about, you know, good effort; Natives try; pretty good; what was the spirit guy doing walking around with the drum? And then, you know, here we are the last few years, some of the same reviewers have been seeing us over time, and we’ve gotten really good support from the press, over the last two years, ever since Keno and Teresa were Romeo and Juliet. So, I think there’s a lot to be said about tenacity, being thick skinned, staying at it.
Donna Cross: I just wanted to say, from a real grass roots perspective, my husband and I, we started doing our performances almost 20 years ago. And we didn’t really think about any of the advertising or funding, or anything like that. We made a commitment to the work because we knew what we needed from it. We quit our jobs, both of us, and we just plowed ourselves into it. And what happened really was, it’s call word of mouth advertising. We couldn’t buy advertising like we got, because one mistake that we made was that we didn’t know how to price the performance. And it was so underpriced, of such good quality, that nobody had ever seen, that everybody spoke of it. We lived in Brooklyn and our phone just rang off the hook all the time. But finally I spoke to Hanay and said, what do most people get for this? And then we he told me I was like, oh gosh no wonder! But by that time we already pretty famous, but we’ve been going on that ever since.
Randy: Rose you had a comment?
Rose Stella: Some of the things that you just said, some of our conversation on our last panel, about heart in the work. And thank you for that because the artist just needs to concentrate on their work and their art—it’s very hard because most of us are already producers. But you have to create the story, you have to create your heart work. And then find the support for it, because if you’re worried about the wider audience or getting it our there, while you’re creating the work, the work looses its heart. And I think we do need producers, we need more producers, Native producers.
Charles: You definitely need to hear it come back to you. Is that what you mean? As you work on it.
Rose: You need to create the work in a pure space, just because it’s art, and then you find someone to go out and do the work, but the trick is that we’re often the same person, and that’s why it’s so difficult. But to find ourselves more producers who have the savvy and the understanding of what that heart is. “Oh, I know what you’re saying, I get it, and I’m going to support you.” That’s what we need, we need more producers who have the savvy and enjoy producing. Because producing isn’t so hard, you know? So I thank you for that. Leave us the space to do our art.
Charles: A lot of this is just like acting, in the sense of the writers in this business, a lot of it is luck. Being in the right place at the right time, but when that luck comes by you be prepared. That’s just the way it is. Listen if you choose this business, it goes along with it. It really goes along with it, it’s a long of the times you’re hungry.
Randy: Jennifer you had something, then Margo?
Jennifer: Well it’s changed now since I’ve heard some of these comments, but I think the praising comment is a really important thing to touch on. Larissa was saying, it made me think, "God, we’re talking about two different jobs here," but so many of us are so used to doing everything, wear so many hats, and a lot of us we talked about this last year. When you find you have a certain talent and have a certain savvy to bring a certain artist or piece to a wider audience, you have to move past your inner artist and move beyond it and almost give up that part of your life. And we had a little cry about it, last year, talking about it, how hurtful it is, but recognizing that it’s for a much greater cause. This means, well Larissa, it struck me as, we’re not saying writers should write to appeal to a mainstream audience and, you know, appease every appetite. And the main thing is shifting perspectives, and who’s responsible for that more than a producer, to say, ya, this is not Native theater. This is an incredible story about a woman who’s doing this that and the next thing, and it’s about selling it. And being able to take that to, not necessarily a wider audience—a different audience. So we can always focus on training kids, our youth is so important, they’re our future, to continue the training but to not say those kids that we’re training are the only kids we’re going to be presenting to. It’s like, you can dance in front of the mirror for years, but there comes a point when you have to see if I can do this, outside of this house. And ultimately that’s a huge risk, and who’s going to like it. But I think it’s important—I’m glad we’re having a producer discussion and an artistic discussion and we just need to find the people, not necessarily Native people, but people who will understand where we’re coming from as creators. And that’s where a lot of things get lost in translation, you know, and in television where I focus a lot of my time, it’s pretty disgusting. You can focus a lot of your time to come at a project with great integrity, but the person who spins that has to respect that, where it comes from, has to respect the cultural aspect; and most of the time how it’s effective. So, a lot of it is education. Educating the audience, educating our kids, our youth, kids who are up and coming and writing and teaching them what to aspire to. This conversation happens a lot in television, like APTN is our national Native broadcaster. To go into a class and talk to kids about learning how to write for television, I think it’s a disservice to say, let’s aim to be on APTN. That’ no, I’m not trying to slander APTN, I mean I wouldn’t have a career if it wasn’t for them, but I think it’s a disservice to say that you as a Native writer—that’s your cap. No your cap should be HBO, it should be channel four in London, it should be every mainstream broadcaster in the entire world on the planet! It should be like everybody else—aim for the sky, don’t just aim for that small little ----- that someone tells you that’s all you’re going to be.
Betsy: I just want to add to that. Yes we need more Native producers, we need more Native everything, but I would also add that I think there seems to be this gap between, kind of, we want to be produced and they don’t want to produce us. I don’t know if I completely buy that. I think there are plenty of reasons that we’re not produced and that there’s some major erasure. At the same time I also feel that there’s some new campaigns to be had. Giving people a sense, and this is a personal responsibility of the Native community, not just the outside, of figuring out ways to have conversations with producers. Just the same way as Native people say, meet with me where I’m at. Meet me where I’m at, please hear what I’m saying. Well, to have conversations with producing organizations to meet them where they’re at. Understand that you’re not a victim if you have a twenty person play and they have, you know, a hundred-thousand dollar budget for the entire year—that they can’t do it. But also to understand just to really have a space where you can get, I mean the folks that produced all of August Wilson’s plays on Broadway, there were no black people. These were white people—made a lot of money. Made a lot of money off these plays. And they were not interested in it as philanthropy, they were interested in them as incoming producing products. The person who produced these, it was woman, the woman that produced Lorraine Hansberry’s
A Raison in the Sun, she made a lot of money. What was her name?
Charles: It was…it was a guy too. Philip Rose and the woman…
Betsy: Yes, but it was a journey about not convincing, not hitting those people over the head, going you have to produce black theater, but saying: this voice has something to say for everybody.
Charles: And it was going back to the story too. It was a powerful story.
Betsy: And how powerful these stories are. So I think it’s very easy for folks to say, okay, the black people take care of the black people, the Indians will take care of the Indians…there’s a danger to say we just need more of us. We definitely need more than us. That’s a given, we need more of our professionals on every level. But we also need more folks on our team for all different levels. Barack Obama just won his presidency not just because black people voted for him.
Charles: Let me say this too, and I’ll just piggy back on what you said. I’ve become a producer! I’m an actor that’s become a producer, simply because I’m the Artistic Director now. But I don’t just look at black plays, I look at plays about the human race—I really do. So, if somebody’s in there that has a piece I need to see, let me have it. I look at plays to just see what it is, I would prefer it to be a play about the people in the minorities, but I want it to be for all people. I don’t want it to be just a black play; that’s passé now. It’s come to pass in a lot of ways, you know? So I think in the twenty years that I was associated, twenty good years that we were on top, and we maybe had four to five productions each year, sometimes six because those were the good days, we maybe had four plays that went to Broadways, a couple of Pulitzer Prize plays, and a couple that won Tonys or something. So you figure out, how many is that, out of 100 plays, you can count it on two hands how many plays out of that hundred went to that other level. And they went there because of the story. They didn’t go there for any other reason, because some producer came and said—they wanted to produce it because people started to come and say that was a good story.
Margo Kane: It is true, you know, we are developing a community and we’re developing, you know we roll up our sleeves and do the work that needs to be done and that’s how I was raised, and that’s how I keep working. And it’s unfortunate that I’m really good at other things because I can’t just act. And there’s not enough work for me to just act. Because I also have a political community consciousness and I want to bring about change and I want to find ways to be useful, to help make it happen. So I have skills in producing, I just learned this because I went along in administration, and I’ve learned that because I have, obviously, some skills in that area. Yes I would prefer to do my art, and to just create some work and not have to raise the funding and train and mentor the students and discuss the big issues with my program officers—you know all of that. At the same time, I guess what I’m advocating for when I say this is we’d all like to do what makes our hearts sing, but sometimes we have to do the slogging work to get there. So somehow we have to find the balance as we’re trying to develop together. To share the load and share the burden, and I felt very alone in my life, and partly it’s not because people don’t care or anything, it’s because I’m an eldest child and I’ve been at it a long long time. And I’m looking around and I would love it if you came to Vancouver and produced a part of my festival. You know, I would really like to invite and raise the money for the whole company. And as an artist you can get a residency grants, you can get your own internship grants, I would really like it to be able to find people to come over and do a piece of the work; not just for me, and the festival, and for Full Circle, but also for the skills and development and sharing of you own skills that you have. And also for an audience that you might bring. We have a whole youth component to our festival, we’re trying very much to develop youth participation. And it’s a challenge because you have to sometimes find individuals who have the, who are ready to go—and they bring with them their audience of young people and a group of people who are supporting them, and by supporting them and helping, they produce a small event at the festival, you bring their community with them. So I’m kind of advocating for—let’s share across the countries. I mean this whole thing about invisibility I think is important Dianne, because when you’re all alone by yourself-- and my God I don’t know how people manage it in New York, you must get so overwhelmed—because you get lost there. But I think it’s the alliance amongst our community members as well that will start to help us start to feel that we can be empowered to make some change. That it can effect a much broader—that’s the paradigm that needs to be shaken up, is we live in a much bigger world that just this one right here.
Donna Cross: I just wanted to say that it was wonderful last year working with Margo, because she heard what Joe and I wanted to do and she invited us to Vancouver. I had never really been into Canada so much, you know, and it was a piece that was in my mind for 15 years, and we couldn’t get off the merry-go-round to do it. But Margo really helped us with that. In four days we put the pieces up, I had all these pieces I had been collecting for a long time, so I had a rug, the set, you know anything to flesh it out. And it was so wonderful to do it and share that, and out of that came, there was a person who came who really enjoys these kinds of stories, the creation stories and the old stories, and Margo then was given grant. So this is how we really need to work with one another. We got what we needed to get, I mean it’s a start and we’re going to make that bigger, and I’m going to ask some of the people to look at it, and then Margo is going to be able to continue with that work too. So just wanted to say that this is so important that we’re sitting here with each other and these networks that we’re making.
Randy: Muriel, I got to thinking you have something to add to this. You’ve had so many different kinds of audiences throughout the years. I’m just curious, what are your takes on some of these issues, maybe the kinds of audiences you had, or thought you would have had, or were surprised to have had.
Muriel: Well in the beginning.
(laughter)Rose: This is a creation story!
Muriel: It was a feminist movement, it was that time. And so we went out into the world as the feminist movement, and it was a mixed group of women, and we went into Europe. What we found is that we did not have the interest here, but we had it in Europe, so then we came back and things changed and what we found that happened here was that our community, and it is a big community here and it is a high profile here, not as high as we would like it, and we found that our community said that we really want you. So it became a Native-feminist theater group. And that’s how it really happened, was that we were really pulled into our community, and they even told us what they wanted from us. They wanted us to talk about giving away our spirituality—and out of that came
Winnetou[
’s Snake Oil Show from Wigwam City]. The Winneto show that we did. But that was really the beginning of facing these issues within these communities. And with that we attracted them, it was broader because we started to look at theater people who were coming to work with us. So it’s not just community Native people, but it was theater people. And then we started to really teach, and I started to really teach, and that brought in a whole other group of people, young people, young Native people, and we do it through storytelling, this complicated storytelling that we do and the weaving of these stories of all these different people. So we went on to reservations and reserves and that’s when we really started to work with young people telling their stories. And we would put up a production in two weeks sometimes, and sometimes in three weeks. Now I do it in the language, so now I was in Kenora working with Waawaate and Don Kavanaugh and we did it all in the language. Which meant that places like Grassy Narrows, or all these places around Kenora, these kids came in. And I saw these kids come in and I thought, oh no we are really going to have a problem, they’ll starting acting up, blah blah, but once it started and it was in their language, and once the lights went down, they were so agaw about the lights dim. It was magic, you know 17 little nasty kids going wow! And some of these people in the play brought in their younger sisters and brothers who did warm up with us. But we discovered so much from doing it in the language. And also we did it in a red neck section of Canada, real North, it’s a hard section.
Charles: Really, in Canada?
Muriel: Oh yah boy, the Indian Canada sometimes is not easy. We did it in a basement of a Baptist church, which means we also smudged for ourselves, and because we smudged we had this reaction from the Baptists because we smudged in their church. And it was very interesting because we didn’t back off, as they say move over.
Randy: Really, you didn’t back off?
(Laughter)Muriel: But what I guess I’m getting at is these people came in, they saw it in their language, and it was really exciting. It was exciting for them. And for their elders, teaching their language. And for the younger ones teaching their language. Then we went to Leftbridge. You know I spent a lot of time in Canada. I spent a lot of time in Canada because that’s where people appreciate me. We went to Leftbridge and we did the same thing with their language again. And we had these big Blackfoot guys, you know, told us they wanted to be on stage. And again the same thing happened again. They are now, they stuck it out, there are four or five of them, and they are all now at the program at CIT. Four of them! Four big guys! Which is wonderful. It’s because it’s in their language, and they understood, we were there, we were supportive, we all—it was a collective team. And when we talk about ingenuity, it’s more than just one producer, it’s a team. And you have to work in teams! When one person is falling back, there’s another person to bring sanity back to it. When I’m teaching I teach in a team for the same reason. And I think if we do that in teams, and producing teams, it would be fantastic. That’s all I have to say.
Randy: Thank you.
Rose: I find the teaching training as one way of creating a wider audience for us. One of the things that The Center for Indigenous Theatre, that I’ve been trying to do, is to take our plays into UofT, we’re at Factory Theatre this January, we’re moving around and trying to make our face in the places where—We are going to get our usual audience, we don’t charge admission, it’s by donation. This is for our students, we want our students to have an audience, but we are really working in places where we don’t have a theater. I want them out of the studio and I want them to feel what being in a theater feels like. What it really feels like to be not in a safe zone of that space that we’ve created. The theater’s still safe, but they have to re-create the safety for themselves. But those people in those theaters are going, "Oh CIT’s back, I wonder what they’re doing this year," "it’s really exciting what they are doing." And even though it might not be mainstream, but there is a wider audience being created through the university circuit and the small theaters in Toronto. But one of the things that has been happening in Canada is the language thing. You created that CD where you sang in Ojibwe, and it was a really important hard work. And you didn’t do it because it was something to cash in on…no you did it from your heart.
(To Jennifer Podemski) Well this language work for us is a serious part of the work for us. Alanis King wrote a play for us that her father translated an entire play for us in Ojibwe, a very very old language and we had to re translate it, because it was such an old language we couldn’t teach it, but it was a two year heart project for our students who had to learn the play like opera.
Charles: Do the established white theaters in Canada do your plays? Are they interested in doing, have they ever been produced in Canada. The established theaters in Canada, like what happened to August here.
Rose: Peter Hinton at National Theater, in Ottawa, is probably the biggest champion right now.
Betsy: I think what he’s asking is have Native Canadian First Nations Aboriginal playwrights been produced on main stream stages successfully in Canada?
Rose: Successfully but not enough; once in a while. Not enough…
Charles: But it’s visible?
Rose: It is visible.
Daniel David Moses: It was really interesting last season to see Native Earth and the National Arts Center English Theatre that Peter Hinton co-produced a project that Native Earth has been working on, adapting Shakespeare,
Caesar, became
Death of a Chief. A lot of gender reversal type casting and they opened in Ottawa, had great reviews, I think it was 97% of houses for the run, and then it moved to Toronto where the critics just wouldn’t allow it. They were saying maybe Natives could do
A Midsummer Nights Dream or
The Tempest , but not
Caesar, it just doesn’t work. So it’s…
Charles: What I find—bringing a theater company back, like I’ve been trying to do with the Negro Ensemble Company, because it was almost lost, and I find that that just because I went around and asked questions, you have to think outside of the box to a certain degree. So the first play that I produced as the Artistic Director was a play that was written by a white man, but he was the editor for the New York Times for 28 years before he wrote this play. So I figured, hey this is a good play to do, because I figured I would get the Times to come in to do this play.
Betsy: Did they?
Charles: Yah they did, and they still come. And even now, when I’m working over at the Signature Theatre, it’s just another way to help the company come back into being. They’re doing some of the old historical Negro Ensemble Company plays over at the Signature Theatre. And it’s putting us back on the map. So I find that’s, and I catch hell from a lot of mostly blacks. They say: Why the white man doing your play? And it’s like, you know, cause we aint got the money to do it. That’s the reality, you know? But it’s still putting us back on the map to the degree where people realize that we’re not gone, so, you have to think outside of the box sometimes.
Tamara Podemski: With that point, something very exciting happened in Toronto last week. The factory Theatre put together an experiment of mixed-racial casting. The question they’re posing for theater is, can an audience accept a mixed race---can an audience be color blind. So they’re taking our canon of Canadian theater, with classic roles that everybody knows, and can a sister be black and the other sister be white? Can a mother be Native and the son be Filipino? And can someone watch a story of that on stage, and completely believe everything and not question it. I left before they finished, so I don’t know what to do with the answer.
Charles: I tell you that it can be that—because I’ve done
King Lear that way; where all the daughters were Asian, white, black, and nobody—it worked.
Tamara: Did it work for the actors?
Charles: Yah. It worked for the production too.
Tamara: I think the wider audience thing is also about the wider experience for the actor and I think that’s the other thing. Just for directors and casting directors and mostly to open their eyes. Because we don’t get to go in for things that aren’t Native specific and I think that it’s great that we’re in that space now, and I think it was a really big deal for that theater company to—for those discussions to be had because it just means greater opportunity for us. Give us the chance that we can go in for Juliet or something like that.
Morgan Jenness: I mean the casting thing is really interesting point to me. Betsy you remember when I was here at the Public and we were trying to do some things and, you know, a lot of times when I was trying to work with a couple of Native writers and go around to theaters and it’s a big excuse for people to say, oh we can’t cast the play. And working now with an Egyptian writer named Yussef El Guindi, a wonderful writer, and he has a ten character play about an Arab-American family called, it’s a great title,
Ten Acrobats in an Amazing Leap of Faith. And he very much wants it to be done with a completely diverse cast. So black, Latino, Native, Arabic, white person. I think that’s a really interesting issue. I remember when David Hare’s
Fanshen was done with a completely diverse cast. So that’s a question. And I’ve always been of two minds about it. So I’m very curious to hear about people do about the issue of casting. Because if you go that way, things can open up to tell stories…
Betsy: Are you giving up power?
Morgan: Are you giving up power, how true is that, is it a step… I’m just so curious to hear what people think about that. Because I’m in the midst of trying again.
Randy: Sure.
Sharon Jensen: I’m Sharon Jensen and I run what was the Non-Traditional Casting Project and now it’s called Alliance for the Inclusion in the Arts, and I would just like to say I Just think through years of experience, there’s no one way of doing things, and everything is done in a context and for a reason. And sometimes that’s opening up a play to a global view. Sometimes there are instances where, for example, Mr. Wilson was very specific about how he wanted something cast, and that issues in the play turned on issues of race, and for him that was obviously crucially important, so I think one respects that. I think in a healthy theater ecology there’s room for all of it. And it’s not like you just do this thing this way only, ever, I think we all work in a context. Whatever that is. Whether you’re in an all girls school doing a production of something, whether it’s a Shakespeare, whatever it is. I thin all casting, though, is deliberate. Whatever you envision the world of that play, you are going to try to cast it accordingly. It’s not that you’re going to say alright, now I’m going to cast this week because he or she or black or just because he or she is Native American. I think that if you have global ---that when you’re thinking about that play, you’ll have a lot of people in mind, about the possibility to do that. And that I know, for example, when Greg Lennox did
The Great Gatsby in Chicago, one of the reviews wrote it up, and I thought this was such a good comment, that people sometimes mix up the character with the color of a person’s skin. And really the issue for the actor is about transformation, and you’re going on that journey with the actor. And it’s not that you forget that someone is black or African-American, or Native American, or Asian-Pacific-American, but that that may not be the primary characteristic that you’re focusing on. So really it’s about the character’s journey, and not necessarily about cultural identification. Although in some cases it is, and then in those cases, obviously…but I think it’s no one way.
Charles: Yeah, in some plays it’s probably easier than others. I just came back a month ago now from doing
Glengarry Glen Ross, and it was no problem because I think anyone can be a realtor, and you know, the only problem I had was saying, eh? I had a hard time.
Sharon Jenson: Years ago at the National, a black actor by the name of Joseph Simon did an Arthur Miller play …Marilyn Monroe, and Millers response to it was that he really thought it opened up his play in a new way. And he thought it was very exciting. If there was ever a play that seemed to be specific about a person it was that one, and his own view of it as the playwright was that it was expanding. And I’ll just say one other thing, and I can’t remember whether it was Jules Pfeiffer or not, and he said “It’s a play it’s not about…”
Charles: Yeah, but then that’s what August was telling a story about a people.
Sharon: Right, and one respects that. And also what we do now may not be done in ten years; it may be different.
Charles: It’s true.
Sharon: But it seems also important also that every culture population has an adequate opportunity to tell its own story in its own voice. And that it doesn’t get co-opted. I think that’s an issue.
Randy: I’m just going to remind us that we probably have four or five minutes left so—Terry, you had something to say.
Terry Gomez: I was just going to say that in the spring, Sheila came down and directed one of my plays. And I usually write—all my plays are about Natives…and we were using the students from the University of Mexico, and I think there was only one student in the acting class, and we looked around for Native people and couldn’t find it. And Sheila really wanted a diverse cast. And at first I thought, well this is specifically about these women, four Comanche women…So she convinced me otherwise and I thought she wanted the best. And she said this little woman is not really doing that well so I would really like to replace her, so I said okay; we did. And after it resolved in a great draw and I thought it was effective, however I’m going to be working with some African-American women this coming spring and they told me we really really like your play, but the main character was white and that ruined it; we wouldn’t buy it, that she was supposed to be a Comanche woman, and that ruined the whole play. And I was really disappointed because it thought that that actor—she even learned our language. And she did pretty well. But on the other hand, I thought it would work because we were so different looking. There’s all white Indians can look…blonde, red, white hair, you know, and all skin colors, and part African-American, and you never know who’s Native American. And we can look all kinds of ways. So that’s why I thought it would work, but they told me that they…so I was kind of disappointed in that.
Charles: I think that was just them. That was just there interpretation and everybody’s got their own, and they probably put someone in there that they wanted. I’ve learned to take that with a grain of salt.
Nicole Joy-Fraser: Just going on the subject of, it’s a little bit to do with casting, but when you were talking about—sorry, my names Nicole—Does it work if you’re casting different ethnic groups even though the subject matter may be specific race or ethnic group. And it isn’t a piece that I was apart of, it wasn’t a theater, it was more of a singing chamber choir group that I was apart of, that someone told me about in Canada. And it’s an Afro-centric chamber choir called the Nathaniel Dett Choral, and they do a variety of Negro spirituals and classics and jazz, gospel, and it’s so refreshing when I first hear about them. Someone said, you can audition for them, because they knew I had choir experience, but I said, do you have to be black? No, no, no it’s a diverse group of people who want to sing and are interested in material, and interested in the stories that are told through the music. And I arrived at the first rehearsal and I saw how diverse it was and there’s only about thirty of us, men and women all ages all backgrounds. I was sitting beside someone who had perfect pitch and music degrees, where and I was sort of tagging along. But the reactions from the audience, and the wide range of audience members, because we were inviting our families and friends and we all come from different backgrounds, and everybody was there. And it didn’t matter because they were here to hear the music, and we were introducing them to this sacred music and I think that’s what was so special. And I was learning them as well while we were learning them too. The conductor, Brainerd Blyden-Taylor, was always educating us about what we singing about and where they all come from, so it was exchange, and there as change made because people were introduced to them and they didn’t know who Nathaniel Dett was, and they’d say: oh, I’ve heard that music before in movies, but here you all are. And its so refreshing to see everyone taking part in it and presenting it, and we managed to tour a little in Ontario and dip down into Kansas City and the reaction was so positive, people walking up singers and saying, we were so moved and so refreshing that you represent the world up there, and I’ll be watching you sing, and that was what was so refreshing. We took pride in that—that we had come from all different walks of life, but we were all focused on a certain type of music and it worked. It worked because it was about the songs. But it might be different, if you have specific character, plot lines and stories, but it is being done. Even in the West End they’re casting
Les Mis with all Nations, so—all Nations are playing in
Les Miserables in the mainstream theaters, and it’s not just for that time and era in the French Revolution, we had, there was, my friend was Filipino and a range now, so we’re breaking barriers.
Randy: Margo’s threatening me with bodily harm, so we’ll take that comment and let Charles and Betsy finish off.
Margo Kane: Thank you. Because what I’m going to say is a bigger conversation that can’t be handled here. I think it’s dangerous to think that all of a sudden we’re looking globally and we’re going into a whole other kind of paradigm that says we’re all the same, and we all have feelings, even you’re black and I’m brown and you’re red and you’re yellow and whatever, and I think that’s dangerous territory to go in, but I think it’s important that we go there and we walk there and have that conversation. Because as an Aboriginal artist I got turned away from some many roles because there was a non-Native actress that wanted the role. And I didn’t have enough expereince, or something, or I didn’t live in the province and they couldn’t afford to bring me over, so as a young performer I didn’t get to perform; even with the few plays that were there. So I think there’s something about, there’s a whole politic around this arena. And the other is that yes—and I struggled with that myself as an actor, I’d like to be an actor, but actually myself, I’m an Aboriginal actor, that is the role I’ve chosen in my life. And there’s a mission and there’s a whole kind of thing I’m working towards, on behalf of myself and my people, for the development and the opportunity to develop our work and to produce the work in a way that we want. And the kind of forms and the kinds of plays and the kinds of performances. So there’s all of that. So, that’s a choice I make. Not every actor of color, or Aboriginal actor, chooses that. They want to be an actor who can play anything and everything. So I really say yes. There is a variety of perspectives when we talk about our teachings. The perspectives are that it takes the full circle of people’s perspectives to describe the sacred tree that stands at the center of the medicine wheel. It’s everybody’s perspective within its different. They see that tree from a different place. And it’s our combined perspectives that describe fully that tree and fully that vision, and you could put anything if you are envisioning a Native production or community. You put that vision in the middle. It takes all those perspectives, so I value that perspective as well. So, I think there is a place for—One more point around the place to consider is that as an actor you’re training and your work is to really inhabit that character and what we’ve seen too often is artists of no color, who are actually trying to play a culturally specific character, who have no concept of living with no privilege, of living with serious trauma in their community families, who have no concept of that, personally, and so the challenge is for that performer is to understand fully the nature of that history and the community that that person that actor, that person comes from. I just believe that.
Randy: Thanks. Charles closing thoughts?
Charles: My closing thought, closing thought: I’m very happy that I came to sit in on this panel. I really would like for you to take my card, for people that want me to read their plays, because who knows? I would just like to do it because I don’t think I’ve ever read a play from a Native American playwright, and I would like to do that. And it’s just very interesting to sit here and listen to you guys. When I first started this conversation, a lot of people weren’t here. And I was talking about a good friend of mine, a great actor by the name of Adolf Caesar, who always told me as an actor to—anything that happened traumatic to use it. And this fellow here asked me, did I ever use it? And to end that story, was that when Adolf died, it hurt me very much. It hurt me very much because he was my best friend for seventeen years, and of course I was just distraught. I didn’t see how—it was very tough on me. And I remember being at his funeral, and Douglas Turner Ward, who started the Negro Ensemble Company, came up to me and said, are you doing all right? And I was crying and why did he die, and Douglas said: Do you know what Adolf would tell you?
(laughter) True story. I can cry whenever I want now. But thank you guys so much.
Randy: Betsy do you have any closing thoughts?
Betsy: Well I just wanted to say, Margo, that the image of people surrounding the sacred tree, I think that’s, you know, I don’t think we know any of these answers—is the point. We don’t know the answers. And one of the reasons why I felt so strongly supporting Oskar and Mandy and Sheila and the other folks, all the folks involved in putting this together the field conversations, which are as important as the scripts themselves, in that no only do Indigenous people in doing this crazy thing called theater not know exactly, and you’re faced with different choices all the time. But we all stand from different perspectives at different moments in the shift. But there is something very strong about the alliance. I was just talking to…woman, who was saying, you know, let’s talk about collaboration, collaboration, collaboration, she said I keep hearing the word alliance, it means that we’re sovereign Nations. We’ll work together from our places of sovereignty, that we’re allies, so I just want to leave you with that thought. Maybe it isn’t just about us kind of bumping into each other and figuring out ways to work together, but that the term ally—I think it’s really powerful because it gives the power to that individual expression. And for that homeland, and for that place that we all to… but it means that there are spaces to come together with that still there.
Randy: Thank you. So if you want to know more about the panelists, there are these nice bios here to tell you what they’ve been up to and who they are.
