@dramatistsguild  @laurieflanigan

When Dramatists Guild member Rhiana Yazzie first came to the Twin Cities ten years ago on a Jerome playwriting fellowship, she found it difficult to cast a reading of a new play with Native American actors, even though the Twin Cities is home to one of the largest urban Native American communities in the nation. Fast-forward ten years, and Rhiana has single-handedly changed the face of the Twin Cities theatre scene. Her New Native Theatre has forged an artistic home for Native performers who are exploring careers in theatre by walking through the welcoming doors of a theatre in their own community. As an enrolled member of the Navajo nation, she understands the complexities of inviting her community to walk through those doors, which have been traditionally shut to Native American artists. She recognizes that many of the artists she is working with never imagined the possibility that the theater was a place they could call home. And she is inspired by the ways in which individuals and the community as a whole find healing and transformation through the experience of being on stage, telling authentic stories, and seeing themselves reflected on stage without that reflection being filtered through a white lens.

Rhiana’s approach is holistic. In her words, NNT isn’t just a non-profit “painted red,” rather, her work intentionally takes into account the individual as a whole person, including their personal history, the impact of shared trauma her larger community has faced in the past and present, and the context of life for Native Americans in both urban and reservation settings. “I care about the well-being of each individual I work with,” Rhiana explains. “There are a finite number of us. We experienced genocide—there’s no getting around that truth. I truly feel that theatre is a healing art form and we can change the course of history by telling different stories.” The invitation to the community includes training for actors, improvisation and on-camera classes, playwriting classes, and a supportive and welcoming setting for Native adults who may have hungered for these opportunities their whole lives, but never thought they belonged. Rhiana finds this particularly thrilling. “When someone comes to me and says they’ve long had a secret heart for theatre, I’m excited to work with them. Sometimes they come to us as part of a healing process. Seeing yourself on stage, telling your own stories, or watching a play whose narrative actually changes the future or the past for two hours—that’s an incredibly healing experience. When an audience sees a play in which the Indians actually win, that changes the nervous system.”

I asked Rhiana, as an outsider to her community, how best I could support her work, and she said first and foremost to come see it. She explains that she has no trouble finding audiences for her work—every major production New Native Theatre has produced has had sold-out attendance by both Native and non-Native audiences. She explained how the best work by Native American writers is not diluted to be more digestible for a non-Native audience (in spite of the fact that Native writers are frequently asked to make their work more accessible to white audiences), and that audiences from outside the community might be surprised to see how much humor permeates Native writers’ work. And not surprisingly, New Native Theatre could use financial support. Most of the work Rhiana is doing is on a shoestring budget, and she is a staff of one, functioning as producer, director, curator, and educator.

This past April, NNT produced The National Native American Ten Minute Play Festival, featuring work by ten Native American playwrights. This summer and fall NNT toured two productions, Stolen Generation by Ardie Medina, and Sneaky by William S. Yellow Robe Jr. The last Friday of every month NNT presents the Well Red Play Reading Series at the All My Relations Gallery on Franklin Avenue in Minneapolis. Check out the New Native Theatre website for the monthly line up: www.newnativetheatre.org 

On top of her work with New Native Theatre, Rhiana is a busy playwright. She was recently awarded the McKnight Fellowship in Playwrighting and is working on a co-commission from the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and the Public Theater for American Revolutions: the United States History Cycle. This fall she heads to The MacDowell Colony for a writing residency.

And speaking of influential (and funny) Native American writers, Minnesota lost one of the greats with the passing of award-winning Anishinaabe playwright, poet, and author Jim Northrup this past August. The first time I met Jim, I sat at his kitchen table where he told me a story about a bear that had wandered into his yard. He went out to his deck and shooed it away, but it just looked at him, until he said, “get out of here” in Ojibwe, and then the bear got it. Giga waabamin miinawaa, Nimishoomis Makwa. And thank you.

Rhiana Yazzie; headshot by Farrington Llewellyn

Aj Kapshesit in Indians and Other Friends by Rhiana Yazzie; National Native American Ten Minute Play Festival

Delinda Oogie Pushetonqua in Sell Fish by Joseph A Dandurand; NNATPF

lflaniganhegge@dramatistsguild.com