LA JOLLA, Calif. — La Jolla Playhouse has announced that Native Voices at the Autry will continue their stint as the Playhouse’s Resident Theater Company for a second year, continuing through the 2017/2018 season. As part of the residency, the Playhouse will host Native Voices’ sixth annual Short Play Festival, entitled Take Back the Land, on Monday, November 14 at 7:30pm in the Playhouse’s Rao and Padma Makineni Play Development Center. The only Equity theatre company devoted exclusively to developing and producing new works for the stage by Native American, Alaska Native, and First Nations playwrights, Native Voices will also present the Short Play Festival on November 13 at the Autry’s Wells Fargo Theater in Los Angeles.
This year’s event features short plays by seven Native American playwrights from across the United States exploring such relevant environmental topics as water shortages, pollution, as well as personal and spiritual connections to the land. The plays were selected by a national panel and will be workshopped and read by the Native Voices Artists Ensemble. Tickets to the Native Voices Short Play Festival are free, general admission seating. Space is limited – early arrival is encouraged. For more information visit LaJollaPlayhouse.org
“Continuing our partnership with Native Voices for a second year is deeply gratifying, as it allows us to forge a deeper relationship with the company and the native community,” said Playhouse Artistic Director Christopher Ashley. “In our country’s current political climate, it is vitally important to provide a platform for these artists to present works that deal with pressing current issues, from climate change to legal debates surrounding borders, resources and sustainability.”
“Native Voices at the Autry is thrilled to be coming back to La Jolla Playhouse for a second year of residency. With such a large Native American population in San Diego, it’s great to have Native work on stage at a major regional theatre,” said Native Voices Producing Director Randy Reinholz. “This is the first time we’ll be sharing short plays with Playhouse audiences, and this year’s festival theme hits home in Indian Country, with the current #NoDAPL fight in North Dakota. Accidents surrounding both the acquisition and transportation of oil are happening with greater frequency – especially on Indian land – and these issues are prevalent in many of the plays in the festival.”
Spearheaded by Ashley, the Resident Theatre Program aims to encourage the artistic development of rising performing arts organizations, while advancing and contributing to the San Diego and Southern California theatre scene as a whole. The Resident Theatre Program is an annual appointment at La Jolla Playhouse. Native Voices’ residency began last May with a presentation of Frank Henry Kaash Katasse’s They Don’t Talk Back, along with the company’s 18th annual New Play Festival. Previous resident theatre companies have included Mo’olelo Performing Arts Company, Moxie Theatre, San Diego Asian American Repertory Theater, Eveoke Dance Theatre, Teatro Máscara Mágica and Circle Circle Dot Dot.
The 2016 Short Play Festival Features:
Dance by Jay Muskett (Navajo) explores three generations of Navajo women confronting climate change in their drought-stricken community. Muskett is a writer, director, and occasional thespian from Nakaibito, New Mexico, located on the Navajo Nation. He is a graduate of Pima Community College in Tucson, Arizona, and the University of New Mexico, where he earned two BAs, one in theatre and one in media arts. Among numerous performances on stage, Muskett co-directed the short film Yes Is Better Than No, which was an AIFF selection in 2008. He is currently an adjunct faculty member at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe.
Bear in Stream by Frank Henry Kaash Katasse (Tlingit) tells the story of an uncle who teaches his nephew to appreciate the resilience of salmon. Katasse (Tlingit) is an Alaska Native actor, director, producer, improviser, and playwright. He received his B.A. in theatre arts from the University of Hawaii, Mānoa, in 2008. While in Hawaii he worked with Kennedy Theatre, Kumu Kahua Theatre, and the Cruel Theatre. In 2008 Katasse moved back to Juneau, Alaska, and was involved with Perseverance Theatre’s production of The Government Inspector. His body of work as an actor also includes world premieres of the Alaska Native–themed plays Battles of Fire and Water, Reincarnation of Stories, Cedar House, and Our Voices Will Be Heard. In Juneau, Katasse has performed with Theatre in the Rough, Juneau Symphony, and Morally Improvrished, and is currently the board president of Juneau-Douglas Little Theatre. He is the proud recipient of the 2015 Von Marie Atchley Excellence in Playwriting Award from Native Voices for his short play Reeling. His full-length play, They Don’t Talk Back, recently premiered at La Jolla Playhouse, in association with Perseverance Theatre,
Waiting for H20 by Claude Jackson (Gila River Indian Community) in which two young boys from the Gila River band are amazed to learn that there actually was a Gila River. Jackson has been writing creatively for more than twenty years as a hobby. During the past five years, Jackson has also been producing film projects and entering writing competitions. He and his brother, Roberto Jackson, wrote, produced, and directed the full-length film In Circles, which was showcased at various 2015 film festivals. A licensed attorney, Jackson is currently the director of his tribe’s Defense Services Office, working in criminal public defense.
Snooky Is a Terrorist by Vickie Ramirez (Tuscarora): A brother suspects his sister of plotting drastic measures against the local dam project. Ramirez is an alumna of the Public Theater’s Emerging Writer’s Group 2009 and a founding member of Chuka Lokoli Native Theater Ensemble and Amerinda Theater. Her work has been previously developed and/or presented at Labyrinth Theater Company, Native Voices at the Autry, The Public Theater, The Flea, Missoula Writer’s Colony, Roundabout Theater’s Different Voices Program, and The 52nd Street Project. Recent productions include Glenburn 12 WP for Summer Shorts at 59E59 Theaters, and Standoff at Hwy #37 for Native Voices at the Autry in Los Angeles and South Dakota. Honors include NYC Urban Artists Fellowship (2009/2010) and NYSCA’s Individual Artist Award (2010).
Porcupine by Diane Glancy (Cherokee): A group of men examine their culpability in the destruction of their own land by the natural gas industry and fracking. Glancy is professor emerita at Macalester College. She received the 2014 Lifetime Achievement Award from Native Writers Circle of the Americas. Her latest books are Fort Marion Prisoners and the Trauma of Native Education, Report to the Department of the Interior, One of Us, Uprising of Goats, and Ironic Witness. Glancy has a forthcoming poetry collection titled The Collector of Bodies: Concern for Syria and the Middle East and is co-editing an anthology titled The World Is One Place: Native American WritersVisit the Middle East. In July 2016 she gave a workshop and reading at the Institute of the American Indian.
Article 13: Or How Manhattan Was Sold by Alan Kilpatrick (Cherokee): A Lenape chief trades land with the Dutch – but first, he insists on observing the appropriate “customs.” Kilpatrick has authored some thirty plays, which have received readings or performances from theatre groups in San Diego, Portland, Albuquerque, New York, and London. He is also the author of the nonfiction book The Night Has a Naked Soul: Witchcraft and Sorcery Among the Western Cherokee. He was Professor of American Indian Studies and Anthropology at San Diego State University and is currently on the psychology faculty at the Pacifica Graduate Institute. He has won numerous awards, including a Beinecke Fellowship (Yale), an Irvine Teaching Fellowship (Stanford), and two Fulbright fellowships.
Backstage, Blue Moon by Ed Bourgeois (Mohawk): North, East, South and West are killing it at the afterlife comedy club known as the Blue Moon. But why isn’t Mother Earth getting the love she deserves? Bourgeois is the managing director of PA’I Foundation, a Honolulu-based hālau hula. He served as executive/general director of Anchorage Opera (2001–2007) and director of programs at the Alaska Native Heritage Center (2007–2013), where he directed Growing Up Native in Alaska, Raven’s Radio Hour, and Echoes at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian. Bourgeois is co-creator of the Raven’s Radio Hour comedy show. He established the Alaska Native Playwrights Project, which trained 32 emerging Alaska Native playwrights, and recently facilitated a playwriting workshop for indigenous writers on Oahu.
