In the heart of Minnesota USA, a local theatre company is giving a voice to Native American creatives, including those who identify as Two-Spirit.
For playwright Rhiana Yazzie, the New Native Theatre is a proud achievement. Based in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, she created the theatre company to tell Native American stories that would otherwise go unheard. Such, productions, which include original works, highlight the significant cultural and social topics surrounding American First Nation peoples. Raising these community voices has been a major goal for Yazzie.
Members of the New Native Theatre
“I came to Minneapolis on a playwright fellowship at the Playwrights’ Centre, expecting to find a fully-fledged Native theatre company,” says Yazzie.
“The Twin Cities are such a vibrant place for the arts with a strong American Indian community. This is where the American Indian Movement began, but despite over a hundred theatres here, there weren’t those meaningful connections between the Native and regular theatre communities,” she says.
“Last year, we had drag performances and we hope to keep growing the powwow into a future week-long event.”
Yazzie began talent-scouting the local community and discovered many people who hadn’t even considered a career in the performing arts yet have gone on to create successful works. In the time since, her theatre has produced such titles as Native Man: The Musical! and Native Woman: The Musical, both a series of stories with a musical twist. It’s worth noting that the local Reservation and Twin Cities urban community make up around 70,000 people who have historically been shut out from professional theatre due to legal, cultural, and societal factors.
New Native Theatre Artistic Director Rhiana Yazzie
“My biggest concern in starting a Native theatre company was being on land that wasn’t my indigenous home,” says Yazzie.
“I’m Navajo (Diné) from the Southwest part of the US, and the local tribes here in Minnesota and the Upper Midwest are Ojibwe, Dakota, Hochunk and Lakota. It was important to me to obtain permission from the elders who’d been working in the arts within this community,” she says.
“From that point onwards, I slowly began creating events that were accessible to anyone wanting to do theatre. The practices of conventional theatre can be quite harmful to Native Americans, so I set out to do things which allowed folks to feel safe and gracefully grow their skills as performing artists.”
Ojibwe artist, Wayne Holmes, in regalia at the recent Two-Spirit powwow
“Some early events were as simple as reading a book out loud, conducting play readings and devising work where folks could bring in their expertise and not feel judged by not having theatre experience. Their honesty became a talent that shined!”
Yazzie built on this principle, ultimately commissioning writers and turning original works into full-length productions. Gradually the theatre has created a canon of work as well as presenting shows from other Native theatre companies across the US and Canada. Then there’s the Two-Spirit LGBTIQ+ community component, including participating from BAAITS (Bay Area American Indian Two-Spirits) – a forum designed to recover and restore the role of Two-Spirit people within the American Indian/First Nations community. For those unfamiliar with the term Two-Spirit, it refers to the shared notion among Native American tribes that some individuals possess both masculine and feminine spiritual qualities.
“It’s so important to reflect on the little and big corners of our experiences.”
“In June we had our second annual Two-Spirit Powwow,” says Yazzie.
“Last spring, we premiered the first US production of Keith Barker’s This is How We Got Here and we’re about to introduce a new comedy called Christmas in Ochopee by Montana Cypress from Florida, who is Miccosukee.”
A dedicated artist herself, Yazzie is a 2021 Lanford Wilson and 2020 Steinberg Award-winning playwright. As a director, filmmaker, and Navajo Nation citizen, her plays have graced stages from Alaska to Mexico – including a Carnegie Hall collaboration with the American Indian Community House and Eagle Project. Her plays include Like the Polar Bear Mom, Queen Cleopatre and Princess Pocahontas, and The Nut, The Hermit, The Monk and The Crow.
Earlier this year at the Anchorage Opera, Yazzie directed the premiere of Missing, a story about a murdered Indigenous woman. She also directed her debut feature film, A Winter Love which won Best Narrative Feature at the 2023 Minnesota Film Festival. She currently writes plays for the prestigious Kennedy Centre and is a screenwriter for AMC’s Dark Winds.
But it is The New Native Theatre’s recent and second annual Reclaiming Our Identities Powwow that still rings of elation and excitement for Yazzie.
“It started with a conversation with members of the local Two-Spirit Society,” says Yazzie.
“They didn’t have the infrastructure or funds to kick it off, so I offered for New Native Theatre to help shoulder the production. We’re proud to support the powwow as a big piece of our theatre company, which includes a committee of Two-Spirit community members. Last year, we had drag performances and we hope to keep growing the powwow into a future week-long event.”
“This year, the committee focused on regalia making. There’s a deep need for community members who at times have been disenfranchised from family and community, in ways that didn’t allow them access to learn these cultural skills. It’s been a widely attended safe space and a wonderful meeting place for people to learn and dance!”
As a playwright, Yazzie sees the New Native Theatre as an expansion of her desire to tell authentic First Nations stories and an understanding of her culture.
“It’s so important to reflect on the little and big corners of our experiences,” she says.
New Native Theatre Artistic Director Rhiana Yazzie
“They are understandings that get completely ignored in the mainstream world. When we do have the space to speak in mainstream outlets, our voices are usually curated in favour of educating non-Native folks but still ignoring ourselves for the most part. I want what I put on stage to be something a Native person can walk away from having seen a part of themselves. That part they’ve known to be hidden in their own life but now feel a part of something bigger. I want them to leave feeling seen and loved.”
“We’re about to embark on a capital campaign to build a 200-seat theatre right here in Minneapolis,” says Yazzi.
“It will be the first and only of its kind in the entire country by being a Native theatre owning and curating its work on-site! My goal is to get this built and have regular and innovative new productions, including educational programs that will hand over the power tools of theatre – to as many Native folks as possible.”
For more visit: newnativetheatre.org
