LOS ANGELES – What if German entrepreneurs were to descend on a Canadian reserve to build the world’s largest Native theme park, complete with bumper canoes and a dream catcher Ferris wheel? Ojibway playwright Drew Hayden Taylor of Canada explores the comedic results in his latest play, “Berlin Blues,” performed as part of a festival of new works by Native playwrights at the Los Angeles-based Autry National Center’s “Continent of Stories” on Nov. 3 – 5.
The staged readings are a presentation of the Autry’s Native Voices theater company, which brings new plays by Native writers to the stage through retreats and workshops. Several plays have been developed into full productions.
“We look to get playwrights in rooms with people who can support their work,” Native Voices Artistic Director Randy Reinholz said. “If a writer is really a comedian like Drew, we make sure there are actors, directors and dramaturges who like comedy. We try to find like-minded artists that will encourage each other to grow more.”
Staged readings performed by professional actors are part of the process.
Also premiering in November is the comedy “Super Indian,” by Kickapoo/Creek writer and performer Arigon Starr, which features an unassuming bingo hall janitor who transforms into a reservation superhero when bad guys come to town; and the thriller “Plymouth Dodge DeSoto,” by Diane Glancy, Cherokee, about a man who seeks revenge after his family is killed in a car accident.
The writers were selected through a competitive process that began with a call for scripts circulated to tribal colleges, museums, arts organizations and others who expressed interest in the program. Native Voices accepts submissions throughout the year.
This fall’s festival participants each have an abundant body of work, but new writers can get their feet wet as well because submissions are evaluated on the strength of their content, not the writers’ resume, Executive Director Jean Bruce Scott said.
“We’ve had writers come to the retreat with their very first play,” Scott said. “By putting those playwrights into the mix, the others support and mentor them.”
Starr, Glancy and Taylor have all been through the process before.
Equity productions of Glancy’s “Stone Heart” and Starr’s “The Red Road” were produced by Native Voices this year; and Taylor’s, “The Buz’Gem Blues,” earned him the moniker “the Native American Neil Simon” in 2003.
During the workshops, the writers hear their words come alive, receive feedback and spend a lot of time alone in their rooms doing rewrites. Taylor said it’s a grueling process, but provides valuable input on what a script is missing.
“Basically, a bunch of people tell you everything that’s wrong with your play and what a bad writer you are,” he quipped. “I used to be wary of workshops, and came out depressed, but now I understand they are a necessary evil in the development of a script.”
He grew up on the Ojibway Curve Lake Reserve in central Ontario, an only child who couldn’t get enough to read – a fact that concerned his grandparents, who considered his incessant reading abnormal.
But it kept him out of trouble and he parlayed the perceived quirk into a prolific writing career with 17 books and 18 produced plays to his credit, all dealing with various facets of aboriginal life and seasoned liberally with Native humor. As former artistic director of Toronto’s Native Earth Performing Arts, he developed plays by First Nations writers in Canada before participating as a playwright with Native Voices. Indigenous theater emerged more quickly in Canada, Taylor said, because Natives are a larger minority there and more government funding is available.
“Native theater in America is just beginning to find its voice,” he said.
Self-described as “pretty much rez-bound” until he left for college at 18, Taylor has more than 20 years of adventure under his belt. After earning a degree in radio and television broadcasting, his forays took him from radio stations, film sets and Native arts organizations to travels in Australia, India, China and Cuba. During several trips to Europe, he noted the German people’s obsessive fascination with all things Native, an observation that influenced the writing of “Berlin Blues.”
He recently moved back to the Curve Lake Reserve.
He writes in a bungalow hedged under a 60-acre canopy of trees, surrounded by the familiar sights and sounds of his boyhood home, where some things are consolingly eternal.
“The water still stays the same, and the leaves,” he said. “The humor and the gossip remain the same.”
It’s the enduring aboriginal reality mixed with his adventures into the urbane world that provides an eclectic palette from which he draws unpredictably entertaining works like “Berlin Blues.”
Theater companies like Native Earth and Native Voices provide indigenous dramatists a path out of the “The Santa Fe Trail” legacy where white people in black wigs portray angry Indians. Without them, their expression would be in danger of remaining as silent as trees falling in desolate woods.
As Taylor said: “If you write a play in the woods and nobody sees it, it is really a play?”
For details about Native Voices programming, visit www.nativevoicesattheautry.org.
