Interview with Dee Antoine, Rosebud residency participant, and Jeff Kellogg, Director of Theatre for the Art Institute at Sinte Gleska University

By Robert Leonard

Robert Leonard: Jeff would you just say what your official title is, please?

Jeff Kellogg: My title has just changed to Director of Theatre for the Art Institute at Sinte Gleska University. Up until September 30, I have been the instructor of theater and site coordinator of Project HOOP, which is the cooperative project through UCLA and the Kellogg Foundation. That grant is coming to an end the 30th of September, so Project HOOP will drop off my title.

RL: You are on faculty and teach classes in theater?

JK: Yes.

RL: Have you taught classes other than theater?

JK: I have done adjunct teaching in Arts and Sciences in Public Communications. Before we got the whole theater curriculum developed, I did that. I helped that department grow while created a full time teaching load. Although under the grant was for half-time teaching, half -time community development for the first two years.

RL: So, this is a real success. You are moving from grant-supported teaching to university-supported?

JK: It is a combination of university support, and – because it has been moved into the Art Institute program – the Art Institute has an outside funding source, an outside benefactor. It is going to be a 50/50 split between the outside benefactor and the university. When he [the benefactor] started the Art Institute in ’87, it was just in the visual arts, but they want also to move into performing arts. This grant came up and the university got involved and I said that when grant was over I would be interested in helping out if we move into the Art Institute. That is what has happened. It has been wonderful, for me especially. Today could have been my last day here if he hadn’t been willing to pick up part of it. The university has been committed to it from the start. They’ve always been committed to, once the grant ended, funding at least 50 percent.

RL: I know you were involved in LeAnne's residency here. Was that Project HOOP?

JK: Actually, it was Project HOOP in collaboration with the National Writing Project. The two organizations together brought her in during the summer of 2000. Then she came back in October of that year on Project HOOP guest money to work specifically with the creative writing and theater students.

RL: Is Kim Karaff affiliated with the National Writing Project?

JK: Yes. She is the director of Sicangu. Here at Sinte Gleska we have the Sicangu Writing Project, which is the South Dakota site for the National Writing Project. The tribe here is the Sicangu Lakota.

RL: What were your intentions in the grant for LeAnne's work here?

JK: We were trying to work with the theater students on writing a piece and putting it up. She came in at the very end of September. She was here for three weeks. On the 12th of October, we put up two staged readings of pieces she had helped with. The creative writing class had been the basis for one piece called "Lakota Lullaby," and my theater classes were the group that wrote with her a piece called "Rosebud."

RL: Was that a picked date?

JK: It just worked out that way. It wasn’t originally picked. For "Lakota Lullaby," the base idea was that one of the students in the creative writing class had her child come home from school having made a paper hat and having learned a song about Columbus. That is what their play was about. The families’ reaction to that. We performed them on the traditional Columbus Day. It was just kind of an interesting interception of events that created that.

RL: What was your interest in LeAnne? How did you meet her? How did you hear about her?

JK: I was aware of her play "Indian Radio Days" because of the work I had done with Native theater. I knew who she was, and Kim asked me who might be able to bring her here for the writing project. I knew right away who she was and we made the connections. Because of the work I do in Native theater, I am on the Native theater listserv. Also I am aware of the Native American Women Playwright’s Archive in Miami, Ohio. I wasn’t able to attend the conference but I got all the reports on the conference. I was aware that there was a conference there. I believe it was the ’99 conference that resulted in the whole issue of a magazine, a journal, coming out of the University of Kansas. She had a good piece in there. That really sparked my interest and got me in contact. I had been in contact with LeAnne through a Project HOOP associate. I was excited to have her come. Part of Project HOOP had guest money built into it to bring people here to do special projects. We had primarily performers come. I wanted a writer to come because there was a lot of interest in the writing aspect of things. It was a great opportunity to get her here.

RL: And Dee, you were in her workshop?

Dee Antoine: Yeah.

RL: And you are a writer?

DA: I guess, yeah.

JK: She has written.

DA: I’ve never considered myself as a writer, but I have been doing some lately. The play, working on the play with LeAnne Howe sparked my interest in writing.

JK: You had been involved in the adaptation of your grandma’s poetry into the "Birth of the World" play.

DA: I was involved in that, too. I just kind of left good ideas for costumes and stuff.

RL: But you have been involved in different kinds of theater?

DA: Yeah, in the past three years, I could say. I’ve been trying different things. Stilt walking. The Aborigines came.

JK: We had a group come that does a lot of circus skills as well as written-word work. We worked with a dance group out of Australia. You helped with the early part of the project over at Pine Ridge. You helped and were a part of the early planning meetings and the outlining of that project.

DA: I taught them how to walk on stilts.

JK: So, you’ve been involved in several projects.

RL: Let me just explain a little, and I will probably say this again as other people come into the room. We are doing this as a pilot research to talk with artists that have worked together in some kind of collaborative effort in theater, specifically we are researching eight ensembles. Some of them are longstanding, some of them are relatively new. Some of them are conventional in their form of theater, and some of them are doing brand new work out of their specific community. LeAnne's WagonBurner Theater Troop is one of the ensembles that we are working with. We are talking with artists who have worked with them, people who have been partners with the ensembles, audiences and so on, in order for the actual experience to have some sort of documentation rather than just a profile written by an observer from the outside. Part of this project is based on the idea that artists talk well about their own work, but they are often not asked. The job is sometimes put to the critic, or the grant writer, or somebody else. We believe that artists and community organizers, the people doing the work, can speak about the work and need to have places to say that. Our premise is the value and expertise that people such as yourself have in talking about what is this thing. The country has become more interested in community-based art making in general, and grassroots theater is part of that, over the last decade and prior. I’m recording this as a document. Our interviews will be posted on our Web site. So, that is the sort of ground that we are on. I’ve got a flock of questions.

What I experienced last night was a treasure for me. I was writing about it last night and I felt like the expression that Steve made and that Albert’s mother made before he played his flute was a celebration of traditions. It wasn’t an introduction to explain anything. The difference was so wonderful. You know sometimes you will go to an event and someone will speak about the credentials of somebody and do an introduction, but this was a group of people coming together to celebrate tradition and acknowledge the arrival of a new participant in that tradition. In my world, that is a rare event. I know that folks were sorry that there weren’t more people there, but I felt really happy that I was there.

DA: I felt about the same way afterwards. I’ve seen my grandma’s slides before. I was younger and I really didn’t appreciate them. That night I when I was watching it, it was just like the images were putting you where the poetry was describing. She was kind of upset because she didn’t have them in order, but I told her it was like the order was meant to be like that. When she was flicking through those first three your thought was in the last one and the colors and all the different scenery. And then she would flick to another one. So, you were comparing those two. It was like it was meant to be that way, I thought. If it had been in order, she would have been happy and pleased, but the different effect she got from the disorder – She actually got the same response. Everyone loved it and felt it was beautiful. If had been in order they would still have felt the same way. But this way she didn’t plan it. That is kind of how a lot of things go for us I think. We don’t plan it and then it happens, or we say we do it and then just one day we just spring it out and we are just doing it!

RL: I think part of that is due to what the audience brings. In this environment the audience and the performance are linked in a way that is unusual, and for my money more valuable. It isn’t a consumer/provider relationship. There is a celebration in the sharing of what happens. We are invited to make the connections that you were talking about.

Robert H. Leonard is an associate professor in the Department of Theatre Arts at Virginia Tech where he teaches directing and improvisation. He brings 30 years of experience as founding artistic director of the Road Company, a nationally recognized theater ensemble (1972-1998) based in Johnson City, Tennessee, which created and produced two dozen original plays reflecting the history and issues of the Upper Tennessee Valley and Central Appalachia. Leonard served as a site visitor for WagonBurner Theater Troop for "Performing Communities," and currently serves as a member of the national board of Theatre Communications Group.

PERFORMING COMMUNITIES
Carpetbag | Cornerstone | Dell'Arte | Jump-Start
LAPD | Pregones | Roadside | WagonBurner
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