Interview with Justin Data, company member

By Robert Leonard

Robert Leonard: What is your regular life?

Justin Data: My regular life right now is working for a giant, financial, bland company in the city. I do Web work. I was in graduate school when we were doing the theater company in Iowa, which was an adventure in itself. If you’ve ever been to Iowa, it is different than pretty much everywhere else. I think everyone feels that way, everyone from other places. After there, I went to Japan during the summer because my girlfriend, who is now my wife, went to Japan. So, we went to Japan and came back. I just couldn’t go to Iowa again after getting out [of grad school]. I had lived there for three years. I ended up coming back to New York, back upstate, and I was working in journalism, which is what I was going to grad school for. I stopped grad school. I was working as a layout designer and copy editor. I got really bored – the pay – you know, upstate economy, typical very low pay. We were trying to start our careers and it was kind of slow so we moved down to Queens. I ended up getting work doing the kind of same thing for a financial paper called American Banker. I trucked along trying to get a foot hold into something and then the Web publishing became popular and I kind of fell into that. That is how I ended up now at Paine Webber. So, on a regular life aspect, it has worked out really well, but it has been slow on the creative side. Actually, I just started getting back into creative things. I began writing songs again, playing guitar. I think having my son being born recently has kind of made me start to play guitar for him and I guess feeling like I need to start doing things like that again. So, that is what I am doing now. Working. Commuting.

RL: Well let’s talk about the theater here for a little bit. Debbie told me that WagonBurner kind of got started because LeAnne had the script and she put a call out at Iowa.

How did you hear about it?

JD: When I went out to Iowa I was in a work-study program for the Office of International Education. That is where LeAnne worked. She was the media person. She did the PR and the press releases. I was a work-study as an assistant in her office. We pretty quickly became good friends. I was just moving out there and my background is actually half Jewish and half Native American. There are only two other people in the world that have that mix. Growing up I didn’t know any Indian people. I grew up in a small town that was 90 percent white. My mother was the only Jewish person for about 40 miles. Then I got up there. I met LeAnne. She was sort of like a big sister or something, taught me a lot about myself, and taught me about Indian culture. Just kind of helped me grow up in that kind of respect. When I went back for graduate school I still had that job. They just changed it to a graduate assistantship. We had been doing different little community involvement things. I was, at the time, writing a lot. I was an English major and thinking about maybe getting into the writer’s workshop. I hated writer’s workshop – not all it is cracked up to be, run by one drunk who has written one book. I don’t think that constitutes a workshop, but, hey, it still produces good writers. One day ,LeAnne came in and she had the play that she and her friend Roxy had written back when she was still living in Texas. It wasn’t the whole play that it is now. It was probably half of it or three-quarters of it. She said, "Here check this play out and let me know what you think. I’ve been thinking maybe I could get a group together to do it as a troupe." So, I read it. It looked kind of funny so she put a call out. I just thought it would be pretty fun. She put out some flyers and just let people know at the community house. I think pretty much everyone who was in it were just the people who showed up. Except for the announcer. I can’t remember his name now, but the original announcer. He had a syndicated show ,"Ask Dr. Science." She knew him and had gotten him to participate in it. We all just got together one day very loosely and had a brief reading. From that we kind of decided to put more scenes into it to try and reflect what we saw as important or whatever history they come from. Just to expand it. It took on its own character from that. We all came back with our little additions and revised it a number of times.

RL: So, you developed a character, or more than one character, for yourself?

JD: Yeah. Everyone had their own. Either written their own scene to put into it, or helped tighten something up.

RL: Did you develop your material writing it or in rehearsal, improv?

JD: A little bit of both. I guess the first thing was coming in with the new scenes that we wanted. What it ended up being by the time we ended it up doing it at the Smithsonian and in New York, compared to the time when we first did it in the community theater in Cedar Rapids, it was a totally different show. It started out very bare-bones. I think that was part of the humor in it, it was supposed to be "Indian Radio Days." That was the whole kind of concept. We didn’t have money. It was all out of our pockets and we were all some kind of student or underpaid administrator at a university. The whole radio show theme helped out with that. We could do it very inexpensively. Plus, it was kind of a good format. You could add things and take things away. It sort of fit. We figured it would be a good way to let it evolve on its own. It started out bare-bones we kept kind of adding layers of complexity to it. The first original one was better and had that more community feel to it. It was kind of a side-show a little bit, how it started out.

RL: How do you mean?

JD: We did it at this community theater in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. We all wore shirts that just said "Indian." Not many props. We had music. We had the table with the Radio Woman, we had the Announcer and another microphone. People would sit in fold-up chairs in the back and step up when they were going to have their part. The Announcer was continually interviewing everyone who was in it. We kind of added this little side-show theme to go around with it out in the audience. We would run around and tell stupid jokes, make wisecracks, auction off Indians for slavery. We were trying to be funny that way, but I think mostly there were people that looked kind of scared after each show, or confused. That is how it started out. By the time later shows were run, everyone had costumes and was wearing plain white shirts and their were props and things. I think, in a way, I preferred the bare-bones thing. It started to detract from it and become more of a parody. It was always sort of sarcastic, parodylike humor. I think it started to detract from it in a way.

RL: That is a very interesting thing. I mean, anyone making art wants to refine it, make it better, make it better, make it better. What you said was that it was further away from what you were trying to say. What were you trying to say? And what were you successful at in the beginning that allowed you to say that?

JD: Well, beginning to end, we were kind of saying the same things, using Indian-style humor to make people realize, partially, the truth behind Indian history, break stereotypes. But also, I think, making them laugh at the script, everything that was being said, and all the serious things that were being conveyed. Making them laugh at it made it less heavy and more tolerable to accept, digest and think about. If you went out there and it wasn’t this bizarre, off the cuff, satirical humor, you would just sit there and feel incredibly depressed. You might even leave. I think as we added more trappings around it, you know, extra props, more music, more lights, costume changes, I think, that detracted from the actual words themselves. Where as when it is just people on the stage, on a plain stage, with plain microphones, saying the words, the words are funny. When you start adding all the additional actions, those movements and costumes became part of what was funny. They could be a distraction from the message itself. Whereas people were laughing just as hard, or maybe they were laughing harder – but either way they were laughing at the original message. So, probably, the delivery of that message was stronger at the beginning.

RL: What was the audience like there in Cedar Rapids? What was the environment like? The theatrical environment?

JD: It was a theater. It was more of a high-school gym kind of feel. It was small. It was an actual community theater. They did a lot of community-based plays there. It wasn’t like a beautiful space or anything. Very simple. It was old, even partially being renovated in some spots. The seating was all fold-up chairs, too.

RL: Who was the audience?

JD: There were a lot of college-aged people. There weren’t too many just your standard Cedar Rapids kind of residents. You know, Iowa.

RL: Was it mostly a white audience?

JD: Yes. Iowa is a pretty white state. At most of the shows it was mostly white audiences.

RL: Forgive my geographical ignorance, but Cedar Rapids, is that a long way from Iowa City?

JD: It is about a half-hour drive.

RL: Why did you go there instead of playing in Iowa City?

JD: I think partially because we could get the space, that actual theater. It is funny: Iowa City is the college town, supposedly the intellectual center of the state. It didn’t really have a space like that, a community theater space. It didn’t really have a whole lot of experimental theater going on. So, this theater was there and it was known for being a community theater. They had experimental shows. They did all sorts of things. LeAnne must have known that they would be open to it, or that must have been the only place where we could have an authentic, legitimate show with a box office.

RL: Then, over a couple of years you played this?

JD: Mm-hm.

RL: And you wound up playing at Lincoln Center in New York?

JD: No. The Smithsonian. The Museum of the American Indian downtown. It is a great museum, right down in the Wall Street area. It is the old customs house from the 1800s. There is a branch in D.C., too, but this one is here. They spent a long time building the branch up here. It is really nice. They bring in all sorts of great movie festivals. They bring in different Indian performers from all over the place. We got invited to do that. I think it was the first year the museum was open. The woman who was in charge of the place had read the play or seen it somewhere. She called up LeAnne and asked if we wanted to do it. Of course it was pretty different from most of our experiences because we all had hotel rooms and plane fare. I think the show before, we were traveling in a beat up RV across Iowa sleeping on people’s floors. It was pretty cool.

RL: What was the audience there like?

JD: It wasn’t as funky or avant-garde as you would expect it to be for N.Y.C. It was just your typical person, a mixed audience, probably still leaning more towards a white audience than to black. All ages.

RL: Did you go out into the audience in New York?

JD: No. We actually only did that in Cedar Rapids. The only other time we did it was when we did a dinner theater in Iowa City. It was more like having 70 people over for dinner and putting the play on in your living room. Actually, I think that was one of the better shows that we did. It really kind of got people involved. The dinner theater part was Native southern food. It was Native food. People were talking with the WagonBurner people. That was really probably the most educating kind of environment. It was a good feeling.

RL: I get the feeling from you that you like to blur the distinction between life and theater.

JD: Yeah. I think so. I think it helps. The subject matter, Native culture, people are just exposed to it so rarely. They only see it really in mascots and old movies, or news about bingo palaces and such. I think that blurring was especially helpful for that play because people just don’t meet Indians, or any kind of Native people. Especially because our troupe was 90 percent mixed ancestry. People you would see walking down the street and wouldn’t think a thing. Whereas seeing a stereotypical Sioux man or Dakota man with four-foot -long braids, you might think, "Ahhh, that’s an Indian," but they would never do that for any of us. I think for that play that was a really good part of the education. It solidifies the message – what the reality is, different from most of what your perceptions are. I think that is good. LeAnne has produced the play with other theater groups, like the Taper in Los Angeles. I would be curious to see those, to see if it was really as much as an educational experience.

RL: Debbie was interested in that, too. Debbie is really into the issue of the distinction between the south-eastern Native customs versus the Midwestern sense, within the Native people. Their sense of what it means to be an Indian is different. She was talking about some specific cultural things. She really wanted to talk to other people who had played her character and other characters that were coming out of the western cultural tradition. I thought that was fascinating. Right there, I was certainly educated.

JD: Especially her character, the Bingo Lady. She is just totally southern redneck Indian. Yeah. It would be interesting.

RL: Were you in a show that had a Native population audience?

JD: There was one in Ames, Iowa. That was really the only one that had a bunch of Native people show up. Yeah. That was at University of Iowa, Ames. It was kind of a small space we did it in. There were some people from the Iowa reservations. It was well received for the most part. There was this one guy was just pissed as all hell. He came up to LeAnne and let her know how disappointed he was. There were some alcohol jokes and some stereotype jokes. The point was lost on him. He obviously didn’t get it, ’cause he was really upset. The ironic part was that after him, there was this old guy, probably in his 60s, you know, a more traditional guy. He came up to us and was like, "That was the best! I was rolling around laughing all the time. Let’s go out and get some lunch." We ran out and went to whatever diner was close by and were having burgers. It was definitely different. People’s own experience – we found out that guy was recovering with his own issues, alcohol and stuff. But for the most part, the Indians that did see it did think it was pretty funny. Especially the older guys. It kind of jived well with that old-fashioned kind of humor. It was also southern, I wonder if that had anything to do with it? Pretty much everyone there was southern, except for me. I was the only Yankee, which they let me know over and over again. The best was the blonde Indian. Steve Thunder. He was the big stereotype breaker. Bleach blonde. You would think he just got off the boat from Germany. He was a real Appalachian character. Cherokee guy. Always had some crazy kind of "car on the blocks in the front yard" kind of story.

RL: As a performer, had you acted before?

JD: I had acted only in high school. But then again, high school wasn’t that far away at that time.

RL: But you were a musician?

JD: Yeah. I had been playing guitar since I was eight. I was in bands or I would play with friends and stuff. Writer, I had aspired to be a writer many times, so it was natural to do. It wasn’t like I had never done anything creative before.

RL: What did you use from your experience? What things were different? What did you do that you hadn’t had to do before?

JD: For one thing, you’ve got more people on stage with you, a little bit more support. I guess one of the things that is different than music is thinking about your timing, projecting, controlling your nerves, things such as that. I think what I really liked was being able to play characters that we had written ourselves. Being able to create a character and then have people respond to it. That was the most interesting, pleasing part. We had one scene where this flamingly gay Indian from the Seneca reservation, called Flaming Tire; it was part of the protest cause the Seneca always seem to burn tires and throw them on the freeway whenever there is a problem. So we made that up and put that in. Just being able to write that, to think of something totally ridiculous one night and then bring it on stage during the play and have people just dying over it as they are watching. And at the same time telling people, hey, this is going on. That is a pretty great package.

RL: What about your relationship with the audience?

JD: I think this one was a little more intimate than doing another play.

RL: More intimate than doing your music?

JD: Yeah. Could be a little similar to music, similar but different. Doing music, you really want to make people feel whatever you are feeling, which didn’t necessarily equate to the play. It wasn’t a really emotional play. It was more of an instructional, educational kind of dissertation. I think it had similarities in the intimacy in that you were trying to directly connect with the people on some level rather than to just put on a show, to have them actually open up more...I’m going to contradict myself now. It isn’t making them feel what you are feeling. You know if you are playing a song that you have written and it has got lyrics that are heartfelt, you want them to feel that. Same way with the play. You may not want them to feel the feeling, but you want them to understand the message. You kind of have that same kind of closeness there. There was that particular challenge of making sure they are getting it, I suppose.

RL: These questions – certainly there is no wrong answer, and I know it is awhile back for you. I am trying to understand what techniques did you use as a performer that you either identified as being like your music, or different from your music world that helped you bring that intimacy, to make it happen, that connection with the audience.

JD: Well some things, you know being in a non-technical surrounding most of the time, where there are not lights on you. Making eye contact with individual people was big. You could be saying something in those few serious moments that there are, if you look into someone’s eyes, it kind of makes them stop. It is almost like when you are teaching, if someone is doddling off, you give them eye contact. It makes them pay attention more, makes them feel connected to what is happening on the stage.

RL: Were you free to depart from the script in front of an audience?

JD: Yeah. We were always free to do whatever we wanted. As long as it came off good you were supported. If it bombed and it sucked then no one really cared that much. We were pretty supportive of each other. The script itself lacked direction. It was all dialogue.

RL: Right. There was no story line you had to pursue.

JD: It didn’t have stage directions or anything like that. It became all a series of inventions.

RL: When you did music, were you a solo artist as a musician or were you in a band?

JD: I was in a band. Just in college, I would play just for friends by myself, or on the street or wherever.

RL: When you performed with a group of people did you just sing one song after the next or would you talk with people in between songs?

JD: Talk.

RL: Were you able to sense how that talk was setting yourself up for the next song?

JD: Yeah. I guess you can. You kind of feel what people are in the mood for, or what they like. Even beyond that, beyond what you are going to play, but how you are going to play it. Are you going to be serious or fun?

RL: Is there a similarity in that and the way you would move from routine to routine in this piece?

JD: Good point. Yeah, definitely. Audiences varied greatly. Some places you would swear everyone was drunk because they were just laughing and laughing, but other places – This one place, a college in Iowa, it was the middle of winter and freezing rain and eight people showed up. Everyone just sat there. We just tried to get through it. You know, don’t do any of the crazy stuff. Keep the sexual jokes a little more mellow. Get the bare minimum jokes, try to keep it funny but not as obnoxious. Try to survive it. It was surprising. Even that one, a lot of people stayed and asked questions. That always surprises me. Even when we thought we screwed up, or the audience was just stone-cold statue-people, they always stayed and there was always someone who asked a really good question or wanted to know more. Should we have toned it down? Who knows? I think you can’t help it.

RL: This play came out of a couple people working in Texas, and eight or ten people working in Iowa – all with different Native roots. No one was at home when they were in Iowa.

JD: Right! Yeah, we were all displaced.

RL: How do you understand a connection with community, with regard to this effort? Not just the play, but the intention of the play and what the troupe might be.

JD: I think we all needed each other very badly. It is one of those moments in the universe when things kind of come together. There wasn’t a big community, in fact there was a lack of one. I think that is why we grasp at it, work at it, fit into it so hard. We needed that in our lives, every one of us. For some reason each of us were displaced. In the middle of the country, in the pinnacle of nondiversity, conservatism. Even though Iowa City was supposed to be liberal, it was still pretty conservative. In that lack of community, we kind of created our own, which is why I think we consider ourselves a community theater. I guess our frustrations of being in this place gave us a lot of things to say. We really wanted to say these things. At the time, there were the usual mascot issues, bad funding for the Indian community house, they didn’t want to have the pow-wow anymore – just the standard academic things going on. Being in a place that lacked the kind of culture that we needed, we kind of made our own. I think it helped that most people were southern Indians and had the same background. They kind of fostered their own southern, Native community. They made their own, and I guess I was a part of that. We were the community. We took those things that we needed to say, and then it is almost like a holy mission, educate the Iowans! Tell them what is going on. I guess we felt like the world needed that play. We went around and we felt we had a mission to educate. I guess we needed each other to kind of relieve our own stresses in life. It worked out good, hopefully for the community and for us.

RL: In performance, were you teaching people outside your community about your community or were you asking people in the audience to join your community?

JD: We were mostly teaching, I think, teaching the outside community about us.

RL: In the event of the theater moment, was the audience kept observing, witnessing? It is interesting because you go out into the audience and I know the Bingo Lady treats the audience like they are playing bingo.

JD: I think my first reaction was that it depended on the show. The ones where we specifically went out, or had a dinner, or auctioned each other off and then auctioned them off, that was really grabbing. But it was really visibly grabbing. It was very obvious. That was my first reaction. Other shows, we weren’t. But the Bingo Lady, she would go up there and yell out the numbers. We would be passing out the cards. They really were a part of the game. There were times we threw things at them. Beads. There was an effort to get everyone to be a participant.

RL: Do you think there was a tension between those two things in the course of the play, where sometimes the audience would feel like "other" and then sometimes they were brought in?

JD: Yeah, I think so. I think the Bingo Lady was probably the best theatrical device we had. It was almost like checkpoints. Are you paying attention? Play with your bingo card and get a prize at the end. I can see definitely the script itself, if someone were not really interested in what we were saying it would be easy to start to feel excluded. Some of the jokes are out-and-out sarcastic reversed racism. If you are not ready to laugh at yourself and laugh at the history of this culture, maybe you would be offended. I think the Bingo Lady helped bring some of that out. Here comes this ridiculous character, it is all fun and games again. There were a lot of serious things.

RL: I would like to know a little bit about your rehearsal process, what techniques you used to basically rehearse the play. What do you remember that worked well for you in the rehearsal?

JD: Harsh criticism worked well, just trying things out and having – there’s only really four people maximum at one time doing a scene – having the rest of the company there at all times to watch helped to be able to judge if something was actually funny or not.

RL: Ah, yes. Judging from their response.

JD: Yeah. A couple of times having some friends come over and watch. I don’t think that happened very much. It was mostly the other people in the theater. I guess we decided that if we thought it was funny than it was good enough for us. That was the main judging factor, the other people in the troupe. Sometimes the whole show itself could be treated like a rehearsal. If something didn’t work out, or something didn’t come off as funny, it was further proof that something needed to change. In rehearsal it was just the other members.

RL: Did LeAnne offer directing?

JD: Yeah. The closest thing we had to directing was LeAnne, I would say. She always swore that she wasn’t the director, but we needed someone there to offer the decisive advice. Everyone could be there yapping and yelling, but we all looked to LeAnne, as kind of the writer of the play and the person with the energy to put it together, as the deciding factor. She was kind of the director, in a way. Also, those first few shows, the coffee guy who played the announcer, he actually gave us some good advice. We were all bleeding amateurs. His career was performance. He helped us out with our rehearsing for our first shows in Cedar Rapids with our timing. Although we didn’t like him in the end very much, he actually did give us some good advice in the beginning, relating to timing and how to respond to each other and the audience. How to speak up better. How to just be better in general, being an actor doing this kind of play. As much as no one ended up liking him in the end, because he wasn’t the best fit for the play, he was very helpful.

RL: Debbie talked about a lot of hands-on-hips discussions.

JD: Yes. I think the play started out very peaceful. As it went on, it got very argumentative. There was this one person, as there always is, she was the perpetual mother. She got to the point where she went from being an amateur person to thinking she was a fabulous actress. Got a little bit too far into it and started taking over the play, so there was a big revolt. I missed this, ’cause I left before the end of the New York show. She pretty much just got herself kicked out. Everyone kind of tore her down on the way out. Everyone went into New York very excited and left kind of dragged through the cheese grater. The tension was building. I think when you are in any kind of collaborative effort, you can’t have one person who is going to try to take over. It really messes things up. That is what happened. If it is going to be collaborative, it has to be collaborative. Or the person who is in charge has to be the person that everyone agrees upon, not just whoever thinks they have the best opinions. Everyone always looked to LeAnne, and this other woman sort of started assuming that position. So, I don’t think you can have that.

RL: Did you find a way out of that?

JD: That was at the end of the performances we did. I don’t think we did one after New York, because we had finally disbanded so far away from each other. We haven’t been able to put one together again. I have a feeling we will someday, even if it is only three or four of us in the right place at the right time.

RL: You stay in touch with LeAnne, right?

JD: Yeah. I stay in touch with LeAnne. I keep in good touch with LeAnne. She was doing a master’s-in-residency thing and graduated last winter. I went up to hang out with her for that. I think everyone kind of stays in touch with her as a focal point.

RL: As a troupe, you were together for how long?

JD: A couple of years. I know we ended at the end of ’95, so about three years. Wow, three years. Yeah.

RL: You didn’t come in with the investment of having written the script, but it became something of yours. Each person had that. I am wondering how you negotiated within the group.

JD: In some ways, there was still some clarity over who had say; it was unspoken. If you wrote this piece, or you were the main contributor for this piece, maybe you had more of a say. Maybe it was just my feeling, but I always felt like LeAnne had the final say, no matter what. I guess I always respected her creative vision, just because she had written the original thing. I know she had asked me to rewrite stuff that I had written. Everyone respected her, and trusted her. She was a good writer. She had produced some plays before down in Texas. I think, at first definitely, although I don’t think everyone did in the end, we looked to her as sort of a mentor. We had these ideas that we would bounce off of her. I don’t know if everyone felt that way, but I know that I did. Techniques that she used, I think, just persistence. Her character itself, if she doesn’t want you just screwing around with her, she won’t let you. So, when you start to step on her toes, she will kick you right back, not backing down. Her being a persistent person who wasn’t going to have anyone screw her play up. If that could be a technique, that is definitely one she used – just sheer strength, remaining strong, not giving in. But I don’t think there was too much to give in to except for maybe later on when people started to be more argumentative and wanted to do different things. That is probably when it got a little more difficult for her.

RL: I was talking with Debbie Hicks about what the process is. You bring something in, it is funny (I am making this up), but it is off the mark in terms of analysis of the situation or usefulness in the text – did those things happen?

JD: I am pretty sure they did. I am trying to think of something specific.

RL: – where you would need to have a group discussion, or not? Maybe somebody would just announce, "No, that isn’t the way that would be done," or a group would discuss that this is the way the script is going and maybe it needs to continue in this direction, rather than take this turn.

JD: I think mostly the decisions we made were consensus. I think if something was brought up, then it would be kind of up to the whole troupe to decide if it was worth it. There was veto power in what LeAnne was able to do. For the most part, I think everyone had a sense of what we were doing and what needed to be done. We would come to agreement on what we should do. The guy who did the music, it always seemed like the music was too loud while it was his music. That is one of those things you would have to remember, he would always tell her, "No, the music had to be louder." She would just have to say, "No, God damn it." There were those times when one of us would have to be put in line, more than likely by her, and at the end, when there was a big blowout, it was LeAnne who had to say, "The troupe feels this way," and bring her bad news. Most of the creative process was a very consensual experience, if I am remembering correctly.

RL: What do you think held you together?

JD: Oh. She did, I think. She was definitely a leader in the situation – a combination of her dedication and our desire to be together and doing something like that. That was enough. I think we were all kind of exploring ourselves as much as we were exploring our issues, just that necessity. We definitely needed to be all together. LeAnne is a very strong person and I think we liked her. We all liked her a lot. We all learned from her. A good person to work with. We were all drawn to her.

RL: Did any of you all get involved in the management of the organization, or was that all LeAnne?

JD: It was pretty much all LeAnne. Booking was pretty much all her. She knew people around and she would meet people at the different events or conferences that she went to and put the spark in their head. A couple of people helped out with booking. Of course there was the Cherokee woman with the broke-down RV with transportation. She mostly took care of it. Definitely bookings. When it came to the Smithsonian, they called her. The paper called her. It really is her play ultimately. I think if we had all eight trying to do everything it would have been a big mess. Centralized administration. One person definitely has to have the final authority. What you said a second ago makes me think about how in creative fields there are so many, everyone knows what is right. You’ve got the ego issues and everyone is just opinionated beyond belief. I think if you are going to have an effort that is as collaborative as this, you need people who are going to be a little more humble, and maybe community theater or theater that has more amateur roots in it in some ways is a good field for that kind of collaboration because people are a little more willing to be told, or to experiment, or just to work together. Not necessarily like "I am the writer" or "I am the lead and I am the most amazing actor." I think we lacked a lot of that just because we were amateurs and we were all able to do something important. If we had a talent, we could use it and feel good about ourselves, but we still had that one person who would help us out when we needed it. She was almost like a coach in a way. She was coaching a team of writers, or actors. In that respect it is almost like a traditional Native way. You don’t vote, you all come to agreement, ’cause what the community comes to agreement on is probably what is best for it.

RL: I got the feeling from Debbie that the moment of agreement was reached informally. You don’t have a formal process, you just work through stuff.

JD: Yeah. It was very informal. Just discussion. No show of hands or tallying or anything like that. No focus groups. It was all just very loose-knit. It was all based on the feelings of the troupe, what our intuition was or what we laughed hardest at. Best we could, we would try to come to it without killing each other or punching each other out. I think most of those heavy disagreements came more from the life span of the play and the pressures of the group being together too long. I can imagine that if we got together now that those tensions would be gone. Of course maybe there would be new tensions. But yeah, it was very informal. There were no methodologies that we were coming up with or aware of in our own minds. We would just talk it out or feel it out. In a way the play had a mind of its own. It felt right.

RL: If you had to pick the most treasured moment for yourself in the course of that time, what was that moment?

JD: I think actually, the Ames play. Taking the RV up to Ames. When I think about it, I think it should be the Smithsonian one. Right, we validated our troupe. We’ve really done something good. But getting back to the community aspect of it, when we were all crammed in this crampy RV, driving up to Ames in the middle of nowhere. A six-hour drive through cornfields. Just hanging out in the back, being stupid, talking about the play and thinking about how we should do it that night. Getting all excited that there are going to be other Indians in the audience. Then getting there and doing it. We met the one guy who hated it, but having other Indians that were supportive. That is what it was all about. That is why we started the play. That is what we were looking for. That is the moment when we really found it. We knew what we were doing, we knew the play enough, we liked the play, we liked each other at the time and we finally got out there and had approval from another Native community. Here was this other Indian community who was like "Yeah, this is good what you do. People should see it." That is important. Then there were tornadoes and thunderstorms. That is why we went to the diner, we couldn’t drive home. But that was the best moment. That was my favorite. It is funny. I don’t think the Smithsonian shows were our best shows. I think it was better when it was in a more amateur-type environment.

RL: That raw place.

JD: Yeah. I think that is where it works best.

RL: You can get those moments that just happen, those spontaneous moments of discovery, and what you want to do is to get back to it. That is where it really becomes a craft.

JD: You try to recreate it, you try to force it, you try to make it, but you can’t force it. For the most part. You give up and then it happens again. Yeah. I know. It is almost like as soon as you let down your resistance it happens. The more cognizant you are, the more futile, sometimes, most of the times. It doesn’t mean that you should stop trying things.

RL: Do you have a sense of what play or what you would do together, if you got back together?

JD: Well, we keep saying that we are going to do this next play that we’ve been trying to start to write for five or so years now. It was going to be a parody of the "Wizard of Oz" with Indians. It was going to be a musical. I don’t know if that is maybe the best direction to go, although I had a couple of songs that I had started to write for it. They are pretty ridiculous. One is called "Jesus Loves Indians," of course...We would do something. Maybe it would be that, and maybe it would be something else. I think it would be more of a one flowing story if we did that. Maybe it would be a lot shorter, too. I think the thing is, with all of us being so far away, it has to be the kind of thing where you can get together, maybe rehearse it for two or three days and then you can put it on without too much terrible. With it being good enough that people would be entertained and learn something. It would be great to do more "Indian Radio Days," or more skits like that.

RL: I think one of the things that is really intriguing for me about your company is the realization of the sense that you are displaced, that you get together. The fact is that LeAnne was in Rosebud and did something this past fall. I don’t know exactly what they did up there. Did they do "Radio Days"?

JD: Yeah, they did. It was with a student group there, I think.

RL: There is this coming together out of an opportunity in one place, and then a call goes out and whoever can get there gets there, then it gets quiet for awhile. There is a very interesting model. If there were enough money in this country to support the artists who exist in this country, it would be a whole other thing. Our resources as a nation are not well applied to our arts. Artists have to figure out another way. What are the models? We can’t all be the Mark Taper Forum. You guys are devising, in an interesting way, another model. I don’t think you are at the end of your road. There’s a germ there. I hear it in Debbie and I hear it in you.

JD: Yeah. I think as long as we are alive, we are going to want to do it. We are going to want to get back together and do something.

RL: Yeah. So, over time, what will be the methods that you do that with? It is just an interesting thing. Relatively speaking you are young as an organization. You’ve had three or four years together, three or four years apart. There is an engine in you still. It will be very interesting to see what happens.

JD: I think we are interested, too.

RL: A friend of mine has spoken to me about how important it is to look at the community-arts movement as including the so-called amateur. That is to say, the artist that is making a living through other things than the art that they make. It doesn’t have anything to do with skill level. The amateur can be as skillful and as committed as the nonamateur. If we exclude them, if we exclude the notion of community artists, we are doing a great disservice.

JD: I think the thing about amateurs and excluding them is that when you are making your living by other ways you kind of have the freedom to do only what is extremely important to you artistically. That is what it is for, whereas if it is paying your rent, you might have to make all kinds of concessions in your creative life. Now, maybe an amateur isn’t as good or polished, but you know if they are doing something on a level where they are part of that creation you know that it must really be important. You are doing it on your own time too. Professional actors are doing it on their own time too. It’s not like there are too many actors who don’t do anything except to plain old act, but you really have to be committed. You can’t exclude that because, there are real voices coming out of that. So maybe it is not the actual execution of the practice, but what is being said and what the purpose of the creation is.

RL: And then we can start looking at how do you do that? What are the models? How can we be inventive and allow for our lives to include this work?

JD: We need more radio shows. I don’t remember which show, but one of them was broadcast on public radio.

RL: And it was picked up in Alaska.

JD: Yeah. Was that the Ames show? I don’t remember which show. I think we felt about that one maybe the way we should have felt about the Smithsonian. We were excited about the Smithsonian, but it really wasn’t – it was more professional or something. We had the curators on our butts saying, "You gotta make this better, it sucks. You’ve got to practice more before you get here." It was a little more sterile. And the people we were delivering it to were just the same old people, where as up-linked to Alaska is a pretty big deal: NPR.

RL: In your own course through this, what did you discover about yourself?

JD: I know there is a lot that I discovered. I am trying to think about how to word it. I think a lot that I discovered was about being involved with that group of people. I discovered my community in general. I hadn’t been involved in a Native community before, despite being half Indian. Through having them as close companions, and doing all this writing, and trooping around to different places I kind of in a way discovered myself in general. Who I am, what I like, what I feel like I have to educate the world about.

RL: Do you have a particular time when that happened for you?

JD: Well, let’s see, the Ames journey comes to mind. I think any time we traveled together, or went someplace together or just hung out telling dumb jokes or whatever. The whole thing really was just great. And then, of course, we did things otherwise. Some of us would go out to eat, or LeAnne and I went down to Oklahoma a few times, just different things. We were like the group of weirdos in the community house. A lot of the people in the community house were still western Indians and a little different view on reality than the eastern folks. We were kind of our own little clique there. We had a good bond of friendship.

RL: Did you recognize that distinction while you were there or did you discover it?

JD: I guess I discovered it. There really is a cultural difference between western tribes and eastern tribes. Then you’ve got the reservation people and the nonreservation people, and the city people and the rural people. There are subtle differences between everyone. Now, being in New York even, down in this area there is like this New York City Indian culture that goes on. I was going to community house for a little while, trying to stay involved. It became too exhausting. I didn’t really feel that spark, like this is where I belong. I met nice people, really interesting people. They are different than the communities in the south. Especially there were some Muskogee that were close by to Iowa City. A lot of the southeastern tribes are very open, embracing. They like to communicate a little bit. Even going back to North Dakota, there are a lot of reservations there. My wife’s family lives at Dulles Lake. There is a Dakota population there. Even there, you can feel that they are a little bit different than even the guys in the Midwest. A different vibe even. Less welcoming, more welcoming. It really does change from place to place. Lots of layers of politics.

That is one thing about the New York area, everyone is so mixed. Just crazy backgrounds. Everyone is very inviting and welcoming. There is no one distinct nation down here that is the predominant tribe. You’ve got Natives from Puerto Rico, Minnesota, Maine, you’ve got a couple Mohawks left over. It is just everything. Everyone is pretty laid back about who you are. I definitely feel that. But even so, back to the play, I think everyone kind of discovered their creative abilities, too. If you don’t know you had it, just being in some sort of environment that is nurturing towards it. If you are going to start any kind of collaborative play, you just need that nurturing kind of feel. It is almost like a support group. Just the support, like anything else, as long as you have an environment where everyone is going to help you out and nurture your ideas and not cut you down, I think you are going to have some kind of success, even if it is just for your own personal growth. Then you can work on making others grow.

RL: That is a great observation, allow yourself to grow and then help others. Is there a story about this experience that you want to share that I haven’t asked?

JD: The big moral of the story is that art does matter. We were just doing a play, but I think it had a message. Even if only 14 people out of ten shows heard it, I think it helped. Those people are going to go talk to somebody else about it. Even if it doesn’t play again, or it only plays every eight years, somebody has stopped and thought about something and maybe changed the way they were feeling. Maybe reversed some negative feelings, or educated them about something that was obscured or hidden. That does matter. It does matter to do these things. If you have these feelings, and you have that creative energy, and you feel you have something to say then you should do it. Even if it is silly or stupid or a pain in the ass or you have to lose sleep, if it feels right something good could come out of it. And why not? You know, what the hell. It is kind of funny. I feel like my creative world has been dormant for awhile. I’ve been focusing on career and stuff, but I can feel that energy coming back a little bit lately. This is kind of nice. It reminds me, oh yeah ... there is that side of me, too.

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.

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