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Field NotesSeptember 2001 WagonBurner Theater Troop is a group of Native American theater artists, mostly Choctaw, Cherokee, Creek and other peoples of the Southeastern region, who were drawn together in 1993 by a play, "Indian Radio Days," written by LeAnne Howe and Roxy Gordon, both of whom are Choctaw. "Indian Radio Days" is a satire, using broad and caustic humor to shatter icons and reveal power structures within the history of cross cultural encounters between Native peoples and the waves of European migration across this continent.
WagonBurner first performed "Indian Radio Days" on October 7, 1993, in a co-production with CSPS Theater in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The production toured to numerous sites over the next two years. The final performance of this production was at the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) in New York City in August, 1995. Since then, Howe has several more scripts in development for WagonBurner to produce. WagonBurner travels to perform. Howe and members of WagonBurner gather together on a project-by-project basis to conduct residencies and workshops as opportunity affords. The ensemble is not located in a geographic place; rather it is centered around specific events when the ensemble can make theater that teaches history of Native peoples. "Indian Radio Days" has had several productions, in addition to the original WagonBurner run. In October of 2000, Howe participated in a three-week residency at the Rosebud Reservation , which coincided with a Department of Theatre production of "Indian Radio Days" at the University of South Dakota in Vermillion. LeAnne Howe and Roxy Gordon started out, in the 1980s, as performance-art partners in Texas, performing poetry, music, storytelling and, as they have described it, generally having a good time. They began writing "Indian Radio Days" as a means of reaching past certain thresholds they encountered in their performance art. Howe brought the play in draft form to Iowa State University, where she was teaching. Her open call for performers attracted people from a number of different tribes. The play itself and Howe’s vision of the production was the initial glue that held the group together. From the very beginning of the original production, however, Howe asked for and got a collaborative relationship with the cast members. Each person assigned to a role was asked to build and create that role, using the initial draft of the text as a starting point for individual and collective creativity. By the time the production reached performance, the play had become a creation of the cast as well as the playwright. This process lies at the heart of this ensemble. Howe is a convener and a facilitator, as well as a playwright. She and the other ensemble members of WagonBurner interviewed in this project stated, in one way or another, that the methods and processes of creation in WagonBurner assume collective input and collective ownership. "The Indian way" is an often-repeated phrase that, for this ensemble, means shared creativity and shared responsibility. All WagonBurner members who were interviewed think of the ensemble as an on-going commitment, which manifests itself when the collective will connects with project opportunities. Personal Reflections WagonBurner Theater Troop is an ensemble committed to the processes of collective artistic creativity in the effort to make plays about Native peoples’ histories. It is not an income base for any of its members. As such, WagonBurner models an organizational structure that is entirely independent of either not-for-profit or for-profit arts corporations. It is its members’ answer to how and why they make theater – collectively, with a deep passion, and with a substantial faith in humor as a medium for truth. As the arts environment changes and coalesces according to social, political and economic climates, artists and their organizational structures change by need and by preference. WagonBurner is charting a course that may be new to many, may even be hard to accept for those encased in certain ways of doing and thinking, but WagonBurner’s path offers hope, courage and practical know-how for theater makers who are intent on the creative process, working together from a common passion and setting aside organizational structures that don’t work, don’t apply and don’t conform to the needs of the artists. I traveled to many places to interview WagonBurner members and partners – Washington, D.C.; Ossining, N.Y.; Cincinnati, Ohio; and the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota. I interviewed three ensemble members. Each spoke passionately of their anticipation for their next projects together. They express a commitment that is not based on season production schedules or payroll contracts. Rather, they acknowledge the importance of the right project at the right time. They speak with a rare strength and resolve in spite of lack of funding or traditional administrative structure. In their interviews each ensemble member expressed an artistically mature comprehension of the function of their theater in their communities and the interplay between art and identity, between comedy and truth. It was not until I met with the Sicangu Lakota people in Rosebud that I began to comprehend in a deep way the practical know-how that lies behind this strength and resolve. LeAnne Howe’s residency had been in the Fall of 2000. I arrived a year later to meet with people who had participated in her playwriting workshop at the Sinte Gleska University Arts Institute, in Mission, South Dakota. Even a year later, the original workshop participants were gathering to take up the two plays they had created together with Howe, to expand them, to rehearse and perform them, to build a small tour with them. Sinte Gleska University is one of some 30 tribal universities and colleges throughout the U.S. It is housed on several small campuses in the Rosebud Reservation. The facilities are limited, the community is plagued with poverty and neglect, and the needs and dreams of the students and community people served by Sinte Gleska are without limit. The impediments to answering these needs and realizing these dreams are severe. LeAnne Howe worked with two members of the Sinte Gleska faculty to put together the workshop: Kim Karaff, who teaches creative writing and literature, and Jeff Kellogg, who teaches theater arts. Between the three of them, the three-week workshop attracted some 20 participants (some students, some nonstudents). Two plays were created collectively, produced and performed for the community. Some 150 attended (a significant audience in Rosebud) and gave their resounding approval to the work. Both plays were generated out of a group process. The ideas and the dialogue were developed around Lakota histories and the participants’ connections with those events. Howe’s skills include an ability to bring historical references into the context of immediate concerns, provoking both passion and the imagination. She and Kellogg maintained a constant record of everything that was said in the workshop gatherings – ideas, jokes, dialogue, scenes and scenarios. These records became the raw material for the plays. Howe and Kellogg would bring these ideas back to the group at each session, for review and elaboration. The accumulated work became the text of the play. The results were theater pieces owned by all participants. A year later, the passion remained strong and the energy was there to re-engage with the creative process, to expand the texts and bring them to new audiences. The interviews with Demetri Antoine and Nancy Whitehorse reflect the same spirit of artistic excitement and clarity of vision that the WagonBurner ensemble members had shared with me. In addition to the ensemble-building skills of LeAnne Howe, which are clearly substantial (to say nothing of her wonderful sense of humor and her incisive analytical capabilities), I witnessed in Rosebud another asset that supports the chosen pathway of the WagonBurner Theater Troop. On my first night in Mission, Jeff Kellogg invited me to attend a poetry reading. My experience at this event was eye-opening. The poet was a grandmother named Muriel Antoine. Her poetry was alive with images and perceptions, her delivery was commanding. Midway through the evening in the student center, the poet introduced her grandson, Albert Bordeaux, a young man barely in his 20s, who played the Lakota flute. Before he played his first piece, Albert’s uncle, Steve Emery, stood up to speak of his nephew. It wasn’t an introduction. Steve Emery stood to honor his nephew’s accomplishments in becoming a Lakota flute player and to acknowledge his entry into the adult community of the Sicangu Lakota people. He told of Albert’s learning. It seems Albert’s grandfather was a great flute player, one who had revived the ancient Lakota tradition after a long silence. Albert’s grandfather had given Albert a flute and told him to go off to play it. No music lessons, just the flute and the encouragement. Of course, the young man heard his grandfather and others play, but Albert learned to play his flute and compose his music entirely on his own, in the spirit and tradition of his family and the Lakota people. The music I heard Albert play that night still stays with me. Yet, it wasn’t until I was talking with Nancy Whitehorse the next day that I realized what I was witnessing. When Nancy said, "LeAnne just allowed me to write; no one in the workshop said no or it’s not done that way," I connected the dots. I heard Albert’s uncle speaking of how a Sicangu Lakota person learns the flute by going out in the reeds and playing and I recognized Howe’s pathway in developing theater. There is a long tradition of making theater within the Native peoples’ cultures. WagonBurner and many others are finding ways to let this tradition flourish in ways that are new and uncommon. Note: "Indian Radio Days" is published by Theatre Communications Group in its "Seventh Generation: An Anthology Of Native American Plays," edited by Mimi Gisolfi D’Aponte. Biography of site visitor Robert H. Leonard is associate professor in the Department of Theatre Arts at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va., 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 currently serves as a member of the national board of Theatre Communications Group. |
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