Native American Drama: A Critical Perspective (review)

This unique and revealing theoretical work analyzes Native American theater by identifying four Native intellectual traditions that exist apart from critiques of Western drama: platiality, storytelling, tribalography, and survivance (26, 29–30). Anyone who has worked in the fields of colonial history, Native Studies, ethnography or ethnohistory will find these four themes familiar, although here thoughtfully presented as the result of a critical examination of Native literary theorists Gerald Vizenor, Robert Allen Warrior, and LeAnne Howe. Author Christy Stanlake set out a critical methodology for reading the unique aspects of Native American dramaturgy that she believes both complements and extends the theories of the general theater.

The book begins with a history of Native American drama. Stanlake reclaims Native American performers and drama writers from the early twentieth century: Will Rogers, Mary “Te Ata” Thompson Fisher, and Lynn Riggs (playwright), who were all members of Native American communities who coded their expressions of Native American heritage and themes due to the racism of the times. In contrast, in the second half of the twentieth century, freed by the civil-rights era, Native writers and performers began to publically celebrate and express their ethnicity. Native theater companies formed as early as 1956 in New York City but it was in the late 1960s and 1970s that the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) and the Native American Theater Ensemble (NATE) were founded. In Santa Fe, New Mexico the IAIA organized a Native theater program by 1969. Meanwhile in Canada, in 1974 the Native Theatre School opened in Toronto. In 1975 Spiderwoman Theater opened in New York City to draw attention to issues affecting Native women living in an urban environment. Stanlake reports that it was not until the 1980s in Canada that a ground swell of Native drama began to take shape. In 1982 a group of artistic urban Native American friends formed a collective and began to produce performances at the Toronto Native Friendship Centre. This group has since become a professional theater company and has won several awards for its work.

In the United States, where government funding for traditional arts is much thinner, Native American companies have forged creative partnerships with organizations that can help support the growth of Native theater. Founded in 1994 at Illinois University, Native Voices is a company that develops Native American scripts for commercial theater. Native Voices later joined the Autry Museum of Western Heritage. Other academic institutions have supported Native American theater as well. The Native American Women Playwrights Archive is located at Miami University in Oxford, while Ohio and UCLA’s project HOOP supports the creation of new works of drama out of the experiences of Native communities. More recently (2005) the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian launched a Native Theater Program.

In addition to these larger companies, there exist numerous grassroots Native theatrical activities such as the Inuit Tunooniq Theater company, Kumu Kahua in Honolulu and a number of Native nation-sponsored theatre initiatives. The field of Native American theater is growing and the interest of the audience is growing as well. However, Stanlake admits that mainstream audiences have difficulties with the genre. She argues that the core dilemma is “theoretical and institutionalized.”

Stanlake’s approach to critical theory uses a framework of Indian traditions to illuminate the ways that Native American plays differ from non-Native plays. She defines Native American drama as “a field of theatre that focuses on plays authored by members of the indigenous nations of the American Western Hemisphere, plays that are both secular and intertribal.” (17) She uses the term secular to clarify that she is not writing about scripted religious ceremonies but of newly created works that are expressive of intertribal issues. However, she also explains that many playwrights do include spirituality and characters from specific nations in their plays. Native writers often write about sovereignty—a traditional Native worldview that is both spiritual and communal.

Stanlake illustrates the recurring topics in Native American drama of political sovereignty, reclaiming identities, revising history, revisiting oral traditions...