On Between Two Knees, or About Other Futures

Between Two Knees starts and the emcee, Larry—brilliantly played by Justin “Jud” Gauthier—warns the audience:

So, white people…You're about to see some heavy stuff. I mean let's be honest here, we're talking about INDIANS. And Indians have been through some pretty dark shit… All caused by you people. We're gonna make this fun. We gonna talk about war and genocide and PTSD and molestation. So it’s OK to laugh. You are going to feel some guilt watching this. But don't worry. That's just what it feels like to be confronted with the source of your social power.

Then, the cast passes a donation bin among the patrons.

The play has just started, and our seats should be burning by now. I´ve seen the show lots of times, from New Haven to Princeton to New York, and the audiences always seem confused: what are we supposed to do with the donation bin? Is this a joke, or do they actually expect the audience to drop some bills? Everyone looks puzzled, smiles, exchange gazes. Some take out their wallets. Some days the bin returns pretty full.

Since the first time I read Between Two Knees in 2020, I´ve been fascinated by this gesture. It pushes the audience to take a stance and grapple with their pity, their fear, their guilt, or their joy. Maybe, as Jud once told me, leaving a couple of bills is a way to feel some ease and give oneself permission to laugh and join the party. It is the perfect entrance to the wild ride we are about to experience. Between Two Knees is a piece written by the Indigenous troupe the 1491s, composed of Dallas Goldtooth, Sterlin Harjo, Migizi Pensoneau, Ryan RedCorn, and Bobby Wilson. Commissioned by the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, it opened in 2019 and then transferred to the Yale Repertory Theatre (where I served as assistant dramaturg), McCarter Theatre Center, Seattle Repertory Theatre, and then to the Perelman Performing Arts Center.

The show is a history of Native Americans in Turtle Island from the Wounded Knee Massacre (1890) to the Wounded Knee Occupation by the American Indian Movement (1973). Between Two Knees unfolds a plot that manages to cover almost a century of history, focusing on Catholic boarding schools, World War II, the Vietnam War, and other events, while telling the fictitious story of Isaiah and Irma Wolf and their descendants. I find this balance outstanding; the production navigates the complex ties of information, historical reflection, and storytelling in a way that reminds of Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979) or Mel Brooks’ History of the World, Part One (1981). These movies interrogate historical constructions to analyze and mock them, creating comedy out of the absurdity of what humans are capable of doing, as well as the ridiculous and biased ways that historians write the past. By the extraordinary hand of director Eric Ting, Between Two Knees becomes massive, impressive, able to confront the audience and to entertain them at the same time, provoking raucous laughter that turns into loud sobbing in seconds. This, of course, can only be achieved with the labor of an outstanding cast who join Larry the emcee: Rachel Crowl, Derek Garza, Shyla Lefner, Wotko Long, James Ryen, Shaun Taylor-Corbett, and Sheila Tousey.

The whole story is wildly tragic. And maybe that is why we need to laugh through it.

You may be thinking now that this is a wildly ambitious project. It is. Covering eighty years of history, it takes the audience across Turtle Island, to the Pacific and the Atlantic, unpacking the traumas and liberations of the Wolfs as they build a family. Here, war is not an idea nor an event happening thousands of miles away. It is a very tangible presence that chases the characters, so death breathes down their necks constantly. Larry actually dies on stage several times and keeps coming back. The whole story is wildly tragic. And maybe that is why we need to laugh through it.

The play reveals that history is not a given, but a terribly artificial construction. The past is vast and impossible to encompass in words. What kind of strange faith makes us believe that these sounds, these scribbles can mirror life? History is a construction, one that can´t be naïve, and it is always written following the interests and worldview of those who write it.

This does not mean that we should, or that we can, get rid of history. I think this means that weaving history is a never-ending practice. It will inevitably create absences, voids, and holes that demand attention and exploration. In her essay “Posession,” Suzan-Lori Parks wrote, “I´m working theater like an incubator to create ‘new’ historical events. I´m remembering and staging historical events which, through their happening on stage, are ripe for inclusion in the canon of history.” What makes performing arts unique is that the storytelling happens in real time in front of an audience, and this is experienced collectively. Parks proposes that these characteristics of theatre make it a powerful platform to investigate the gaps of historical narratives. It materializes what is lost and what is unknown. Between Two Knees embraces this principle by bringing eighty years of history to life in front of the eyes of the public.

In Between Two Knees, a troupe of Native artists tells the histories of their peoples, but they refuse to use tragedy to do so. The genre of tragedy inherited from the Ancient Greeks emphasizes how trapped humans are by destiny and how little freedom we actually enjoy. This focus is not necessarily bad—until it becomes the predominant narrative resource to tell the stories of oppressed peoples. It risks creating a world where only pain is possible and will be reproduced constantly. How, then, can we combat this? The 1491s claim their freedom from this history by laughing their asses off.

The 1491s are staging a future to respond to the past they have just narrated. This bends and liberates time, as well as the construction of history. Maybe other pasts, other presents, other futures are possible.

Near the end of act one, Irma Wolf claims that “uncensored humor borne from trauma is actually beneficial to community healing,” and this brilliant line seems to summarize the project of the show. Is it possible to make comedy about massacres, sexual abuse, war? The key here, of course, is that the ones making the jokes are those who received the violence—and I intentionally avoid the word victim as a category. When I interviewed the team, Bobby Wilson said the following:

It is so easy to fall in love with your trauma, when all of these spaces that will give you money to talk about it will pat you on the back and say, “I’m so sorry that happened to you.” Oh! That shit feels good, doesn’t it? They’re just massaging the balls of your trauma all fucking day, every time you show up with something like that. More! More! Give me more! A lot of the stuff we do is so against that. I’m in fucking therapy, I don’t like my trauma, I wanna get rid of that shit, and I don’t wanna pass it on. I have a child! I don’t want them to grow up with that. I want this kid to have a fun, amazing, beautiful life.

Humor becomes a strategy to deactivate trauma. Wilson discusses the use of narratives as a device for liberation, and so the retelling of history constitutes a collective act of transformation. By reimagining the past, the troupe makes it malleable, and so it stops constituting a burden.

The end of the play is tragic, though. After almost a century of resistance, the Wolf family doesn´t survive the reclamation of Wounded Knee. Maybe there was no way out and we needed to look the violence in the eye. But we can´t leave the theatre like that, so a hole opens in the space-time continuum and they are all saved. The deus ex machina is blatant and lacks subtlety. Larry travels back to 1491 to stop Christopher Columbus, and everyone lives happily ever after. It is shamelessly absurd and joyful as hell. The audience dances and sings together, and for some minutes we inhabit utopia. Of course, after the applause, the audience leaves the theatre and things have not changed in the real world. Maybe utopia can only last a handful of minutes. But the play has also done something more powerful. The team has dreamed the future and materialized it. Suzan-Lori Parks wrote about using theatre to stage the past, and here the 1491s are staging a future to respond to the past they have just narrated. This bends and liberates time, as well as the construction of history. Maybe other pasts, other presents, other futures are possible.

In 2023, I traveled to Princeton to see the opening night of Between Two Knees at the McCarter, and the next morning I met with Jud for coffee and a walk. He comes from Wisconsin, I am from Perú, and neither of us imagined we would be doing what we love in these fancy theatres. This morning our histories resonate with each other, as they have done for countless nights of drinks and food after rehearsing or performing. He tells me that today, as we speak, there are kids watching YouTube while dreaming of movies and shows they will create years ahead. We need to be ready to work with them, welcome them in the spaces that welcomed us. I smile and think the futures we have ahead are grim, so we need to keep reworking, reshaping, retelling, rediscovering our pasts. Liberating ourselves from them. With this, we´ll afford some other futures. Maybe?