Raised on a small farm in Southern Minnesota with nothing to do but play pretend, Sierra Rosetta (she/her) learned to translate imagination into stories from a young age. She is an Indigenous theater artist and scholar (Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe) whose work focuses on Ojibwe stories, Indigenous archives, public humanities, dramaturgy, and pre-colonial performance.
Named one of Theatre Communication Group’s “Rising Leaders of Color” in 2024, Sierra wears many hats in her dramaturgy, playwriting, acting, and academic practices. As both a production and new-play dramaturg, her work has been seen at Goodman Theatre, Northwestern University, Native Voices, Hedgepig Theatre Ensemble, and various individual sessions with playwrights. Her research and passion focuses on incorporating Indigenous dramaturgy methodologies into theatrical practice. She is the founder of the dramaturgy mentorship program at Native Voices Theater in LA, where she also works as the Literary Associate and pairs emerging Native dramaturgs with career dramaturgs for one-on-one mentorship at Native Voices’ various festivals. Her literary work started at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in 2023 where she worked as a Literary Fellow after winning the Kennedy Center American Collegiate Theatre Festival national dramaturgy award in 2023. As a playwright, Sierra was the winner of Yale University’s Indigenous Performing Arts Program Young Native Playwright award in 2024 with her play “From the Old Wood Forest.” She was then accepted into a competitive writing residency at Storyknife Writers Retreat in Homer, Alaska in 2024, where she finished a new full-length play.
Sierra is also a Theatre and Drama PhD student at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL. Her research focuses on script reconstruction of pageants and performances at the Hayward Indian Boarding School in the early 1900s. She spends her days reading, writing, and digging through archives trying to piece together “performative assimilation” in the Indigenous studies field. She has presented at various conferences all over the country including, but not limited to, Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of America, SIX Symposium, Center for Native American and Indigenous Research, and NU Summer Research Opportunity Program.
In her limited free time, Sierra enjoys reading, playing piano, singing karaoke, “beaching,” and playing with her Holland Lop bunny, Siro.
