Loud and Clear: A Roundtable on Theatre's Colonial Silencing

For hundreds of years, theatres in the United States have staged dehumanizing representations of Native people. Native theatremakers consistently work to change or remove these plays, but they are often silenced. Quita Sullivan (Montaukett/Shinnecock), senior program director for theatre at the New England Foundation for the Arts, sits down with two people who have pushed back on this harm from within institutions: playwright and attorney Mary Kathryn Nagle (Cherokee Nation) and Betsy Richards (Cherokee Nation), executive director and senior partner with Wabanaki Nations at the Abbe Museum. They surface not only their significant work to change the narrative, but also the kinds of arguments they encountered along the way.

I don't think true artistic choice comes out of ignorance. If you're just perpetuating harmful racist stereotypes, that's not art.

Quita Sullivan: We're exploring how we are being silenced and what the effects of that are. We know that trauma is real. We're all dealing with it in multiple ways right now.

Mary Kathryn (“MK”) Nagle: These are tough conversations. When I have raised issues of the dehumanization of Native people on stage—how much it disappoints me, how much trauma it causes to people in our community—I'm met with a lot of responses. People say, "Well, we have free speech. First Amendment." But what we're asking for is a different conversation. I'm an attorney, and I’m not saying, "Please use censorship." I’m saying, "Why are you choosing false, dehumanizing narratives about us instead of real representation of us on stage?"

The policies that are being perpetrated by the federal government to destroy theatre right now are a very natural consequence of how American theatre got its beginning. I have to credit Dr. Bethany Hughes for the work she did in documenting the play Metamora; or, The Last of the Wampanoags (1829) and its rise in popularity in the 1830s. The play used redface, and that dehumanized the Wampanoags. That play arose while American theatre had a central role in shaping American culture. It's not a coincidence that Andrew Jackson was president at the same time that Metamora was being consumed by Americans. It promoted this idea of Indians as a vanishing race and not existing as a people anymore. Then, those were exactly the policies Andrew Jackson created with the Indian Removal Act.

So, if you're going to investigate or invest in any kind of stories along these lines, also understand where they come from. Understand where the practice of redface comes from.

These theatres that are choosing to do redface don't know the origins of redface. I find that really problematic because I don't think true artistic choice comes out of ignorance. If you're just perpetuating harmful racist stereotypes, that's not art. That's what we have to help our fellow theatre people in this community understand.

Quita: I'm interested in the use of the word “censorship”—accusing us of censorship when we're asking for discussion.

MK: Yes, we get told constantly that we're engaging in censorship when we don't even have a seat at the table. Censorship is government action silencing speech.

In many cases, we're saying, "Why are you doing this? This relies on stereotypes and tropes. Can we have a conversation about how it harms Native people?” The irony is we're being told that is censorship.

Quita: That is one of the tools, to turn it around. Blame the victim. That leads into another thing, which is that we don't understand satire. Betsy, that came up when you were a fellow at the Public during Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson.

Betsy Richards: Yes, when I was at the Public Theater, I had already worked with Oskar Eustis for several years in the early 2000s (when I was at the Pequot Museum and he was at Trinity Rep) on two Native theatre festivals and two full productions. So, by Bloody Bloody, Oskar was already very familiar with the Native theatre community. Then, in 2003, I went to the Ford Foundation, and soon after Oskar was chosen to lead the Public Theater. The moment that Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson was first being developed at the Public, my portfolio at Ford was funding Darrell Dennis's Tales of an Urban Indian and the Native Theater Initiative (NTI). At the end of my contract at Ford, Oskar asked me to join the Public Theater as a senior native initiative fellow for a year. I arrived at the Public with great expectations because of all the relationships developed, trust built, and shared investments in new Native work.

So it came to me as a shock when, soon after I started as a fellow, Oskar took me to a dress rehearsal for Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson and I witnessed the most offensive play to Native people I’d ever seen. I was sickened as I sat next to him. And a lot of people I told were like, "It can't be that bad." And then they'd see it, and they'd go, "It's worse." I went back to meet with Oskar and pointed out not only the easily understandable ugliness—redface, a sexy Andrew Jackson, and a humorous song about all the ways to kill Indians—but more importantly the damaging, desensitizing, and dehumanizing historical inaccuracies in the play. I then asked him if he was really going to do this during the Native Theater Initiative. He equated moving forward with the show as freedom of expression for the authors, and others went the not understanding “satire” route, saying it's skewering everybody. It’s also important to point out that I had been made aware that a play had been pulled from the former season’s line up because it could be considered biased about a particular group—so there had been a precedent to weigh the consequences before producing. 

Oskar then suggested that dialogue with the Native community was the way forward and asked if I would invite community members in to see the show and have a conversation about it. Of course, I spent a lot of energy with the authors and staff: a lot of emotional energy, a lot of research energy, a lot of problem-solving energy to point out that, first, in satire, it's about punching up, not about punching down. Second, it's one thing to be making a point to have humor, but it's a different thing to not tell the truth in ways that harm a group. Most of my encounters were about listening, but really, very little changed. Oskar then called a meeting with over twenty community members. It was only scheduled for forty-five minutes. 

This is something that we've been talking about a lot lately—the uncompensated labor that we are doing to change the American theatre.

MK: When you talk to these people, and you ask about the origins of the stereotypes in these plays: "Can you tell me the first instance in America when this was used? Have you read Playing Indian by Philip J. Deloria?" Seriously, how do you do satire if it's based on ignorance? I think satire, for it to actually be satire, has to be based out of knowledge and an intentional choice.

Cheap jokes that punch down and dehumanize Native people that have gotten a laugh since Metamora was on stage, since the beginning of the genocide, and it's not actually satire. It bothers me when people say, "Well, it's satire, and you're not understanding that." 

It's hard. Some of us, who are in these positions within the institutions or have relationships with these institutions that are doing these very harmful things, we try our best to correct it. I think we need everyone everywhere. It's worthwhile to have Native theatremakers try to work with a theatre or a playwright to change that play and to not give up. We have to keep the conversation going somehow. At the same time, it's really traumatizing for that person to be in that position.

Quita: It’s one of those patterns that's constantly repeated. The person on the inside is the one who's being traumatized. This is something that we've been talking about a lot lately—the uncompensated labor that we are doing to change the American theatre.

Betsy: Yes, because of that experience, I don't choose to work in the theatre much anymore. I’m now the director of a Native-governed museum. I’ve moved on and forgiven, but something in me really switched after that stint. As a mother of young children at the time, I stepped away in order to protect my mental and physical health. I also stopped limiting myself to theatre in order to have an impact on dominant narratives. I still direct at times, but that event made me realize that no matter what the circumstances, I could no longer accept crumbs from the settlers' table and be a whole person.

Maybe the message to the American theatre isn't, "We're going to keep fighting. We're going to keep up the pressure." To me, it's just, “By now you should know better, and you have choices.” It's completely within each organization’s power to learn to be more culturally competent all while supporting artistic freedom. Choose to produce things that don't dehumanize us or others—good art is not dependent on dehumanization. Please pause, think, and check in before you are in dress rehearsal, even if you think the script is sexy or cool or pushing the edge. This isn’t censorship. It’s about responsible choices and true consultation.

MK: That was painful when the Yale Repertory Theatre (Yale Rep) did peerless in 2015. It's about university admissions. In the story, there's this kid (played by a white actor) who is one-sixteenth Native American, and he gets into this really elite university that an Asian American student doesn't get into. The Asian American characters think he got in because he's one-sixteenth Native American, though they’re wrong about that. There's no Tribal Nation mentioned, and the actor wasn’t really Native, so it plays into all the stereotypes of the vanishing Indian. All of these things that were in peerless that were just really problematic and harmful. You could just draw the straight line to Metamora. You can just see where those ideas about us come from.

I had a position at Yale, and I felt responsible. I was running the Indigenous Performing Arts Program. I think all the Natives that had any kind of leadership or staff role or faculty role on campus wrote a letter to Yale Rep and really asked them to think about the harm they were causing to Native students. There wasn't a lot of interest in discussing that at the time or even considering it.

[Curator’s note from Tara Moses: Since the 2015 production of peerless, the script has evolved to better reflect the issues of blood quantum and identity. We can only speculate that later productions have had a different impact, perhaps as a result of MK’s work and advocacy by the larger Native community at Yale. During the Primary Stages production in 2023, the theatre programmed Native-led and centered events during the production run, including a reading of my play Quantum as an intentional conversation with peerless. I hope this series can illuminate the impact of advocacy and provide clear paths forward for harm reduction.]

We've already discredited that it's censorship. We've already discredited the satire argument. How about the argument that it's actually going to come back and hurt all of American society?

Quita: Were you requesting a meeting? Were you requesting an open conversation?

MK: We asked to have a talkback panel after one of the shows and put Native people on stage to talk about what's harmful in this play. That was a non-starter. That was a definite “no.” I think we asked if they could do some sort of public letter acknowledging that the stereotypes in this play perpetuate a false narrative that Native people aren't really Native and that blood quantum can be used legitimately to identify whether someone is actually Native.

But Yale Rep just wasn't interested. Again, they said what we were trying to do was censorship.

I think what's really weird, too, about that critique is that lot of these theatres had never produced a single play by a Native playwright (at that point, that included Yale Rep, though they have since produced a couple). If you're going to let that happen, why can't you also let us share our stories? Why can't you also invite Native playwrights to the stage?

A lot of theatres that start to work with Native playwrights become less interested in stories that dehumanize us. I think that's a natural outcome of meeting us and realizing that the true stories about us are far more interesting than the stereotypes and tropes.

peerless was a very challenging situation. Native students were going to see this play and coming out very traumatized. It felt like they were being told, "The only reason you got into Yale is because you can check the Native box, not because you got good grades in high school, worked really hard and have all the bona fides that the non-Native students have.” Now we're seeing how that narrative is destroying hundreds of years of post-Civil War civil rights statutes, like the ability of universities to utilize affirmative action to bring about the fundamental goals of the Fourteenth Amendment, which are pillars for many segments of American society. That narrative in peerless hurts everyone. So I guess that's my message too: We've already discredited that it's censorship. We've already discredited the satire argument. How about the argument that it's actually going to come back and hurt all of American society? It's bad for everyone. So even if you don't care about the impact on us, maybe care about yourselves. 

In Phil Deloria’s Playing Indian, he unpacks the psychological reason that so many non-Native Americans want to play as Indian, to dress up as Indian, to take on and appropriate our culture into American identity.

Quita: It's a way to justify being a colonizer.

Betsy: We need to invest our funds and our time in our communities and with people and organizations that want us to tell our stories. I'm in my sixties now. The years I have left on Earth, I want to be putting stuff out that is empowered and be working with people that are empowering. 

MK: We keep talking amongst ourselves and asking the American theatre to sit down at our table and have this conversation with us because we don't really have seats at their table yet. Maybe some people will hear this time.

Betsy: I want agency for all the incredible artists and culture bearers that are coming up and the folks that came before us, not just in the theatre but in all cultural platforms: museums, literature, film, etc. I think we need our upcoming leaders to be upheld as their creative, strategic, and powerful selves and give them as much support as possible.

Quita: We make our own place, we do.

Betsy: Invite them to our table.

Quita: Yes. So they can eat better food.