Bird House

Our next two Retreat and Festival plays may sound familiar to Native Voices patrons. Playwright Diane Glancy is a long- time friend of Native Voices and we're proud to begin a new journey with her as we continue to develop her latest play, The Bird House. This play was featured during our 2010 First Look Series with Stephan Wolfert and Bryan Davidson at the helm. For the 2011 Retreat and Festival, direction will be led by Robert Caisley with dramaturgy by Shirley Fishman.

Diane Glancy, Playwright

Diane Glancy (Cherokee) is professor emeritus at Macalester College. She lives in Shawnee Mission, Kansas. Native Voices has produced three of her plays, Jump Kiss, Stone Heart, and Salvage. In 2010, she made an independent film, The Dome of Heaven, which won the Native American Film Award at the Trail Dance Film Festival in Duncan, Oklahoma. A new collection of essays, The Dream of a Broken Field, is forthcoming in 2011 from the University of Nebraska Press. In 2010, Mammoth Publishers in Lawrence, Kansas, published her latest collection of poems, Stories of the Driven World. Her novels include The Reason for Crows, the story of Kateri Tekakwitha, a 17th century Mohawk converted to Christianity by the Jesuits; Pushing the Bear, a story about the 1838-39 Cherokee Trail of Tears.

Robert Caisley, Director

Rob Caisley will be pulling double duty during this year's Retreat and Festival. In addition to directing Bird House, he will be serving as dramaturg for Susie Silook's play Ungipamsuuka (My Story). For information on Rob, please click here.

Shirley Fishman, Dramaturg

Shirley Fishman is the Director of Play Development at La Jolla Playhouse where she oversees commissions and projects in development. Dramaturgy credits at Native Voices: Wings of the Night Sky by Joy Harjo; Fancy Dancer by Dawn Dumont. At the Playhouse: John Leguizamo's Diary of a Madman, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Night Watcher, 33 Variations, Zorro in Hell, The Wiz, among others. At The Public Theater: Jessica Hagedorn's Dogeaters; Two Sisters and a Piano by Nilo Cruz; Tina Landau's Space; Arthur Miller's The Ride Down Mt. Morgan; Tony Kushner's A Dybbuk: Or Between Two Worlds; David Henry Hwang's Golden Child; readings, workshops and co-curator of New Work Now! Festival. Also Sundance Theatre Lab (I Am My Own Wife; 36 Views; and The Laramie Project), Ojai Playwrights Festival, UC San Diego Baldwin Festival, USC Under Construction New Play Festival. M.F.A. Columbia University. Member LMDA.  

The Bird House will be presented at La Jolla Playhouse on Saturday, June 4 and at the Autry National Center on Saturday, June 18 at 1:00p. For tickets, please click here.

Capping Off Diane Glancy Week

Photo by Lost in Scotland

As you know, last week we kicked off our 2010 First Look Series with a workshop and reading of Diane Glancy's newest play The Bird House. We've developed and produced three plays by Diane in the past and are extremely excited to begin yet another journey with her. In addition, we held an in-house reading of yet another new play by Diane, The Catch, which she's creating in collaboration with long-time Native Voices' Costume Designer Christina Wright.

Needless to say, it was a busy, busy week for Native Voices. The script we began our Wednesday evening workshop with for Bird House was completely re-written for our Thursday afternoon rehearsal and the public reading of the play held later that night was actually only the second time it had been heard out loud in its entirety. Talk about first look!

On Friday, we had to place our Bird thoughts aside in order to explore the depths of The Catch, a play based on the ledger- book drawings of Bear's Heart who was imprisoned at Fort Marion, Florida during The Trail of Tears. We assembled an incredible group of artists to aid Diane and Chris as they continue their examination of voice, clothing, and Native education. Many thanks to Vincent Scott who joined us from the National Museum of the American Indian to direct the piece as well as Kim Walters from the Southwest Musuem of the American Indian who hosted the event. Of course, I have to mention our lovely cast of actors - Robert Greygrass, Kalani Queypo, Adeye Sahran, DeLanna Studi, and Noah Watts - for their creative energies and valuable insights.

Throughout the week, Diane was so gracious with everyone's comments and feedback - surprisingly, not every playwright is like that. But what Native Voices is able to do for its artists is create a safe place that inspires creativity; an open space where we can all be heard. And it is within these spaces that the magic of play development takes place.

A Playwright's Inspiration

The Hotel Eden by Joseph Cornell

From the moment I met playwright Diane Glancy, I have been fascinated by what inspires her to write. From old photographs, to a heart-shaped rock, to a car ride down Highway 2, the stories behind her plays are just as interesting as the plays themselves. Next week, we will begin workshopping our fourth play by Diane, The Bird House, which features a role written specifically for Artistic Director Randy Reinholz. 

So, we put our frybread-filled thoughts on pause for a week or two and turn our attention towards Ropesville, Texas where the heat consumes you, the poverty overwhelms you, and hopelessness is a way of life. It's a grim play but, at the heart of it, is the sense that we will be able to overcome anything that's thrown our way.

Below, in her own words, is what inspired Diane to write the play that will kick off our 2010 First Look Series and it's my hope that these words will inspire you to join us as we begin our journey into The Bird House.

My work usually comes in the process of travel. I was on my way from Kansas to San Diego in 2008. I stopped at my son’s in Texas. The landscape description comes from his place— the ground dried and cracked, the alkali traces, the short, brittle weeds. There’s always baggage to the land. If I stand in a place long enough, situations occur to me.

At the end of the play, I have the following:   

Gratefulness to Native Voices at the Autry for the Naomi Iizuka workshop during the LMDA Conference from which the idea of two women living in a church came.

The idea for the eventual use of videography in the play came from the video work in Craig Wolf’s The Merry Chase, which I saw at the LMDA Conference in 2008. In fact, it was the genesis of the play along with a conversation with Randy Reinholz.

The title came from the actual bird houses on Jean and Randy’s back patio. It was where Randy and I talked one morning about aging, stroke, and puzzlements of the Christian faith— issues probably no one wants to look at.

At the moment, I’m interested in miniaturist theater, an invented term that means a play constricted in a small space. Nailed down. Distilled. For what purpose? Artistic exploration? The downturn of our economy? The way the term, cutback, continually is in the news? The way aging seems to hedge one’s life? (I can’t do what I used to).

I don’t mean miniaturist theater in terms of a short play. The Bird House is a regular one-act. But a miniaturistic play. Though not stated directly, its undercurrent is Native American heritage, a minority culture small in number in relationship to others. It also often is confined to a reservation.

For this play, I’ve been influence by Joseph Cornell, an American assemblage artist of small boxes with a proximity to Surrealism. He’s the author of contained worlds. I want to make a contained world of words.

I want large moments contained in smallness— I want to get as close as possible to the claustrophobic while maintaining a play with very large issues— abandonment, poverty, stroke, death.

I want a rowdy play. A small, quiet, rowdy play with huge, noisy, oversized issues.

I want it to seem the actors hardly can move. I want them hemmed with the smallest stitches by the sharpest needle.

Pierre Reverdy defined surrealism as “a juxtaposition of two more or less distant realities.” In this play, I want the distant realities to be not two but three characters who have enormous distances, yet live together on one small stage.

I want to see their restricted movements. (Even if this play grows with development, I hope it remains a minimalist piece on some level, meaning movement and action take place within a small space that is no space, to maintain the undercurrent of restriction in which the limitation and compression spark a dramatic friction).

I want it to seem like dialogue contained in small boxes of metaphor, with the largest issues held in the tiniest containments— as if the characters were tied together with very short ropes. I want to see the word, diminishment, as a lovely horizon.

In the end, as I travel, I try to catch the flocks of words that lift from passing fields.

The Bird House will be presented at the Autry National Center on Thursday, October 7 at 7p. It will be directed by Stephan Wolfert and feature dramaturgy by Bryan Davidson with a cast that includes Carla-Rae, Ellen Dostal, and Randy Reinholz. For more information, please click here.