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Plays by or about Native Americans
Larissa FastHorse is a Native American (Sicangu Lakota) playwright and choreographer based in Santa Monica, California. FastHorse grew up in South Dakota, where she began her career as a ballet dancer and choreographer but was forced into an early retirement after ten years of dancing due to an injury. Returning to an early interest in writing, she became involved in Native American drama, especially the Native American film community. Later she began writing and directing her own plays, several of which are published through Samuel French (a Concord Theatricals Company) and Dramatic Publishing. With playwright and performer Ty Defoe, FastHorse co-founded Indigenous Direction, a "consulting firm that helps organizations and individuals who want to create accurate work by, for and with Indigenous peoples." Indigenous Direction's clients include the Guthrie Theater. FastHorse is a past vice chair of the Theatre Communications Group, a service organization for professional non-profit American theatre. Read more on Wikipedia.
Lynn Riggs (August 31, 1899 – June 30, 1954)[1] was an American author, poet, playwright and screenwriter. His 1931 play Green Grow The Lilacs was adapted into the landmark 1943 musical Oklahoma!. Riggs was born on a farm near Claremore, Oklahoma, (then Indian Territory). His mother was 1/8 Cherokee, and when he was two years old, his mother secured his Cherokee allotment for him. He was able to draw on his allotment to help support his writing. Riggs wrote 21 full-length plays, several short stories, poems, and a television script. Read more on Wikipedia.
William S. Yellow Robe Jr. (February 4, 1960 – July 19, 2021) was an Assiniboine actor, author, director, educator, playwright, and poet. Yellow Robe's works have been performed in venues across the United States, including the Penumbra Theatre Company in St. Paul; the Public Theater in New York; the Trinity Repertory Company in Providence, RI; and the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C. He was a member of Penumbra, as well as the Ensemble Studio Theater, Amerinda, Inc., and the advisory board for Red Eagle Soaring Native Youth Theatre. Read more on Wikipedia.
- North American Indian Drama
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Collection of 244 plays by 48 playwrights representing the stories and creative energies of American Indian and First Nation playwrights of the twentieth century. More than half of the works are previously unpublished, representing groups such as Cherokee, Métis, Creek, Choctaw, Pembina Chippewa, Ojibway, Lenape, Comanche, Cree, Navajo, Rappahannock, Hawaiian/Samoan, and others.
- American Gypsy byPublication Date: 2002In American Gypsy, a collection of six plays, Diane Glancy uses a mélange of voices to invoke the myths and realities of modern Native American life.
- Average Family byPublication Date: 2007Two families. One reality TV show. Who will survive three months as an 1840’s frontier family on the Minnesota prairie? Will it be the urbane Roubidouxs from Minneapolis? Or the no-nonsense, live-off-the-land Monroes, from the North Shore? Soon enough, both families find they’ve more to overcome than just the elements. It’s an adventure (all caught on confession cam!) fraught with laughable predicaments and harrowing incidents. And when one family reconnects with their Dakota culture, it leads to startling revelations for all, inspiring the true spirit of generosity.
- The Body Guards byPublication Date: 1997Benny and Skin are charged with watching over the body of their "Uncle" Clarence until the hearse and sherrif can arrive. As Benny gets a little too close to the body and probes a little too much about what Skin knows, the two hear a voice from beyond the door. A short play about who will care about what happens to the dead.
- Body Indian byPublication Date: 1972"Body Indian" is the most conventionally dramatic of Geiogamah's plays. Its five scenes unfold in one room during one day, and each scene is centered on the robbing of Bobby, the drunken main character, by his friends. The play is further unified by sound and sight effects at the ends of scenes. These intensify the predominantly naturalistic mood, which culminates in “horror” at the end, as Bobby slumps forward in his chair.
- The Cherokee Night byPublication Date: 1932The author of numerous plays and film scripts, including Green Grow the Lilacs, later made into the hit musical Oklahoma!, Lynn Riggs (18991954) is recognized as one of America’s most engaging dramatists and was the only active American Indian dramatist during the first half of the twentieth century. The Cherokee Night and Other Plays features his never-before-published play Out of Dust, as well as The Cherokee Night and Green Grow the Lilacs.
- Chili Corn byPublication Date: 1997A poem expanded into a play that deals with interracial relations, social issues, and violence.
- Cherokee Family Reunion byCall Number: PS3606.A784 C54 2013ISBN: 9781583429075Publication Date: 2013This modern-day Brady Bunch blends two nearly grown families when a Cherokee man, John, and a white woman, Emma, get married and move into his small community, surrounded by his family. Before the wedding decorations are down, the two groups are thrown into planning the biggest family reunion in Cherokee, N.C., complete with a historical reenactment! Looking for acceptance, Emma hopes that playing out the story of Henry Timberlake, a white explorer visiting the Cherokees in the 1700s, will help the kids realize what it is like to fit into a foreign world. Instead, cultures clash, young love blooms and history threatens to repeat itself. Through music, dance and some wild fights, everyone learns what it really means to be a family.
- Grandchildren of the Buffalo Soldiers and Other Untold Stories byCall Number: PS3575.E46 G73 2009ISBN: 9780935626599Publication Date: 2009-01-15Drama. Native American Studies. This collection of five plays portrays the complex issues that arise when mixed-blood American Indian characters confront traditional Native beliefs. It shows how legislated and internalized racism has ravaged human relationships and created divisive struggles within Native American families and communities. The title play, Grandchildren of the Buffalo Soldiers, examines the lingering effects of colonial exploitation of tensions between African American and Native American people in the nineteenth century. All of Yellow Robe's plays meditate on the returning to home, to community, and how the matter of belonging is a privilege. William S. Yellow Robe, Jr. is an Assiniboine playwright, director, poet, actor, writer, and educator from the Fort Peck Indian Reservation, located in northeastern Montana.
Green Grow the Lilacs by Call Number: PS3535.I645 G7 1931ISBN: 9780573609626Publication Date: 1931Drama / 10m, 4f, extras This evocative play charting the rocky romance between headstrong farmgirl Laurey and cocky cowhand Curley in a tale of early America during the settlement of the midwest was the basis of the classic Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Oklahoma Using the colorful vernacular of the period, Green Grow the Lilacs paints a picture of pioneer farmlife with colorful characters and language, presenting a dramatic challenge to professionals and amateurs alike.- New Native American Drama byCall Number: PS3557.E357 N4ISBN: 0806115866Publication Date: 1980Three plays that depict the problems of American Indians today including Body Indian, Foghorn, and 49.
Russet Mantle and the Cherokee Night by Call Number: PS3535.I645 R8 1936ISBN: 9781258217006Publication Date: 1936
Plays by or about other indigenous people
Richard Joseph Frankland is an Australian playwright, scriptwriter and musician. He is an Aboriginal Australian of Gunditjmara origin from Victoria. He has worked significantly for the Aboriginal Australian cause. Frankland has worked as a soldier, a fisherman, and as a field officer to the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. This experience inspired him to write several plays, including No Way to Forget, Who Killed Malcolm Smith and Conversations with the Dead. Read more on Wikipedia.
Jane Harrison (born 1960) is an Indigenous Australian playwright, novelist, writer and researcher. A descendant of the Muruwari people of New South Wales, from the area around Bourke and Brewarrina, Harrison grew up in the Victorian Dandenongs with her mother and sister. She began her career as an advertising copywriter, before becoming a playwright, novelist, writer and researcher. Her best-known work is Stolen, which received critical claim and has toured nationally and internationally. Read more on Wikipedia.
Tomson Highway (born 6 December 1951) is an Indigenous Canadian playwright, novelist, and children's author. He is best known for his plays The Rez Sisters and Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing, both of which won the Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding New Play and the Floyd S. Chalmers Award. Read more on Wikipedia.
James "Jimmy" Ronald Chi (1948 – 26 June 2017) was an Australian composer, musician and playwright. His best known work is the 1990 musical Bran Nue Dae which was adapted for film in 2009. The musical won the prestigious Sidney Myer Performing Arts Awards in 1990. The following year the published script and score won the Special Award in the Western Australian Premier's Book Awards. It brought acclaim for many Aboriginal artists including Ernie Dingo, Josie Ningali Lawford and Leah Purcell. The musical's success was also instrumental in the formation of the Black Swan Theatre Company. Read more on Wikipedia.
- The Drover's Wife byPublication Date: 2017The title character, Molly Johnson, is a heavily pregnant woman living in a remote homestead in the Snowy Mountains, whose husband spends long periods away as a drover. She encounters Yadaka, an Aboriginal man on the run from colonial authorities. Over a few days, a series of events occur which change their lives forever.
- The Visitors byPublication Date: 2021On a sweltering day, 26 January, 1788, on a bluff high above Sydney Cove, seven Aboriginal men stand looking out to sea. Moored off-shore is a huge nowee (boat) ... then there are two, then more. Who are these visitors? Where are they from? What do they want?.
- The Witch of Niagara byPublication Date: 1998The action occurs in a village, in the fields, and on the paths through the forest along the river and gorge in the vicinity of Niagara Falls, the residence of the Thunderer, the Iroquois god of Rain.
