Honoring Native Stories and Acknowledging Indigenous Identities in TYA
Join TYA/USA, in partnership with Arts in Color, in a national conversation on addressing the racism and oppression that impacts the entire TYA industry in personal, professional, and systemic ways.
How can non Native TYA institutions honor, represent and collaborate with Native Communities? How can Native Communities benefit from a deeper connection with Theatre for Young Audiences? This session will focus on honoring Native American stories in TYA, and how acknowledgment of indigenous communities and Native land can impact the day-to-day functioning of TYA organizations.
Over the course of a 11-session webinar series we will explore a variety of issues and perspectives regarding the ways artists and organizations can begin to (or further) embed antiracist practice in Theatre for Young Audiences.
In addition to the 11 webinars, participants will be provided with reading materials, resources, follow up questions to deepen their learning, and a Slack Channel for further dialogue. Join colleagues across the country in actively engaging with ways to dismantle racism and white supremacy in the TYA field, and work toward making (or sustaining) meaningful change in creating a truly equitable landscape for our artists, organizations, and our young audiences.
Event Details
Date: Thursday, December 3, 2020
Time: 1:30 – 2:45 PM ET
Cost: Sliding Scale. Visit www.tyausa.org/antiracism for details.
Register Now
Members Non-MembersThis webinar is part of an 11-session series. For more information, visit www.tyausa.org/antiracism.
Speakers
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Mary Kathryn Nagle
Speaker
Mary Kathryn Nagle is an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation. She is also a partner at Pipestem Law, P.C., where she works to protect tribal sovereignty and the inherent right of Indian Nations to protect their women and children from domestic violence and sexual assault. From 2015 to 2019, she served as the first Executive Director of the Yale Indigenous Performing Arts Program. Nagle is an alum of the 2013 Public Theater Emerging Writers Program. Productions include Miss Lead (Amerinda, 59E59), Fairly Traceable (Native Voices at the Autry), Sovereignty (Arena Stage), Manahatta (Oregon Shakespeare Festival), Return to Niobrara (Rose Theater), and Crossing Mnisose (Portland Center Stage), Sovereignty (Marin Theatre Company), and Manahatta (Yale Repertory Theatre). She has received commissions from Arena Stage, the Rose Theater (Omaha, Nebraska), Portland Center Stage, Denver Center for the Performing Arts, Yale Repertory Theatre, Round House Theater, and Oregon Shakespeare Theater.
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DeLanna Studi
Speaker
DeLanna Studi is a proud citizen of the Cherokee Nation. She is an actor/playwright whose TV credits include “Dreamkeeper”, “Edge of America”, “Shameless”, “General Hospital”, “Z Nation”, and the recent season of “Goliath”. Her theater credits include the First National Broadway Tour of “August: Osage County”, Off-Broadway’s “Gloria: A Life”. She retraced her family’s footsteps along the Trail of Tears with her father and created her play “And So We Walked” which has been touring for the last three years. She is the Chair of SAG-AFTRA’s National Native Americans Committee and the Artistic Director of Native Voices at the Autry, the country’s only Equity theatre company devoted exclusively to developing and producing new works for the stage by Native American, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian, and First Nations playwrights.
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Ty Defoe
Speaker
Ty Defoe (Giizhig), Oneida + Ojibwe Nations, is an interdisciplinary artist, writer/actor, director, and Grammy Award winner. Ty’s has an integral approach to artistic projects pulling in social justice messages rooted through words, music, literature, theatre, film. Awards: Robert Rauschenberg Artist in Residence, Jonathan Larson Award. Works created: Red Pine, The Way They Lived, Ajijaak on Turtle Island, Hear Me Say My Name. All My Relations Collective—(DTWG, Public Theater, GIZHIBAA GIIZHIG | Revolving Sky at Under the Radar’s Incoming!). Movement Director: Mother Road, Dir. Bill Rauch (OSF), Manahatta, Dir. Laurie Woolery (OSF + Yale Rep), Choreographer for Tracy Lett’s, The Minutes (Broadway). Netflix Appearance: Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Broadway: Young Jean Lee’s Straight White Men, Dir. Anna Shapiro. Degrees: CalArts, Goddard College, + NYU Tisch. Lives in NYC, loves the color clear. He|We| tydefoe.com
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Kenny Ramos
Speaker
Kenny Ramos (Barona Band of Mission Indians, Kumeyaay Nation) grew up on the Barona Indian Reservation and holds a BA in American Indian Studies from UCLA. He is an ensemble member at Cornerstone Theater Company and Native Voices at the Autry and has also performed at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, The Kennedy Center, South Dakota Shakespeare Festival, Passage Theatre, and the Denver Center Theatre Company. Specific highlights include the world premiere productions of Larissa FastHorse’s Urban Rez (Cornerstone Theater Company) and Native Nation (Cornerstone/ASU Gammage), Mary Kathryn Nagle’s Return to Niobrara (Rose Theater Omaha), and Vera Starbard’s Devilfish (Perseverance Theatre). Kenny is a recipient of First Peoples Fund’s Cultural Capital Fellowship and is the first Native American to receive Theatre Communications Group’s Fox Foundation Resident Actor Fellowship. He is passionate about theatre that centers Native perspectives and challenges settler colonial realities of American society, and outside of theater, Kenny is actively involved with language revitalization efforts and two spirit advocacy within his own tribal community.
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Larry Wright Jr.
Speaker
Larry Wright Jr. is the current Tribal Chairman of the Ponca Tribe of Nebraska. He was recently elected to his 4th four year term. He also serves the Area Vice-President for the Great Plains Region on the NCAI Board of Directors and is the Acting Chairman of the Nebraska Commission on Indian Affairs.
With a background in education and management, Wright brings extensive knowledge of tribal sovereignty issues that afflict Indian Country today. He has been a High School Social Studies Teacher and owns a General Contracting business. He is also a veteran.
