Others see this interpretation as a devaluation of sacred rituals as simply a pre-form of secular theatre.”[1] One of the first practitioners of Native theatre was Seneca playwright and actress Gowongo Mohawk (1860-1924), whose 1892 play, Wep-Ton-No-Mah, was performed in the United Kingdom.
[1] In 1950, two non-Natives, Frank Morrison and Cecil West wrote and directed the opera Tzinquaw: The Thunderbird and the Killer Whale, which premiered in Duncan, BC, performed by purely Native people.
In Canada, playwrights James Reaney, John Herbert, and George Ryga made their contribution to Native theatre with The Ecstasy of Rita Joe (1970).
In 1987, on the Hobbema Reserve, Four Winds Theatre Group was founded by Darrel and Lori Wildcat (Cree), along with cofounders Rosa and Melvin John.
“KNPRN concentrates on traditional theatre, storytelling, and dance and works with young people, touring all over Canada and internationally.” (1) In 1992, Margo Kane founded Full Circle: First Nations Performance in British Columbia.
It resists any clear-cut definition and is constantly exploring new forms of expression.”[1] The stories that inspire Native American theatre have been around for hundreds of years, but did not gain formal recognition by colonial America.
Even though there is a large amount of plays available for production or analysis, the Native American drama genre is often overlooked by not only the general public, but also by universities.
The lack of connection between plays from reservations and urban areas needs to improve in order for there to be more information from different angles and perspectives presented through dramatic literature.
“However, indigenous theater was absent in Native writing during this period and the multiple reasons given for this nonexistence usually reflect a long history of silencing, discrimination, oppression, and displacement exercised in the genre.”[3] These stories were usually told orally in a way accompanied by dancing, music, and other performances while the storyteller gets close to the audience to give them an immersive encounter of the story and the storyteller.
The spare setting, the drumming, the chanting and singing, the dancing, its episodic nature, and its wry point of view all proudly proclaimed this was Indian Theatre.”[4] Coyote is a metaphor to describe the character of Native American theater.
Keams has challenges stereotypes through writing and creating plays that include Native American history, such as Flight of The Army Worm, first performed in 1976 at Navajo Community College.
“The character of the announcer gives the audience factual information about historical events, while through song, the Guitar Player urges revolution.
The “Three Miguel sisters" founded the Spiderwoman Theater (1975); their drama has raised the public profile of figures and themes of traditional Native American stories.
In the play Day of the Swallows, Estela Portillo Trambley uses an Indigenous male character to represent the protagonist's Native American roots.
“Eduardo symbolizes the best and the worst of humanity in Josefa’s world, for he is Nature personified as Man.” Mummified Deer was written in 1984 by Luis Valdez.
His character Cajeme, a deer dancer named after a famous Yaqui who fought against the Mexican government, is portrayed through different elements in the play.
“Cajeme represents her inner thoughts, her fears, her Yaqui blood and being.”[2] These plays were written to reconnect Chicanos with their Native American roots.
Trambley focused more on writing in the style of realism, which was more general with no indication of specific indigenous people, while Valdez wrote and produced in more specifics communities as well as by using “a surreal vision of the Chicano’s distorted postmodern, internally colonized condition.” Trambley stated in an interview, “I hope…[Chicanos] still relate to seasons and to plants and to colors and to the wind, and to the Indian in them, or the element that is closest to the Earth.”[2]