Amplifying Indigenous, Feminist Voices On Stage

What does an Indigenous, feminist history play look like? By surveying forty-two plays written in the 21st century by Indigenous North American women, this research attempts to identify the various approaches to the intersections of indigeneity, women’s bodies, history, and feminism. The stage affords Indigenous women’s voices and bodies a location to reinject their stories into our historical record and relate those events to the contemporary realities of Indigenous women. The plays studied in this project reveal a preoccupation with challenging settler colonialism, highlighting relationality and survivance, and foregrounding the sovereignty of Indigenous women’s bodies. These focal points demonstrate what is at stake for Indigenous North American women writing plays in the 21st century: the opportunity to critically improve conditions for Indigenous peoples, specifically women, by demanding space on stage for their perspectives and histories. An advocacy- and action-based methodology involved producing a staged reading of Marisa Carr’s Reconciliation at the University of Iowa and close analysis of works by Jaisey Bates, Diane Glancy, Larissa FastHorse, and Mary Kathryn Nagle. This research addresses the need to amplify Indigenous women’s voices on stage and close the gap between the number of plays being written by Indigenous women and the number of their plays receiving productions.