Mary Kathryn Nagle, a
playwright in this years R&D group, recounts the process of her most recent
investigative theatre project, Sliver of a Full Moon. The play was performed on
October 14th by the Native American women who included their stories as victims
of violence. For more information on the show, please click HERE.
Sometimes I have a hard time calling myself a playwright. When I write, I don’t invent stories or
characters. I don’t search deep down
into my creative soul to discover a story- I go out into my community and I
listen. And through the act of listening,
I inevitably discover stories that must be told. Stories that the world needs to hear, and
that the community needs to share. For a
long time, I felt that made me a fake playwright. All I do is listen to others, record their words,
and then I cut and paste them into a format I find to be compelling. I’m not really making up anything on my
own. What kind of a playwright does
that?
The most amazing part about writing these sorts of plays is
that you never know where the story will take you. You start with something you want to
investigate, something you don’t understand.
And you ask questions. And after
you take account of all of the answers that come back to you, you realize the
story you’re telling is a story you could never have imagined yourself.
Most recently, when I sat down to conduct interviews for Sliver of a Full Moon, I thought the
piece I was writing would just be a series of monologues that I cut and pasted
together from the transcripts of the interviews I conducted. When I was asked to conduct these interviews,
I had no idea where the story would eventually end up.
It was February 2013, and tribal leaders from several
different American Indian Nations were in Washington, D.C., lobbying for the
re-authorization of the Violence Against Women Act (“VAWA”). More specifically, they were asking the
United States Congress to pass a bill that would recognize the inherent
sovereignty of American Indian tribes to prosecute non-natives who come onto
tribal lands and commit acts of domestic abuse against Native women.
In 1978, the United States Supreme Court declared that
Indian tribes no longer have jurisdiction to prosecute non-Indians who commit
crimes on reservations. Following the
Supreme Court’s decision in Oliphant,
Native women were hit the hardest.
Native women are more likely to become victims of violent crimes such as
sexual assault and domestic violence than any other race—and yet 88% of the
perpetrators of these crimes against Native women are non-native. So when the Supreme Court stripped tribal
governments of their ability to prosecute non-natives, tribal governments lost
their ability to protect Native women in their own homes.
Press coverage for Mary Kathryn's play Sliver of a Full Moon
It was February 2013 and I had come to DC not to lobby or
help with the effort of VAWA, but rather, to socialize with some friends, and
suddenly, in the middle of dinner, I was facing some important questions:
How can we share the
stories of our Native women survivors?
Can you interview them?
Can you write a play?
My answer was YES. I
was honored to take on this task. And in the middle of dinner, our plan became
clear. We would interview a group of
survivors, and their stories would be transformed into a series of monologues
that would become a play- and then we would take the play directly to Congress. We would perform the monologues of their stories
in DC for the entire government to hear. How could Congress deny tribal governments
the right to protect Native women after hearing their stories?
But the thing about this form of art is that, as a
“playwright,” you have no control. You
start out taking interviews with one thought in mind, and six weeks later you
realize you’re involved in a project that is larger than life and taking you in
a completely opposite direction.
Two days before I was scheduled to take my first interview,
I received a text message from my friend.
“VAWA passed!!!!”
What?! No one thought that would happen!
The whole purpose behind taking these interviews and writing
this play was to help the effort in getting VAWA passed—because everyone agreed
the House would vote against it! Now
that VAWA has passed with the tribal jurisdiction provision in it, what’s the point of writing this
play?
After much discussion, we decided to go forward with the
interviews. As I listened to their
stories, their words, I realized this play was not what I thought it was.
The women I was interviewing weren’t just survivors. They were warriors. They didn’t just survive the violence that
was inflicted upon them—they took their experiences, their stories of survival,
and they started a grassroots movement to change the law at the national
level. All of them had been involved in
change at their local level, and now the result was change at a national level. A change that restored a portion of their
tribes’ pre-1978 sovereignty to protect them in their own homes.
Suddenly I realized that the play I was writing wasn’t about
the violence that had happened to these women.
No—this play was about their success in changing the law so that what
happened to them would never happen to their daughters. Or their grandchildren.
This past Monday October 14, we held a reading of Sliver of a Full Moon. The women warriors who I interviewed played
themselves in the play—they read their stories for all to hear. I am honored to have worked with some incredible
women: Lisa Brunner (White Earth Ojibwe); Diane Millich (Southern Ute); and
Billie Jo Rich (Eastern Band Cherokee).
 |
| Representative Tom Cole and the woman interviewed for the project. |
And although there were monologues of survival in the play,
the majority of the play covered the true story of Native women warriors, as
well as tribal leaders, who used their stories and their life experiences to
achieve one of the greatest victories American Indians have ever seen since
1492.
Having recently joined the Civilians R&D Group, I have
learned that this kind of theater is known as “investigative theater.” I love that.
I love that we have a title for the kind of sacred story telling we Natives
have been doing for hundreds of years. I
am very much looking forward to this year with my fellow collaborators in the
R&D Group. If my experience doing
investigative theater with the R&D Group is anything like the investigate
theater I’ve done in the past, I know it will change my life.
 |
| President Barack Obama,survivor and actress Diane Millich and Vice President Joe Biden |
Thanks for sharing your
process, Mary Kathryn. For other posts about our R&D Group artists,
please click HERE
