SummerSTAGE 2009 - Pieces of Us: How the Lost Find Home

SummerSTAGE 2009:
Pieces of Us: How the Lost Find Home
by William S. Yellow Robe, Jr. (Assiniboine)

Rainier Valley Youth Theatre, a program of SEEDArts, provides theatre training for Seattle youth with professional artists. Our SummerSTAGE productions are unique in youth theatre, often featuring national premieres of work by prominent playwrights, performed by an incredible array of diverse local youth.

In 2009, we partner with Red Eagle Soaring Native American Youth Theatre. Pictured are Red Eagle Soaring youth Jacob Braxton and Dallas Pinkham, who are joined by a diverse cast of young Seattle actors including Red Eagle Soaring student Roberta (Birdie) Sam. We are proud to present the NW Premiere of Pieces of Us: How the Lost Find Home, a contemporary, abstract play by our country’s foremost Native American playwright, William S. Yellow Robe, Jr. (Assiniboine).

Calendar Information:
Pieces of Us: How the Lost Find Home

Performance Days & Times:
Thursdays – Saturdays; July 23, 24, 25, 30, 31, August 1; 7:30pm

Location: Rainier Valley Cultural Center, 3515 S. Alaska St., Seattle, WA 98118

Tickets: $7 Students & Seniors, $10 Adults

Information & Reservations: (206) 725-7169

Oskar Eustis, the artistic director of the Public Theater, writes: "Bill Yellow Robe's voice is funny, honest, and searing. He tells painful truths that are designed to heal, and healing truths that are hard to hear. He writes from an utterly specific Native world, one we all need to know, but he uncovers human truths that are universal and profound. He is one of our necessary writers. We would be much poorer without him."

Pieces of Us: How the Lost Find Home is an intensely contemporary theatre piece that explores Native identity and mixed heritage through the psychological journey of main character Adam. Encouraged by close conversations with the author, RVYT sets the play in our own Seattle home, envisioning Adam as a member of a Coast Salish tribe. Through wry, sharp interactions with groups including the Chorus of Academia and Chorus of Governance, as well as lost family members and the Trickster himself, this poignant play casts a sharp look at the institutions, people, and legacies that help and hamper a Native reclaiming his heritage.

The all-teen cast has rehearsed for six weeks to present this challenging work, which also features video and multi-media projection art by Native Lens and Longhouse Media. Cast members include Jacob Braxton, Roberta Sam, and Dallas Pinkham of Red Eagle Soaring, as well as many other Rainier Valley youth. The artistic staff includes costumer Francisca Garcia, scenic designer Cooper Lanza, choreographer Danny Long, director Tyrone Brown, advisor Martha Brice of Red Eagle Soaring, and producer Maria Glanz. Performances run July 23 – August 1.

Rainier Valley Youth Theatre is a program of SouthEast Effective Development (SEED). RVYT and the Rainier Valley Cultural Center are supported by the contributions from the Washington State Arts Commission, the National Endowment for the Arts, 4Culture. SummerSTAGE 2009 is supported by the Beth Jean Schneider Memorial Scholarship Fund.


Notes from Red Eagle Soaring:
William S. Yellow Robe, Jr. is a long-time friend of Red Eagle Soaring, having helped as dramaturg in the creation of our first play, Story Circles, in 1991/92, and served on our Advisory Committee since that time. We are honored to participate in the production of his play Pieces of Us, contributing advice, props, and best of all, three of our student actors. We are so proud of them for the fine work they have done and the commitment they have made to the project. In a recent conversation with Mr. Yellow Robe, he said that his wish for this play was to anchor the heritage of the leading character of Adam in the community of Native people in which the play is produced, and with a tribe that has had difficulty maintaining their cultural connections over the years. Thus, we advised the RVYT to choose advisers, cultural references and traditional elements in the play from among the Coast Salish people and traditions. RVYT have done that to the best of their ability. It is our hope that the Duwamish people and the other Coast Salish Nations around us will welcome and be honored by this effort.

Calendar Information:
Pieces of Us: How the Lost Find Home

Performance Days & Times:
Thursdays – Saturdays; July 23, 24, 25, 30, 31, August 1; 7:30pm

Location: Rainier Valley Cultural Center, 3515 S. Alaska St., Seattle, WA 98118

Tickets: $7 Students & Seniors, $10 Adults

Information & Reservations: (206) 725-7169

Rainier Valley Youth Theatre – Artist Biographies

William S. Yellow Robe, Jr., SummerSTAGE Playwright, is an enrolled member of the Assiniboine Tribe, located on the Fort Peck Indian reservation in northeastern Montana. He has a body of work that includes fifty plays, several short stories and poetry. “Grandchildren of the of the Buffalo Soldiers and Other Untold Stories,” is a new collection of his full-length plays published by UCLA’s Project HOOP. He is a recipient of the New England Theater Conference Award for Excellence, the First Book Award for Drama from the Gathering of Nations Conference, and the first playwright to receive a Princess Grace Award for theater. He is an actor and a director. William is a Adjunct Faculty member of the English Department at the University of Maine, in Orono, Maine, and is a Faculty Affiliate of the Creative Writing Department at the University of Montana. His most recent play, “Thieves: In the red way,” was presented in a staged reading by Amerindian at the Public Theater in New York.

Tyrone Brown, SummerSTAGE Director, is well known locally as the leader of BROWNBOX Theatre, an African American theatre that has been resident at the Rainier Valley Cultural Center since 2002. Tyrone directed several successful productions at the Rainier Valley Cultural Center including Black to My Roots in 2001 (which was a Fringe First Award winner at the 2002 Edinburgh Festival in Scotland); Hamlet X (chosen as by the Seattle Times as one of the best theatre Shakespeare productions in 2005) and Wreck the Airline Barrier (2006). Tyrone holds a Bachelors of Arts in Theatre from Western Washington University, Performing Arts Management Certificate from the University of Washington (Extension Program), and is currently working toward his MFA in Arts Leadership at Seattle University.

Maria Glanz, SummerSTAGE Producer, is a playwright, performer, director, educator and producer. She has worked in Seattle, San Diego, and Hawaii. She was recently Artistic Director for Playwrights Project in San Diego, before moving back to her long-time home of Seattle. She served as Artistic Director of Rainier Valley Youth Theatre from 2003 to 2007. Maria has taught for Seattle Children's Theatre, Youth Theatre Northwest, Hawaii's Alliance for Drama Education, and several schools and produced the RVYT SummerSTAGE productions of The Tempest, Reunion, Ola Na Iwi, Angkor / America, and DREAM’N.

Martha Brice (adopted-Tlingit, Eagle moiety, 1996), founding Board member and volunteer with Red Eagle Soaring Theatre Group from 1991 to the present. Martha’s experience and expertise has encompassed all of Red Eagle Soaring’s activities over the years. Since 1984 she has been a volunteer free-lance producer of multi-cultural theatre projects, especially those with peace and social justice themes, including Word of Mouth: Women Reading and Singing for Peace; Most Dangerous Women, a dramatized history of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom; Breaking the Silence, a docu-drama of Japanese American history; and the annual Seattle peace event, From Hiroshima to Hope. For these activities she has received awards from Physicians for Social Responsibility (2008) and the Aki Kurose Peace and Social Justice Award (2004).

Red Eagle Soaring is a non-profit Youth Theatre Program that serves Native American and Alaskan Native youth in the Pacific Northwest. The group’s mission is to “empower American Indian and Alaskan Native Youth through traditional and contemporary theatre arts”, and they have done just that for the past 18 years. RES currently produces a year-round series of drama and cultural workshops and performance projects, including an original play production every Spring, a Fall Skills Workshop Series, and a two-week intensive drama workshop in the summer. Through the inspired work of the many teaching artists, playwrights, and directors that have been brought together to teach them, and the dedication of mentors and volunteers, students grow in self-confidence and self-discipline, empathy and compassion, communication skills, teamwork, curiosity and creative expression. RES is grateful for support from the City of Seattle Human Services Department, the Potlatch Fund, the Muckleshoot, Tulalip, Puyallup and Lummi tribes, and Safeco Foundation.