Return to Form Institute of American Indian Arts reopens black box theater with William Yellow Robe works BY ALEX DE VORE a l e x @ s f r e p o r t e r. c o m
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etween the Santa Fe Playhouse on the cover and SNL alum Ana Gasteyer in the 3 Questions section on page 24 for her upcoming Lensic Performing Arts Center singing performance, this edition of SFR seems to have inadvertently become an informal theater issue. To sweeten the deal, meet Jonah Winn-Lenetsky, the chair of the Institute of American Indian Arts’ theater program—one which sat mostly dark during the pandemic, but which makes its triumphant return to operations May 6 and 7 with works by playwright and former IAIA writing professor William Yellow Robe (Assinboine), who died last year. We figured with everything else going on theatrically right now, it would be an opportune moment to check in with Winn-Lenetsky about what the reopening means for students, and indeed the city itself. SFR: Who are you, what do you do and why do you do it? Jonah Winn-Lenetsky: I see myself predominately as a scholar and as a director and, occasionally, as an actor. I am the chair of performing arts at the Institute of American Indian Arts on the very edge of Santa Fe. This role is brand new to me, I’ve only been the chair this semester. Shelia Rocha was the last one, but I’ve been a professor since the department launched four years ago. In 2018 we launched [performing arts] as a major. We have basically four people on our team. Myself and [Rocha] are the only professors in the department, and then we have Fulbright Scholar Sebastien Lange, who is working with us this year and has come to us from France via Mexico—and who directed the [one act play], Sneaky. We also have a technical director, Catherine Owens, and our main focus right now is theater, specifically Indigenous theater, the history and theory of/application and performance; and we put on a little bit of music and dance, but our main focus is theater. The theater was closed during the pandemic, at least for live performance.
What makes now the right time to get back into the weeds? We were building momentum and putting on a lot of shows, right up through the fall of 2019, so we’d been going about a year-and-a-half when, as with everything, things slammed to a halt. We performed small things for the school, but the entire campus was closed for the rest of 2020 and some of 2021. So, when the campus reopened, there were all the variants and masks, and we only put on small events for invited audiences. This is the first time we’ve opened up our theater space to the public—and it’s only 70 seats. Part of the performance will happen outside, though, but this is the first time we’re having a big pop-up. It’s for our students, because we have a cohort of majors who started either immediately before or during the pandemic, and they’ve been unfortunately performing for tiny audiences or streaming recorded stuff. They’re very talented and working hard, and they deserve the opportunity to perform for an audience, and to get more experience training as performance specialists. They need that. I think the other point I’d make is simply that it seems things are opening back up again. It really feels like theater is starting to happen again, and people are starting to gather again. The pandemic is by no means over, but it seems right now that the vaccines are really helping. It seems a little bit less threatening. There’s an energy exchange between the audience and the performers that you really only get with live performance, and a lot of
There’s an energy and exchange between the audience and performers that you really only get with live performance. -Jonah Winn-Lenetsky
A&C
JASON ORDAZ
S FR E P O RTE R .CO M / ARTS
Sean Seymour, Jonah Winn-Lenetsky, Willard Claschee and Isaiah St. Cyr prepare for IAIA’s return to thetrical perfornace next month with a selection of plays by Willian Yellow Robe.
our students are getting work in film and TV, both professionally and in school films, and they haven’t had that experience of performing in front of people. You can feel the energy change [when performing live], the transformation, the excitement. Has the long lull resulted in excited students? I would imagine everyone is working extra hard to produce something memorable for this return to performance. They’re very enthusiastic. They’re excited and maybe a little bit nervous, because we’re inviting in an audience. As for the first production, why did you choose William Yellow Robe, beyond his obvious ties to the school? He does have that tie to IAIA, but I think, first and foremost, William passed away after a long illness less than a year ago, so it’s really our first opportunity to honor him and celebrate his work. He contributed extensively to Indigenous theater. He’s very prolific. I’m not even sure I know every play he’s written, but we often teach them. He taught here in the past, but he’s a playwright who has written very realistically and starkly in a lot of ways about life on the Rez, and I think he’s contributed a ton to both self-perception, and also audience perception of what Rez life is like. His writing is darkly powerful, insightful and funny. There’s a lot of humor in what we’re doing, but his plays are really about human struggles, personal struggles, relationships within families. I’ve interviewed Native actors who say Native culture loops back around in Hollywood every so many years. As someone who is working with young
people, the next gen of performers and writers and such, do you think Native storytelling will continue to be more commonplace on stage and screen? My future vision is very limited, but if I can prognosticate, I certainly hope so. I think the one boon, and not just for Indigenous people, has been the way that Hollywood has lost some of its grip on entertainment thanks to the internet, the pandemic, smaller indie projects and streaming studios. So yes, most of the money is still coming out of Hollywood, but I think even the streaming studios are more open to a diversity of voices. There’s an interest in hearing different types of stories rather than mainstream, white, hetero stories. Will it last? One of the biggest changes I’ve seen is those stories are being told by Indigenous writers and actors and storytellers, and I think that is a big shift. What do you suppose the future holds for the theater program at IAIA now that people can attend again? Our hope is to keep presenting interesting, experimental new work by Indigenous artists, as well as some of the classics, such as what we’re doing in this case. Hopefully more performances. We’re building our technical and performance program, and we hope to use that to host more concerts, dance performances—not just theater. Definitely being able to do more plays would be so amazing for our students and will hopefully give something to the public.
SNEAKY: AN EVENING OF PLAYS BY WILLIAM YELLOW ROBE 6 pm Friday, May 6 and Saturday, May 7. Free Institute of American Indian Arts 83 Avan Nu Po Road, (505) 424-2300
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