Living Between Worlds
a conversation with playwright and director Madeline Sayet
by Norah Vawter
Madeline Sayet’s autobiographical one-woman play is streaming at Woolly Mammoth Theatre until July 11. A collaboration with the Folger Shakespeare Library, Where We Belong is about a lot of things. Shakespeare. Colonialism. What it’s like to be a theatre maker and a Native American at the same time. And what settlers stole from Sayet’s Native ancestors over generations—including their language. While the play wrestles with her people’s history, Sayet is careful to say that this is not the story of her tribe—the Mohegans—or all Native people. At its core, Where We Belong is a fiercely personal story of disillusionment, starring a young woman who finds, after crossing the ocean to study Shakespeare in England, that she’s strayed too far from home and needs to search for who she is. And to do that she has to wrestle with the fact that Shakespeare’s plays, which she grew up with and still loves, are part of the colonialist system that tried to erase her people.
The play—using stark, spare staging—is honest in a raw, brave sort of way. Sayet is not afraid to be real, vulnerable, or to say things that are uncomfortable for her or the audience. Brilliantly directed by Mei Ann Teo, the play is visually stunning and works well on screen. It’s available for streaming by purchasing a ticket here. I was able to chat with Sayet, who both wrote and stars in Where We Belong. Because Madeline Sayet shared so much with me, we’re splitting this conversation into two pieces, so we can share more of her words with you. Check back next week for the second half.
“I was spending so much time up in the air,” Sayet told me, describing all the travel involved when she was living in the U.K., getting her PhD in Shakespeare, and also serving as a TED Fellow and an MIT Media Lab Fellow. “When I came down in 2018, and I was home—it was the first time in my life that my feet didn't feel like they rooted quite right to the ground ... . Up until then, whenever I came home to Mohegan, it was like I could feel my roots went all the way down, to my ancestors, into forever.”
She started writing. “It wasn't supposed to be a play. I was just trying to figure this out. And at the same time, I was processing what it meant to have become a bird [what with all the travel]. I was also at this particular moment really interested in traditional storytelling. ... [in the] collective wisdom that emerges out of [a group of people gathering to share stories].” So she began collecting stories of her Mohegan ancestors who traveled to the U.K. hundreds of years ago, trying to process everything taken from her people by her new, temporary home of Britain. At one memorable moment of Where We Belong, Sayet gets a tour of the British Museum and learns that they have a collection of Native American skulls and other human remains—people that the Museum refuses to let go home. I felt physically ill as I considered this tangible proof of people being treated like things.
Sayet grew up as a member of the Mohegan Tribe in Connecticut. She had a special connection to the land around her from a young age. “I grew up leaving gifts for the Makiawisug, the Little People of the woodlands. [I knew the meaning of local] place names and the stories of those places. But [non-Native people in the community] would say things to me like, ‘Oh, I just got back from Europe. It's so sad that we don't have old stories or places like that here.’ ... You're kind of living between worlds. There's the Connecticut I feel I see as a Mohegan person ... [but] all that is hidden to people who aren't Native. Knowing your ancestors are from a place, that you will return to that place, that you're made of that earth—you [grow up with a] very different relationship to the land.” Mohegan culture is also matriarchal. “I was very used to seeing women in leadership roles,” she told me. Indeed, Sayet’s mother is currently the tribe’s Medicine Woman.
As a kid, Madeline Sayet was surrounded by stories. “My family [in 1931] founded the Tantaquidgeon Museum, the oldest Indian-owned-and-operated museum in the country. They founded it on the idea that it's hard to hate someone you know a lot about. I grew up ... coming [to the museum], hearing and sharing stories with my family and my tribe. That environment of sharing stories was a big part of how I was raised. And I could see in some instances how [storytelling] really helped relations with [non-Native] people around us. I have teachers who [as kids] had gone and heard my uncle Harold tell them stories, and there was a lot of respect for that relationship.”
Beginning when she was six or seven, Sayet’s mother took her to outdoor Shakespeare productions. “My grandpa bought me the complete works. I was drawing parallels between the kinds of stories, like how our trickster character Chahnameed was like Falstaff. ... And it wasn't until college that I was really separating the things and analyzing them in a different way. Initially, it was like these were all story worlds and characters. I wasn't seeing the divide, which is why I was never scared of Shakespeare, or why it never seemed strange to me to imagine Native people in Shakespeare. I wasn't separating things that way. Like, why would I imagine a world in which I didn't belong?”
And yet there is a difference. “I could go to Shakespeare rehearsal [as a kid],” Sayet told me, “but I couldn't go to Mohegan language class. That didn't exist yet, when I was a little kid. There was no opportunity for me to learn my language, because it was something that society has said should be destroyed.” Because white settlers tried so hard to snuff out Native languages, the last fluent speaker of Mohegan died in 1908. Now the tribe is piecing together their language. In the play, Sayet grapples with the significance of this loss. “[I] have Shakespeare because [my] culture was taken. … [My play is] not anything about me suddenly hating Shakespeare. It's the realization that Shakespeare is a part of the systems that stole children from their homes, stopped them for speaking their language, and forced them to speak Shakespeare.” Sayet is asking us to interrogate the Shakespeare system, but she still directs his plays and is absolutely not trying to “cancel” Shakespeare.
Check back next week for the rest of my conversation with Madeline Sayet. But now, I have a mission for every reader. When I asked the playwright what non-Native people could do to really engage with these issues, she said “it’s important for folks to learn whose lands they are specifically inhabiting—not just that they're on Native land in general. ... Once they know that, it’s much easier to do the research and build the relationships that will enable them to communicate with scholars, artists, find books, etc. from that particular tribal nation, with their unique relationship and knowledge of their histories and the stories of the place you inhabit.” To find out which tribal nation: go to https://native-land.ca. Then you can do your own research to find people you can learn from: members of that nation who are writing, speaking, etc. You can also look for an indigenous cultural center in your area to find out what’s going on locally. Next time I’ll also be sharing what I find out about the land I live on, in Northern Virginia.
WHERE WE BELONG, presented by Woolly Mammoth Theatre in collaboration with the Folger Shakespeare Library, runs from June 14 - July 11, 2021. It is available to stream on demand. Tickets can be reserved online at woollymammoth.net, by phone at (202) 393-3939, or via email at tickets@woollymammoth.net. In person purchases are not available. This film has closed captioning available. Flashing lights are used in the production.
Madeline Sayet is a Mohegan theatre maker who believes the stories we pass down inform our collective possible futures. She has been honored as a Forbes 30 Under 30 in Hollywood & Entertainment, TED Fellow, MIT Media Lab Director’s Fellow, National Directing Fellow, Drama League Director-In-Residence, NCAIED Native American 40 Under 40, and a recipient of The White House Champion of Change Award from President Obama. She serves as the Executive Director of the Yale Indigenous Performing Arts Program (YIPAP), Co-Artistic Director of Red Eagle Soaring: Native Youth Theatre, and is known throughout the field for her work promoting indigenous voices and decolonizing systems. This fall she joins the English Dept at Arizona State University with the Arizona Center for Renaissance and Medieval Studies. www.madelinesayet.com
Norah Vawter is DCTRENDING’s Local Authors Editor. She has an M.F.A. in fiction from George Mason. She is querying her first novel, which was longlisted for the Dzanc Books Prize for Fiction. Norah lives with her husband and son in Northern Virginia.