the second half of my conversation with theatre maker Madeline Sayet

by Norah Vawter

Last week, I shared the first half of my conversation with Madeline Sayet, playwright, director, actor, and member of the Mohegan Tribe. Her one-woman play about Shakespeare, colonialism, and searching for identity is Where We Belong. Sayet wrote and stars in the show. Mei Ann Teo directs. It’s streaming at Woolly Mammoth Theatre through July 11.

Where We Belong is autobiographical, a glimpse into Madeline Sayet’s mindset as she’s trying to decide whether to continue studying Shakespeare in England, or choose a different path that might be truer to her Native roots. Teo uses deceptively simple staging and flashes of lights to highlight Sayet’s body language and physical presence: in moments of crisis we see the crisis. We’re drawn into Sayet’s psyche and worldview. Willing to be vulnerable to the audience, the playwright uses both her script and superb acting, allowing the audience (watching on our screen at home) a glimpse into her inner life and memories of encounters with many people. 

There are many compelling moments, but one in particular stands out. It’s a moment that’s on a loop, a moment that keeps happening to the theatre maker, over years. She’s talking about having the same conversation whenever she meets a new person and tells them she’s Mohegan. She often hears the same joke, an allusion to the novel and movie The Last Mohican. “So are you the last Mohegan?” Not a particularly funny joke, and it brings up a lot of complicated feelings. Can you imagine if you said you came from D.C. and a stranger replied, fairly seriously, “Are you the last Washingtonian?” 

Sayet told me, “it feels like to exist is an act of rebellion.” Many Americans don’t realize that there are vibrant, active Native communities in the East. And narratives like Mohicans reinforce that—as Sayet explained, it’s “a space in which [the powers that be] really didn't want us to exist. All of the work that was done [by white people] to make sure we didn't exist. [But] we do, in fact, continue to exist and that continues to be an act of resilience.” In fact the federally recognized Mohegan Tribe, which has lived on its land in Connecticut for hundreds of years and dates back 10,000 years in North America, has over 2,100 citizens.

James Fenimore Cooper’s 1826 novel mixes a lot of stuff up, combining the New York Mohican Tribe with the Connecticut Mohegans. But it also has a character Uncas, based on a real eighteenth century Native leader. In the book and movie, he dies without heirs, and is the last of his kind. The real Uncas had many children and can claim many living descendants, including Sayet. He was an important force in saving a future for his people. The playwright told me, “[Think] what would be opened up in terms of possibility, if [non-Natives knew that we were here and] understood the stories of the place that they're in, if they understood matriarchal leadership models, the relationship to the land. I feel like the world is so broken now [and the voices that were silenced could help heal it].”

I don’t know why Cooper made the choices he did, but his choices were powerful. Sayet told me about a fundamental principle of Mohegan culture—Story Medicine—that seems to be at play here. The basic idea is that stories are powerful and we must acknowledge our responsibility when we tell them. “I wasn't raised in a culture in which [storytelling] could be neutral. My mom is the Medicine Woman in my tribe. My great aunt was the Medicine Woman before her, and so I think a lot about Story Medicine in my work. The idea is that every story we tell is either effecting real-world healing or harming.”

“If we're going to do something that's harmful or violent, or even unconsciously harmful like redface, [we should think] what are we doing by dehumanizing people as part of our story practice?” Sayet told me. Similar to blackface, redface is when non-Natives “play Indian” by donning feathers, warpaint, and other stereotypical costumes. “What are we doing that is genocidal without being conscious of it? What are we doing by lifting up one type of story, or by leaving in the sexism and racism that's 400 years old and not addressing that in the production? ... It's too often in the American theatre that people are like, ‘Oh, well, there's theatre for social change. And then there's like, normal mainstream theatre.’ No! mainstream theatre is definitely doing something. It's just the question of what it is that it's doing.”

So along these lines, I wondered, what questions should we be asking about Shakespeare and mainstream theatre? “He was a man of his time,” she said. “To say that his plays are not sexist and racist is ridiculous. Yes, he was very forward thinking for his time. I've read the other early modern playwrights. Shakespeare is way less sexist and racist. But he was not a wizard who [could see the future].There has been a deification of Shakespeare, like he was beyond human. To treat him like a god is part of a system of upholding certain aspects of white supremacy that I think is really problematic.”

However, for Sayet the real problem is not the actual plays. “It's not Shakespeare the playwright, it's Shakespeare the system,” she said, explaining how missionaries carried copies of the Bible and Shakespeare to the Natives, and how Shakespeare was taught in Indian boarding schools, which children were forced to attend after being stolen from their homes (with the idea that they would assimilate into white society and Native culture would die out). The most widely produced playwright in our time, today Shakespeare is also the only playwright American students are required to study in the Common Core. Sayet says we should be asking questions about all of this. She thinks Shakespeare is used as part of a white supremacist system, which elevates white voices and white cultures above all others. “If he's taking up that much space, what is it erasing? I don’t hate Shakespeare [or think] the playwright had any sort of agenda. But the plays are part of a system.” 

Sayet is now excited about her work with Native theatre, which she didn’t realize existed until college. The fact that those Native voices aren’t widely known is another example of this system at work, elevating whiteness and not making much space for other voices. Sayet told that when she was a kid: “I genuinely didn't know that there was such a thing as a Native play. And I'm not alone in that experience. I know other Native theatre makers who had very similar experiences. It was a real moment of relief and reckoning for me.” She had a new, important, hopeful question: “What if I could actually tell our stories through this medium, instead of [Native storytelling and stage plays] being these separate things?” 

For years Sayet has worked in this field. “I’m developing and supporting new Native plays. I’m also supporting Native theatre artists [working in] other environments—like doing Shakespeare in a way that uplifts indigenous voices, decolonizes systems, and really lifts up the stories of the land that we're in.” Sayet is co-artistic director of Red Eagle Soaring Native Youth Theatre where she can offer kids a world of storytelling that wasn’t available to her at that age. “If the first theatre you were introduced to as a kid was about valuing your culture, instead of believing you had to be somebody else: What would that do? And what would that mean for the stories that you could then create?”

Having a voice, telling her story, and showing the world that her people do exist and that hers is just one voice out of many in our modern world--that is the heart of the matter. Madeline Sayet told me,“this extreme silencing [of Native voices] that has occurred, that makes it an act of rebellion just to be able to speak and exist—it has been going on for so long.” Sitting there, listening to the playwright’s stark statement, I was struck by how little I, a non-Native, know about these stories, or the land I occupy. It’s important that we ask these tough questions, even if they are uncomfortable, rather than resort to bad jokes or just not speaking. 

“As part of this intentional erasure, this intentional genocidal practice, growing up, I only saw redface on stage,” Sayet told me. “I didn't see any Native theatre, but I saw Native people made fun of. And so what that does to your consciousness? There's just so much work that has to be done to remove that, before you can go forward, and celebrate, and have joy. Now, I'm really excited about the moment [when we can] step into that and say, we, as the Native theatre movement, have some freedom and have been rising for a little while. How can we all collectively step into our joy? And what can that joy do for other Native people?” 

If you read the first half of my interview with Madeline Sayet, you know that I was researching the Native people whose land I live on, so that I can learn about their story and this land, and maybe even meet some folks. I have more to learn, and more to say than can fit at the bottom of this piece, so look out for a whole piece on that topic soon, here on DCTRENDING.com. If you are a member of one of the Native Tribes local to the D.C. area, please reach out to us. We’d love to hear your story.

But I will leave you with a list of Native theatre makers Madeline Sayet recommends we all check out for a glimpse into the Native theatre scene that I for one know little about.

Vera Starbard, Tara Moses, Cathay Tagnak Rexford, Mary Kathryn Nagle, Ty Defoe, Frank Katasse, Maulian Dana, William S. Yellowrobe Jr., Rhiana Yazzie, Arigon Starr, Larissa Fasthorse, Dillon Chitto, Lee Cataluna, and so many many more.

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.