Why Shakespeare deserves a Native American perspective
Here’s how our new production of The Winter’s Tale infuses indigenous ideologies into Shakespeare’s classic.
When you travel somewhere new, you want to experience the art native to that place. In England, that means Shakespeare. But what is indigenous to the United States? If someone visits New York City, would they know where to find, for example, Native American theater? As a Mohegan director based both in New York and the UK, this question is always on my mind. How do we welcome people to our home with our art?
Well, if you happen to be in New York City this December, you’ll find an all-Native American cast performing our version of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale. The ensemble at American Indian Artists Inc (AMERINDA) is presenting the play as part of our new Native Shakespeare Initiative.
You may well ask yourself: Why Shakespeare in New York? Why produced by a Native organization? In 2014, we launched the Native Shakespeare Initiative at AMERINDA to give Native actors the chance to further their careers in theater by performing iconic roles, to be freed from the shackles of stereotype, and to create a bridge for new audiences to try Native theater. Filling the stage with Native artists gives us an opportunity to build a world in which we are allowed to exist in every possible role, beyond the confines of a single tokenized Native character or redface. For Native peoples, even being allowed to exist is still considered a political act.
Shakespeare’s plays are known for their ability to transcend the politics of their time by weaving fundamental human truths into timeless, iconic narratives with universal characters. And as a Native community from many different indigenous nations, AMERINDA knows how to weave stories. So how do we work what is relevant to us today into Shakespeare’s messages?
One theme we’ve woven into our production of The Winter’s Tale is the destruction of our environment and sacred lands. This destruction negatively impacts everyone. Self-serving choices by big businesses have been illegally wreaking havoc on sovereign Native lands and on our Mother Earth since colonization. It must stop. There is an echo of environmental destruction in The Winter’s Tale, when Antigonus, a lord of Sicilia who has been ordered to abandon the baby Princess Perdita, is famously pursued offstage by a bear. The Clown says of the bear: “They are never curst, but when they are hungry.” In a harsh winter devastated by environmental destruction, a bear would be very hungry, and so will eat people – not its normal behavior.
The Winter’s Tale also echoes today’s political climate of division in the United States. The first half of the play takes place during a winter in which a country is extremely divided and there is a desperate need for balance. This division harms the future generations. Our cast, ranging in age from 13 to 90, reminds us that we are accountable to the generations before and ahead of us for every decision we make now.
Shakespeare put truth and power on the side of the women in The Winter’s Tale — and it comes naturally to me to cast women in leadership roles, as Mohegan culture is matriarchal. The Earth is our Mother, also a woman. But in the play, no one listens to the women until it’s too late. In the second half, we are transported to spring a generation later — a time of restoration and rebuilding after more than a decade of repentance — when another generation of women is being questioned. They speak their truth and wisdom speaks clearly, leading to their triumph. Feminine power is amplified in our production through additional gender-bending: the Shepherd, Clown, Cleomenes, and Time are played by women, whereas in traditional productions the actors would have been men.
Finally, The Winter’s Tale makes us think about the laws of nations, their rulers, their inhabitants, and how these shape the world we live in now. Leontes, who invents divisive rules in response to personal fear in the beginning of the play — locking up and punishing his wife and anyone he suspects of treachery — says at the end of the play, when his world has been restored beyond the realms of possibility: “If this be magic, let it be an art as lawful as eating.” I have noticed when considering indigenous languages, which are typically wiped out as conquerors’ languages survive, the latter are good at dividing people, while indigenous languages tend to focus on connection. Connection-focused languages are banned because they weave people together — and one must divide to conquer. Shakespeare’s power is deeply rooted in his particular ability to shift the nature of English words so that they connect us all.
It’s not every day you can come to New York City and find Native American theater, particularly not fused with Shakespeare. We welcome you to come explore what a Western classic means in the context of today’s world — one we all call home. We must connect and weave and heal our world.
Don’t miss The Winter’s Tale, running from Dec 2–17th at HERE Arts Center in New York City. Get your tickets now.
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