New Forms of Theatre: Traditional Storytelling to Storyweaving

This course examines Native American theatre from origins of traditional storytelling to politics of race involved in Native theatre today and is best suited for students exploring how to become theatre makers. First, we examine traditional storytelling from creation stories in literature and theatre. Second, we study interactions with Europeans with the Doctrine of Discovery, Native American boarding schools systems, outlawing of traditional culture and how Native culture survived in these systems in wild west shows, sideshows and snake oil shows. Topics will be explored through a Native lens via movies, commercials, television and will examine the theatre movement that responded. Finally, students will directly engage with course content through weekly embodied practice. The weekly course structure will include one class meeting focused on seminar/lecture/discussion, with the second meeting focused on writing and movement based in Spiderwoman methodology.