Volume 13 Number 1
October 1973

Kent R. Brown

Thus begins Na Haaz Zan, an astoundingly beautiful dramatization of the Navajo myth of creation and one of the two major works currently performed by the Native American Theatre Ensemble.

Originally formed in February, 1972, as the American Indian Theatre Ensemble Company, it is America’s first and only all-Indian repertory company. The name was changed in April, 1973.

Hanay Geiogamah, the Ensemble’s central administrator and author of Body Indian (a scathing look at current Indian society), states that "The central aim of the Ensemble’s work will be to present plays for and about American Indian people . . . plays that are political, propagandistic, cultural, comic, tragic, educational and simply entertaining in nature . . . wherever those Indian people are located."

While the scope of the intent appears to be far-reaching and eclectic, evidence indicates that the need for such a troupe is long overdue. Jane Lind, an Aleut Indian and member of the Ensemble, recalls that she and several associates had considered starting a company six years ago at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The complex job of collecting personnel under one philosophical banner, however, seemed prohibitive in the light of meager funding. The actual formation of the project was left to the business acumen of Geiogamah and, later, Ellen Stewart of New York’s La Mama Experimental Theatre Club.

As an undergraduate journalism major at the University of Oklahoma, Geiogamah explored a long standing interest in theatre. Geiogamah’s interests included playwriting, and in 1970, after finishing a series of one-acts, he realized he needed an entire company of actors to perform the play, "and everyone of them would have to be an American Indian." But still no funds.

After graduating in 1970, Geiogamah was selected by the National Indian Youth Council to be an intern Senate aid assigned to the office of Senator Edward M. Kennedy. Part of the program’s training included the writing of a proposal that would contribute to the new national Indian identity. Fusing his journalistic talents with his sensitivity toward theatre, Geiogamah drafted his plan for the creation of an organic Indian theatre company. "For decades American Indians have been portrayed in films and on television in a manner entirely derogatory to the cultural and mental well-being of this most maligned and isolated of American minority groups. Who on this earth can enjoy seeing themselves and their race depicted as fiendish savages and murderers who hurl forth blood-curdling yelps, as seemingly their only form of vocal communication? It is thought that this unabated corrupt use of American Indians by the American dream makers has been a major factor contributing to the deepening cultural and spiritual malaise of American Indians."

As an inroad toward corroding this vulgar image of the American Indian, Geiogamah believed that "plays for and about Indians, their past, their despairing present, their hopes and dreams and daily lives, presented by Indian artists could be of inestimable value in uniting and uplifting the 850,000 Indian people in the United States. The ceremonial rituals they have practiced for centuries are uncontestable testimony to bow strongly they respond to theatre, for these rituals are theatre in its purest and most functional form."

Support for the proposal gathered momentum with the Arts and Communications Committee of the National Indian Youth Council, and shortly after its construction, Geiogamah contacted the National Endowment for the Arts. Although the funding body was most understanding, Geiogamah was told that the venture had to be associated with a successful producing body. Geiogamah had kept abreast of the activities of Ellen Stewart at La Mama and sensed that his project might fit well with La Mama’s experimental attitude. "I just dialed the number," relates Geiogamah. "I never expected to talk to Ellen Stewart, but she answered the phone. We talked for a moment or two and she had an immediate response to the concept. She said ‘Come up . . . just come right up!’ So I made my first trip up five flights of La Mama stairs and Ellen understood it all at once. The same day we worked out our budget . . . $110,000."

With La Mama’s expertise and successful track record in firm support of the project, the National Endowment for the Arts became financially sympathetic. The Ford and Rockefeller foundations and the New York State Council on the Arts all followed suit, and even Lutheran organizations assisted by sponsoring furniture sales.

Now that a sponsoring agency bad been found, the next major step was to recruit members for the company. Geiogamah was determined the Ensemble "was not going to be another trite little display of Indian crafts and culture, a little dance with narration saying, ‘This dance means this . . . by this tribe from the beautiful land of . . ." With the Ensemble, he wanted to eradicate decades of such white-washed and superficial expectations from the public’s mind, and even from the minds of Indians who had themselves accepted "traditional" stereotyping. Because this was to be the first Indian theatre company, Geiogamah wanted to assemble members from as many tribes as possible--while simultaneously gathering those who were most talented and committed to the educational and inspirational intentions of the Ensemble.

Groups of Indian actors or artists are scarce, so Geiogamah began reading cast lists and playbills of every production he could find that listed an Indian performer of any kind. The task was made more difficult because artists were scattered widely across the country. Geiogamah achieved the diversity he wanted, for among the 16 members are represented the Aztec, Navajo, Blackfeet, Aleut, Papago, Taos Pueblo, Cherokee, Mescalero Apache, Skokemish-Yakima and Cheyenne tribes.

After the Ensemble took up residence at the La Mama Experimental Theatre Club, the troupe embarked on an extensive nine-month training period. The La Mama organization, international and intercultural with several producing companies in Tokyo, London, Bogota, and elsewhere, assimilates and experiences different attitudes from the native art of the world. In this fashion a myriad of acting approaches can be focused on productions. At La Mama the Ensemble was exposed to dancing, singing and acting techniques, plus speech and technical theatre training.

During the training period, two scripts emerged which neatly balanced the poetic and rhetorical aims of the Ensemble. Although the company experimented with several of his plays, Geiogamah’s Body Indian surfaced as the most workable script. The second performance piece, however, had not yet been created. Robert Shorty, a Navajo, was asked by Lee Breuer, one of La Mama’s artistic directors, to direct a second play. "Although I was a performing arts major at the Institute in Santa Fe, I had never directed anything before. Also, no script had been written. My initial feeling was that we should devise something moving, colorful and flowing. I began to think of Indian sources and soon, with others, we realized that we should start at the beginning, with the Navajo myth of creation. I began to read books on legend and folklore and slowly, with the intelligence and guidance of Lee Breuer, Na Haaz Zan took form and shape. The final work owes much to Geraldine Keams and Timothy Clashin, who worked on the Navajo-English adaptations. It was a communal endeavor. Without any of these individuals, the project would never have evolved."

The experience and transformation the spectator undergoes is difficult to describe, for the impact is more than the sum of any single part of this ritualized vision. The nobility and simplicity of the theology astounded me. Much of the power of the experience came from a deep lamenting that we, as the other Americans in this country, have no single story or religious philosophy, as a collective people, that comes close to touching the splendor and dignity of Na Haaz Zan, a moving and tender utterance in the simplest of language and movement.

Following Na Haaz Zan is Geiogamah’s abrasive examination of the condition of the Twentieth Century Indian stripped of his ancestral grace and philosophical roots. Body Indian exposes the internal disintegration of the Indian community. A drunken Indian, Bobby Lee, who has recently lost a leg in a train accident, drops in on a group of Indian friends in the midst of a drinking party. He has just received payment for his government lease and intends to spend the money on an alcoholic cure. His friends, alternating between various states of stupor and staggering intoxication, persuade him to be fair about his new wealth and buy them booze. Up to this point the action is raucous and sprinkled with the usual "drunk" bits associated with the stereotyped "drunken" Indian. But as the play continues, the action takes on tragic-comic dimensions.

Enveloped in the humor and havoc of the pervasive alcoholic binge and decked out with smeared lipstick and pincurlers, the Indians begin to pierce their very existence; unemployment, problems with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, estrangement, a sense of purposelessness and despondency at being unproductive and unwanted, the welfare culture and a white-controlled economy of poverty, the dogged hopes of seeing hope in a dismal future. The play is divided into five scenes, each ending with an approaching train whistle, dimming lights and darkness. Each time Bobby Lee collapses at the end of a scene, his body is searched by his fellow Indians who want more money to continue their drinking. Three generations of Indians are represented, from the traditional reservation Indian to the young Indian radical. They are rapacious, vicious and pathetic. Clearly, they depict the most destructive elements within their own environment. The party continues at a furious pace until, finally, Bobby Lee's money is gone. All that is left is Bobby Lee’s wooden leg. The Indians remove it and leave to barter the leg for liquor.

With its direct reference to cannibalism, Body Indian is more surreal than real and more metaphoric than representational. The wailing train whistle which keynotes the end of each scene represents the presence of the white man’s technology and also hearkens back to Bobby Lee’s disfigurement. Bobby Lee has been crippled by industrialization, yes, but in the context of the play, it is the current Indian culture that supplants the train as the ultimate crippler. "My intention," indicates Geiogamah, "is to depict how Indians abuse and mistreat one another in a dangerously crippling way--not with physical violence, but with actions and gestures that most of them do not see as being insulting, abusive and defeating. It is very gratifying if a non-Indian audience reacts, but Body Indian is primarily for the Indians."

The Ensemble might well be compared with the general state of Black Theatre in the early 1960s. Both are exploding with energy and vitality and ideas, but at this point, the Ensemble is less experienced in technique, stagecraft and theatrical variety. Geiogamah indicates that earlier in his thinking the Ensemble might well have directed itself toward castigating the whites, thus aligning itself more with many of the vitriolic Black plays. But the decision was made to "take the approach of survival in the future rather than reproach for the past. We’re hoping to harness this inborn sense of theatricality into an arena of concentration in which we can look at our situation in politics and the social environment. We believe the Ensemble can function as a component of the overall movement to achieve true equality and self-determination."

In many ways the Ensemble should not become more technically proficient. Its future does not lie in the realm of the machine-like workmanship of the commercial theatre. The two major historical uses of theatre, artistic and rhetorical, can be notably served by the Ensemble. There is certainly an opportunity to preserve a cultural existence dangerously close to extinction. Not only can the presentations add to our collective American legacy, by enriching, preserving, and extending the Indian culture of this country, but they can also provide a reservoir of common artistic experience for Indians. As Robert Shorty states, "I consider myself an example of an assimilated Indian. I have been forced to function in an essentially nonIndian world. My grasp of my own language has deteriorated greatly but this project has served as a source of rejuvenation, a rebirth of pride in my Indian character and heritage."

The Ensemble is not impervious to the realistic difficulties of sustaining itself in the future. But underneath all the pressures and red tape, the sense of eventual achievement is encouraging. "I am hopeful," relates Shorty, "that American Indian theatre in this country will branch out in many different directions, will be as different and varied as pictures on canvas. We have to try and explain to Indians and non-Indians the turning points in their coexistent lives, where things happen and why, to try and make the communication between the two cultures more bearable. I will soon return to my tribe in New Mexico. I’m looking forward to working with people who have a library of untapped experience and wisdom. unknown to the Anglo audience."

After a successful tour of cities in Illinois, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Minnesota, the Ensemble returned to New York. Publicity about the Ensemble grew, and by February, several offers were received to present Body Indian and Na Haaz Zan in colleges and universities (Massachusetts, Michigan, Wisconsin at Milwaukee, Dartmouth, New York State at Buffalo), and a three-day engagement at the Smithsonian Institute.

Because of its established artistic credibility, the Ensemble now has sufficient funding to maintain itself until May, 1974. Official Indian country residence has been created at Oklahoma College of Liberal Arts, Chickasba, and permanent artistic residence is at La Mama.

Plans include workshops for Indian playwrights and scenic artists plus creation and rehearsal of new theatrical pieces. From January to April, 1974, the Ensemble will tour Body Indian and two new Geiogamah works, Fog Horn and Forty Nine.

"Fog Horn," states Geiogamah, "is a collage of scenes in the medicine show tradition. It begins at Alcatraz and ends at Wounded Knee. It is an examination of Indian stereotypes as conceived by the white man. (See front cover photo.) Forty Nine is more jubilant and is subtitled ‘An Indian Youth Musical Celebration.' Eventually we want to organize a performing arts group within every Indian tribe large enough and viable enough to sustain one. If we can do this, then there is no question that the Indian culture will thrive and evolve in the future."

1. Robert Shorty and several original troupe members left the Ensemble in February, 1973, to establish the Navajoland Outdoor Theatre.

Kent R. Brown is Chairman of the Drama and Communications Department, Oklahoma College of Liberal Arts. He received his Ph.D. in Film History from the University of Iowa, and his M.A. in Theatre from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has had book reviews in Journal of Popular Film and Film Journal. This article first appeared in Players Magazine, in which Dr. Brown is frequently published.