Connecting Traditions (cont'd)

The Zuni people's oral traditions contain a rich past - ancient knowledge, stories, beliefs and histories that must be preserved for the future, said Edward Wemytewa, the founder of Idiwanan An Chawe, which in Zuni means "Children of the Middle Place."

But radio, television and other forces from the modern world threatened to destroy many of those traditions.

"All the storytellers had just about disappeared in the 1960s," Wemytewa said. "As a people, we used to laugh together, we used to cry together. So we created this Zuni-language theater company to make sure that the language and the beliefs are getting passed on to the younger generation."

The partnership between Roadside Theater and the Zuni theater took root more than 30 years ago, when, during a visit to Zuni, Cocke met Wemytewa at a game of pick-up basketball.

"I enjoyed the culture and community and the natural beauty, but I also saw the struggle of the Zuni people," Cocke wrote in Journeys Home: Revealing a Zuni-Appalachia Collaboration, a new book chronicling the creation of the play edited by Cocke, Wemytewa and Donna Porterfield of Roadside Theater, and published by Zuni A:shiwi Publishing.

"It's a lot like Appalachia. We've got a lot of the same troubles and a lot of the same joys, and that's what drew us together. In sharing our troubles and joys, we got connected to one another. You could say we're both privileged because we each have a sense of our history, of heritage, of being part of a special culture. We each have this historical sense of who we are based on our oral traditions."

As the excerpt from the 1912 New York Times editorial makes clear, mainstream America once viewed both cultures disparagingly. Despite those harsh views, and perhaps even because of them, the Zuni and Appalachian cultures persisted, decades later forming their creative partnership.

After that first meeting in 1969, Cocke returned to Zuni with the Roadside Theater troupe, and people from Zuni traveled to Kentucky to experience life in Appalachia. Workshops and residencies took place, and many stories were shared.

Wemytewa soon realized that both traditional ways of life centered on agriculture and that the Appalachian theater's form of storytelling resembled Zuni storytelling.

Page 1 2 3

Back to Reading Room