News from Zuni by Edward Wemytewa Edward Wemytewa is a founder of Idiwanan An Chawe, a new (and the first) Zuni language theater. For the past eleven years, Roadside and Native American artists of the Pueblo of Zuni in New Mexico have been conducting an exchange. A joint creation, Corn Mountain/Pine Mountain: Following the Seasons, will be touring regionally and nationally for the next two years. This year has been a busy one for us. We made a new play, Ulohnan Dewntso'ya A:deyatkya (They Once Lived in a Beautiful Place), about caring for the environment on the Zuni reservation, and we created a five part storytelling series about water loss at Zuni that was broadcast on KSHI, Zuni Community Radio. But the most important thing we've been trying to do is evaluate ourselves. We wanted to find out if there is a real need for theater in Zuni. We wanted to know if we are addressing concerns. When we first performed Ulohnan Dewatso'ya A:deya'kya, the audiences were small. We worried that people weren't that interested in this kind of thing. But after the performances, we started getting requests to perform at award banquets and meetings. We were invited to attend conferences and to perform at Arizona State University in Tempe. And we received many requests to tell stories in schools. Several classes at the mid-school had been reading the English version of a Zuni tale, "Boy Who Made Dragon Fly," by Tony Hillerman. The teacher asked us to come to her class and tell the version of the story we had grown up hearing in the Zuni language called "A:tstana A:chi Shumak'olo:Wa" ("Two Little Children Who Made Dragon Fly"). When the bell rang, the students were so full of questions that they didn't want to leave. We involve young people in our theater at all levels. This is very important. We want them to be good listeners, but we also want them to learn to be comfortable standing up before people and speaking, dancing, singing. We want them to know that they have valid things to share. We want them to be role models for their fellow students, and to consider continuing their education beyond high school, off the reservation. Chris Edaakie, a student who told stories and sang in Ulohnan Dewntso'ya A:deya'kya, has started a dance group named Nawitsa. He has become a mentor for his peers, and is training young singers. When this happens, we know there is success. So it looks like we are meeting a need. We will continue our work to make a Zuni language theater that relies upon the knowledge of community elders and is especially concerned with providing opportunities for young people to express themselves. We are planning to write a new play about farming, seeds, and water use, and to produce a new radio series. Students have requested that we air the series on the weekends so they can stay up late and listen to the whole show.
			A:shiwi ulohnan dewutso'ya a:deyaye. The Zunis are in a beautiful land. Ko'n yado: ho'n a:wan Yadokkya Datchu dewankwin yela:nakwayle:'a Every day our Sun Father rises up from the east Chi:biya Yal' an dunayadona ', yam lada: its' alina', lak'yan Idiwanakwin a:widiyulla:k'e:'a. Looking over the Sandia Peaks, stretching his wings down to the Middle Place. Habanna: A'1 Akk'wan isnok'on dek'ohannan iyanna, lesna lak'yan an dek'yalnan ik'eyadok'yanna: Daylight will come first to the Canyons of the Ghost, then the light and warmth will rise this way: Heshoda Tstin'a, K'yawa:n'a, Kyadi:kya, Halona:wa, Hawikkuh, Hanlubink'ya. Isnok'ons duna'yadonna. Ulohnan dewutso'ya. Pescado, Blackrock, Kyodi:kya, Halona, Hats'ina:wa, Hawiku, Hanlubinkya. He will see from above. Beautiful land. If there still was a river, the sun would have shimmered in the water as it passed over. -- excerpt from Ulohnan Dewntso'ya A:deyatkya by Idiwanan An Chawe

Walk Together Children  
William and Mary Collaboration
by Bruce McConachie

Last year, the William and Mary Theatre presented Walk Together Children, an original play focused on the Civil Rights era in Williamsburg, Virginia. The show resulted from a year-long collaboration between the theater department at the College of William and Mary, Dudley Cocke of Roadside Theater, Theresa Holden of The Artist and Community Connection, and Robbie McCauley of Robbie McCauley and Company.

Cocke, Holden, and McCauley trained the undergraduate student participants in the techniques of story gathering and presentation, and helped to educate them in the dynamics of local history and racism. They worked with me as I co-taught the class and directed the final production.

Walk Together Children, shaped by Professor Hermine Pinson at the college, began in segregation times in the early 1950's and concluded with school desegregation problems in the late 1960's. It included episodes about a couple trying to break segregated housing, a black boy jumping into a white swimming pool, the first integrated church services, white and black workers sitting down at a lunch counter together, and a former school superintendent's story about a near riot at a school board meeting after a white high school teacher threatened some black students with a gun.

Because the student performers did not use the real names of local citizens, audience members listened eagerly to figure out who among their friends and neighbors was speaking. One friend of mine told me later, "I sat next to a group of local African Americans who spent intermission discussing who they recognized. I followed out other faculty/town types wondering about the depiction of the college and its president (whom the show had criticized for delaying desegregation in the 1960's). For me as a historian of Tidewater, Virginia, the production was spellbinding."

Although the local newspaper critic barely acknowledged the racial content of the show in her laudatory review, friends and acquaintances were more forthright. A long-time resident of Williamsburg who had helped the community to desegregate, an Asian American sociologist at the college, wrote that it was "poignant to be reminded of just how tentative and fragile black/white relations were--even among those who were well meaning."

An African American community leader, a woman of great hope and fervent faith, summed up the feelings of many audience members, "We really have missed out on what we could have shared together to make this a peaceful, happy, safe, productive and progressive community."

Marilyn Shannon Talks about the Dayton Stories Project

Marilyn Shannon was the director for the Dayton Stories Project, a three year, city-wide collaboration sponsored by CityFolk of Dayton and supported by numerous local partners. The project generated hundreds of arts activities that crossed race and class lines, including the writing and production of a mainstage play, And That's My Story. Roadside Theater was a partner in this project, working at first with the city's white urban Appalachian population. Roadside's long-time collaborator, Junebug Productions from New Orleans, worked at first with the African American community; gradually the black and white communities drew together to share their frustrations, hopes, and joys.

By the project's end, 235 story circles had been held in homes, churches, community centers, senior citizen homes, businesses, and schools. Nearly 1,200 individuals participated from different ethnic groups, including African American, Appalachian, Greek, Japanese American, Jewish, Hungarian, Latino, Polish--as well as retirees, students, teachers, church and civic groups, artists, storytellers, community gardeners, deaf senior citizens, prison inmates, and a wide variety of everyday folks. Most of the story circles were recorded on audio tape for the Dayton Stories Project archive, which will be placed with the Historical Society and will be available to the public.

Junebug Productions and Roadside Theater helped legitimize the project in the Appalachian and African American communities. Because of their experience in other story projects and their love for what they were doing and the people here, they were extremely helpful to me personally. I can't stress enough how important they were to the success of the project.

They helped us get started-- taught us the story circle process, and that was the cornerstone of the whole effort. I've always believed every person has value and should be treated with respect, and the best way to show respect is to permit a person to tell you who he or she is and to listen to that person's stories. The story circle is a good way to get at this idea. It's a great equalizer--each person has the same amount of time to talk without interruption. Whether you're rich or poor, graduated from college or never went to school at all, your story is just as important as the next person's.

People talked more about chicken, especially the best ways to kill them, than any other food, and about grandmothers more than any other relative. I learned that people are more connected to each other than they know and the best way to learn about people different from yourself is to meet them face to face and listen to their stories. People from different cultures were surprised to find out how similar they were, especially when it came to intolerance and prejudice. "I didn't know you had gone through the same thing!" was a common refrain. Participating in all those story circles taught me the value of listening.

I also learned how dependent good theater is on good storytelling. Junebug and Roadside demonstrated to story circle participants ways their stories could be presented before an audience full of strangers at the community celebrations. They kept emphasizing to them that their stories were so powerful they didn't require a lot of acting ability or props and that, in fact, sometimes those things got in the way of the story itself.

The Dayton Stories Project was probably the most meaningful work I've ever done and also the most enjoyable. The project continues through the work of several community partners. The Dayton Jewish Community Center meets monthly and has presented its "Dayton's Jewish Legacy" program a number of times. Nine one-hour programs on the project's activities continue to be shown on Public Access Television, and "The Appalachian Group," that first official story circle, just completed its twenty-fourth round!

Ain't No Ways Tired: On the Road
with Junebug/Jack  and Roadbug

	In March and April of 1997, the first part of a multi-year initiative, the Southern Partnership Project, brought together black and white Southerners to address racism through theater residencies that included community story circles and performances of   Junebug/Jack and RoadBug. Host communities were Jefferson City, Tennessee; Rowan County, North Carolina; Charles City County, Virginia; Salisbury, North Carolina; and Slidell, Alexandria, Ruston, and New Orleans, Louisiana. Following are two reports from the Louisiana leg of the tour.

From Dudley Cocke, Roadside Theater

New Orleans, April 11 -- A converted twenty-lane bowling alley, now the Christian Unity Baptist Church, is our first stop in Louisiana. An audience of over 200, black and white, and of all ages, are here for the evening's performance of Junebug/Jack.

Pastor Audrey Johnson welcomes the assembled and calls the members of the Christian Unity Choir to come forward with song. Their processional selection, "Keep on Walking" ("Walking on to freedom land"), stirs the spirit of the audience who regularly testify as a chorus once the play gets underway. "Tell it!" "That's right," and "Thank you!" follow play lines like, "Millions and millions of welfare dollars been spent since '33/ Won't equal what they stole from the savings and loans/Now here's the real tragedy..."

From John O'Neal, Junebug Productions

Ruston, April 19 -- Mrs. Sarah Albritton has been married to Mr. Robert Lee Albritton for forty three years. They are the proprietors of Sarah's Kitchen, which sits in a wooded glen nestled next to the home in which the Albrittons raised their children. As you approach the homestead, you see right away that you're coming to a special place. It's like I imagine Hansel and Gretel to have felt upon seeing the gingerbread house. A profusion of plants, flowers, and an assortment of knickknacks adorn the yard where tables are set up to accommodate their customers.

The strangest things are treated as commonplace. Radiators surround a flowered shrub like sentinels. When the "colored school" that everybody in the black community over thirty-five attended was razed as the result of integration, Ms. Sarah said she couldn't stand to see those radiators consigned to a landfill.

A bright sign painted on a strip of weathered clapboard hanging in an evergreen tree beside a trellised canopy tells you that you're in "the preacher's corner," and warns those diners who come to sit to "watch what you say cause God reads lips."

Inside the restaurant, every place your eyes rest there are curious objects holding stories waiting to be told, and when she's not too busy, Ms. Sarah loves to join her company in conversation. Like every good storyteller, Ms. Sarah soon has her guests telling their stories.

The home cooked food is great, but Mrs. Albritton is absolutely amazing. She gets up at 4 am each day to cook and prepare the restaurant. She closes twelve hours later when she takes off on a whirlwind of church, community service, and arts council duties. And this is work that she and Mr. Albritton began as a way to pass their retirement years!

As if she doesn't already have enough to do, five years ago Ms. Sarah started painting pictures of events that made strong impressions on her from her life in northern Louisiana. One remarkable picture shows what she remembers of the last lynching in Ruston. After seeing the picture, many of her white patrons told her what they remembered of the fateful event. Now she says she'll paint another picture depicting what the white people say and put it side by side her original and label the two pictures, "Who's Lying?"

Next time I get a little weary, I'll just think of Ms. Sarah and Mr. Robert Lee and sing to myself the words from those old spirituals, "Believe I'll run on and see what the end's going to be," and "My soul ain't no ways tired."