How did this play come to be and who was involved?
“Wusatoumuduk: We Make It Burn” was collaboratively written in the spring of 2024 by a team of locals living on the North Pacific Coast of California, some of whom have direct connections to local efforts to restore fire to the landscape. The project was envisioned by Professor Marnie Atkins (Wiyot) and features text in Soulatluk, the language of the Wiyot people.
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The writing team included Marnie Atkins (Wiyot), Maggie Peters (Yurok/Karuk), Kate Droz (Yurok), and Solomon Everta (Turtle Mountain Chippewa), with Artistic Directors Michelle Hernandez (Wiyot) and Zuzka Sabata.
The production began as a creative partnership of the Wiyot Tribe and North Coast Repertory Theatre (NCRT). On June 16th, 2024 a staged reading of the first draft of the play premiered to enthusiastic audiences at North Coast Repertory Theatre in Eureka. It featured an all-Native local cast, included technical and design elements, as well as the beginnings of the 3 traditional Wiyot stories (lhatsik) told through shadow puppetry. Please see below for a full accounting of the cast and crew of the staged reading.
Our approach to writing the play was collaborative and ensemble-driven by which we reflect the Native value of being in relationship to each other as well as the land we live on. In proposing her vision to create a community-drive play about the need to reintroduce Native traditions of good fire to the land, Marnie Atkins defined the difference between non-native land and resource stewardship and the traditional indigenous perspective on caring for our natural world by saying “we need to be in reciprocal relationship” with it.
This story could not have been written by a single author. It needed many people in reciprocal relationship. We hope to inspire our audiences and the communities we perform to to imagine what stories they could tell collaboratively and to generate community creativity and conversations that envision a common future that is reciprocal, caring and clear-eyed, in addition to uplifting Traditional Ecological Knowledge and the foundational right of indigenous people everywhere to be in right relationship with the land.
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Cast & Crew of Staged Reading in 2024:
DIRECTION:
​Reading Directors: Samantha Williams-Gray (Tlingit), Laura Muñoz
Director (video): Michelle Hernandez (Wiyot)
Video Production: Sugarbush Hill Productions
Producer: Calder Johnson
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CAST:
Della: Maggie Peters
Lou: Deja Coleman
Thomas: Armando Peña
Chuchk: K’nek’nek Lowry
Professor Daggett: Solomon Everta
CREW:
Shadow puppet/set designer & fabricator - James Hildebrandt
Projection technician - Victoria Timoteo
For NCRT:
Technical Director - Brian Butler
Backstage Manager/Props Master - Kelly Hughes
Costume Shop Manager - Megan Hughes
Office Administrator - Shawn Wagner
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CREATIVE TEAM:
Artistic Directors: Michelle Hernandez (Wiyot), Zuzka Sabata
Playwrights: Michelle Hernandez (Wiyot), Marnie Atkins (Wiyot), Zuzka Sabata; with Maggie Peters (Yurok/Karuk), Kate Droz (Yurok), Solomon Everta (Turtle Mountain Chippewa).
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