Searching out Alaska Native playwrights

The Alaska Native Heritage Center is seeking Alaska Native artists to join in a yearlong playwriting mentorship program. The Alaska Native Playwrights Project will "identify, train and nurture Alaska Native writers who wish to tell their stories and the stories of their people in theatrical form," according to a statement issued by the Heritage Center.

More on the Alaska Native Playwrights Project Application materials Alaska Native Heritage Center Native Voices at the Autry

The goal, said project director Ed Bourgeois, is to identify Alaska Native artists who are interested in learning the craft of playwriting and help walk them through the creation of their first script. It's an attempt to begin filling a void in the American dramatic canon, where Alaska Natives are barely represented.

"They're probably not produced in the mainstream as often as they'd like to be, but there are a lot of really high-quality Native playwrights, Native American playwrights, out there," Bourgeois said. "But there's not much in the repertoire that's Alaska Native."
The project is funded through a grant from the Ford Foundation that is, as Bourgeois describes it, something of a parting gift from the foundation's outgoing program officer for media, arts and culture, Betsy Theobald Richards, who is no longer with the Ford Foundation.

"Coming from a production background, I like to put things up on their feet, you know, up on stage," said Bourgeois, who was general manager of the Anchorage Opera before joining the Heritage Center. "But what (Richards) was most interested in ... as her closing chapter for theater giving, was to fund a project that would add something permanent to the canon of theater literature, particularly Native theater."

Applications for the project are due Oct. 5, after which the field will be narrowed to 10 participants. Each applicant is required to have a specific story in mind for the project, and the idea is to develop 10 "uniquely Alaska Native plays." The writers will attend a five-day writing intensive in Anchorage in January, during which they'll get what Bourgeois calls "a crash course" in writing for the stage.

"Obviously it doesn't replace going to school and getting a degree or spending four years, you know, really doing it right," Bourgeois said, "but for an artist who already has their own way of getting their voice out there, it's just taking that and gently redirecting it into a form that theater practitioners understand."

In the months following the January workshop, each participant will be mentored by a "teaching artist" -- an established Native American playwright who will help guide the writing and revision process. The scripts must be completed by Aug. 31.

Bourgeois said the Heritage Center is not yet ready to announce the names of the five teaching artists (each of whom will mentor two playwrights), but they will be established, nationally-prominent Native American playwrights. Participants will be expected to commit to the project's 10-month duration, and in addition to the January workshop and ongoing mentoring, they will receive a $500 stipend and, for artists traveling from outside Anchorage, travel, accommodations and food allowances.

The Heritage Center will work with Native Voices at the Autry, the Native American playwrights' initiative at the Autry National Center in Los Angeles, to get the project off the ground.