Indigenous Performing Arts Residency

Background image: An actor stands on a stage under a spotlight while holding a script in her left hand and gesturing upward with her right hand. She is wearing a green floral skirt and a beige cardigan. There are chairs and music stands in the background.
Image credit:
David Allen

About the Indigenous Performing Arts Residency

In fall 2023, the Arts Research Center and the Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies(link is external) (TDPS) collaborated to create a multi-year Indigenous Performing Artist Residency (IPAR) program. The IPAR is a 3-year invitation to a local performing arts company working with Indigenous performers, whether playwrights, dancers, musicians, or performance artists, to:

  • host one of their yearly performances by emerging Indigenous performing artists on campus at Berkeley
  • support for their chosen artist to visit campus during the performance as an Artist-in-Residence
  • a public talk, talk back, or artist lecture to support the work
  • an opportunity for the artist to work with students in class visits, etc.

The mission of the IPAR program is to strengthen relationships with Indigenous community partners and to create ongoing financial and material support for upcoming Indigenous performing artists so that Native stories can be told on our campus now and into the future. It utilizes the longstanding collaborative partnership that ARC and TDPS have established with each other over many years, and utilizes both our units’ connections to local California theater and performing arts organizations off campus. 

The program stems from the idea that embodied theater and performance practices are a site of historical remembering and knowledge production. The Indigenous Performing Artist Residency builds a relationship with a local performance company for multiple years, to premiere Native or Indigenous creative works in their theater/performance space. ARC and TDPS will then collaborate to reprise those artistic works in one of our campus performance spaces. During the presentation of the performance, the artist(s) will be invited to campus to meet with our community, give talks, engage with our students in a variety of ways that best support the artistic production. 

Diné Nishłį (i am a sacred being) or, A Boarding School Play

Inaugural Resident Company: AlterTheater

Alternative Theater Ensemble (AlterTheater) was chosen as Berkeley’s inaugural partnership company for the 2024-2026 period, and offers them the opportunity to workshop or present a play by an Indigenous playwright each spring on campus. 

AlterTheater seeks to create a more just, equitable community by supporting the creative growth of theater artists from historically underrepresented communities, and telling stories that reflect the full complexity and diversity of our community. Their work centers the spiritual and emotional well-being of Black and Indigenous people, casting roles in ways that break stereotypes rather than reinforce them and creating opportunities for both established and emerging artists to learn and support each other in their craft.

A portrait of Drew Woodson wearing dark-framed glasses, a white collared shirt, and a grey blazer. He has black wavy hair and a beard.

Spring 2025 Artist in Residence: Drew Woodson

Drew Woodson is a Western Shoshone playwright based in New York City. He has had his work read in multiple theaters across New York, including Rattlestick Theater where he was asked to open the first annual Northeastern Native Arts Festival with his play Your Friend, Jay Silverheels. For this same work, Drew was named Yale's Young Indigenous Playwright of 2021. More recently, Drew completed a two-month artist's residency on Governors Island for AICH, and completed a workshop of a new work, From Above, under the direction of Madeline Sayet. As a writer, Drew seeks to tell stories where Native people are allowed to take up space, be complicated, and ultimately be more than a storytelling device. Drew earned an M.F.A. in Dramatic Writing from NYU and a B.A. in Theater and Performance Studies from UC Berkeley.

Drew will be in residence at UC Berkeley on April 17–19, 2025 to present staged readings of his work.

Blossom Johnson, Playwright

Spring 2024 Artist in Residence: Blossom Johnson

Playwright Blossom Johnson was in residence at UC Berkeley from April 7 to April 14, 2024. Over the course of her residency, she fine-tuned her script for Diné Nishłį, (i am a sacred being) or, A Boarding School Play, visited classes, participated in a free and public talkback alongside director Daniel Leeman Smith, and oversaw four staged readings of Diné Nishłį at Durham Studio Theater and the Arts Research Center. Blossom's script for Diné Nishłį was studied by the students of Indigenous Language Revitalization with Professor Beth Piatote, Playwriting with Professor Philip Kan Gotanda, and Directing as a Social Justice Practice with Professor Timmia Hearn DeRoy.

Person wearing a denim jacket and black cap standing in front of a stone staircase and dry vegetation.

Spring 2023 Artist in Residence: Dillon Chitto

Playwright Dillon Chitto was in residence at the Arts Research Center from February 2nd to 12th, 2023. Over the course of his residency, he premiered Pueblo Revolt, an equally hilarious and poignant play that wove together history and Indigifuturism to examine queerness, family, religion, and survival, at the Arts Research Center with production by AlterTheater Ensemble. On February 6th, Chitto was joined by Laurie Arnold of Gonzaga University for a public lecture, Theater as a Site of Public History.