Playwrights

LeAnne Howe

Representative Plays:

The Mascot Opera (2008)
Indian Radio Days (1998)
Big PowWow (1987)

About the Playwright:

Poet, fiction writer, filmmaker, and playwright LeAnne Howe was born and raised in Oklahoma and is a member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. She worked as a newspaper journalist for 12 years before earning an MFA from Vermont College. Howe's lyrical poems engage Native American life. She is the author of the poetry collection Evidence of Red: Poems and Prose (2005), which won the Oklahoma Book...

Linda Hogan

Representative Plays:

A Piece of Moon (1981)

About the Playwright:

Linda Hogan was born in 1947, in Denver, Colorado and grew up in Oklahoma. She obtained a M.A. degree from University of Colorado at Boulder in 1978. Hogan is a passionate educator and speaker who has taught at the Indigenous Education Institute and at the University of Colorado. She has spoken at the United Nations Forum and a plenary speaker at the Environmental Literature Conference in Turkey in 2009. Hogan has played a prominent role in the development of contemporary...

E. Donald Two-Rivers

Representative Plays:

Winter Summit or the Bang-Bang Incident
Forked Tongues
Chili Corn
Coyote Sits in Judgment
Shattered Dream
Old Indian Trick (An Old Urban Indian Story as Told by an Old Urban Indian Who May Have Lied)

About the Playwright:

E. Donald "Ed" Two-Rivers, sometimes known as Donald Two-River, was an Anishinaabe (Ojibwa) poet, playwright, and spoken-word performer. Brought up first on the reservation and then in the urban Native community in Chicago, Two-Rivers was an activist...

Diane Glancy

Representative Plays:

The Woman Who Was a Red Deer Dressed for the Deer Dance (1995)
American Gypsy: Six Native American Plays (2002)
Cargo (2006)

About the Playwright:

Proficient in numerous genres—fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and playwriting—Diane Glancy often creates work that reflects her Native American heritage. Part Cherokee, and of English and German descent, Glancy was born in Kansas City, Missouri. She has served as artist-in-residence for the Oklahoma State Arts Council (traveling...

Jim Northrup

Representative Plays:

Rez Road Follies
Rez Road 2000
Shinnob Jep

About the Playwright:

Jim Northrup (April 28, 1943 – August 1, 2016) was an Anishinaabe (Native American) newspaper columnist, poet, performer, and political commentator from the Fond du Lac Indian Reservation in Minnesota. His Anishinaabe name was "Chibenashi" (from Chi-bineshiinh "Big little-bird").

Links:

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Lynn Riggs

Representative Plays:

Big Lake (1927)
Green Grow the Lilacs (1931)
The Cherokee Night (1936)

About the Playwright:

Lynn Riggs is the Southwest's most important playwright and a significant folk artist. His best-known play, Green Grow the Lilacs, became one of the world's greatest musicals, Oklahoma! Riggs was also a poet but mostly made his living writing Hollywood film scripts. Half of his thirty plays are set in the Southwest, and he vividly depicted life...

Jackie Sibblies Drury

Representative Plays:

Fairview (2018)
Social Creatures (2013)
We Are Proud to Present a Presentation About the Herero of Namibia, Formerly Known as Southwest Africa, From the German Sudwestafrika, Between the Years 1884–1915 (2012)

Bio:

Jackie Sibblies Drury is a Brooklyn-based playwright. Her critically acclaimed play Fairview premiered in 2018 at Soho Rep. Other plays include We Are Proud to Present a Presentation About the Herero of Namibia, Formerly Known as South West Africa,...

Ismail Khalidi

Representative Plays:

Returning to Haifa (2018)
Sabra Falling (2017)
Foot (2016)
Tennis in Nablus (2010)
Truth Serum Blues (2005)

Bio:

Born in Beirut to Palestinian parents and raised in Chicago, Ismail Khalidi is a playwright and director who has written, directed, performed, curated and...

Ianne Fields Stewart

Representative Plays:

A Complicated Woman (2019)

Bio:

Ianne Fields Stewart (pronouns: she/her/they/them) is a black, queer, and transfeminine New York-based storyteller. Ianne's work is divided into three platforms: the platform they stand on as a performer; the platform they build amongst others as a cultural competency consultant and community organizer; and the platform they build for others to stand on as a playwright, director, teaching artist, and choreographer. As a performer, Ianne has...

Hiroshi Kashiwagi

Representative Plays:

Kisa Gotami, A Buddhist Parable (1955)
Laughter and False Teeth (1953)
The Plums Can Wait (1949)

Bio:

Born in Sacramento in 1922, writer and actor Hiroshi Kashiwagi spent his early years in Loomis, California. He was incarcerated at Tule Lake Segregation Center during World War II where he was defined as a “disloyal” for refusing to answer the loyalty questions. He renounced his U.S. citizenship and later worked with the Tule Lake Defense Committee and Wayne M. Collins to restore his citizenship...