Native Voices 2023
Presenting two Native Voices events for San Diego audiences in 2023
Continuing more than two decades of partnership with Native Voices at the Autry, La Jolla Playhouse is proud to present two Native Voices events for San Diego audiences in 2023.
29th Festival of New Plays
Native Voices’ Festival of New Plays is a ten-day residency where playwrights are partnered with an artistic team, a dramaturg, and professional actors to explore their scripts in front of an audience.
La Jolla Playhouse is thrilled to host the 29th Festival of New Plays to celebrate inspiring and talented Indigenous playwrights as they regale us with their stories of being Native today.
Program
Click here to read the program for Native Voices Festival of New Plays, including cast and creative bios, play synopses and a message from the Native Voices Artistic Director.
The festival includes:
Central Standard Time
By Maddox Pennington (Cherokee)
After moving back to their family hometown in rural Oklahoma, Jay confronts chasms of generational and cultural differences in their hopes of contributing to their Nation and family. Jay’s reconnection is tested by resistance from relatives, scrutiny at work, but most of all by an uncertain and shifting notion of home.
Sunday June 18, 1pm
Free to attend, RSVP required
Reserve Now
Comanche Girl on the Moon
by Dustin Tahmahkera (Comanche)
Tired of being bullied at school, Petu discovers her late grandmother’s secret rocket ship on her family’s allotment in Oklahoma. Together with her humorous animal relatives and some eccentric inter-planetary creatures, Petu plans to fly to the moon in search of a new start, but at what cultural cost to herself and her tribal community in Oklahoma?
Sunday June 18, 4pm
Free to attend, RSVP required
Reserve Now
Note: This popular event fills up fast. Please reserve asap to secure your seats. Max 2 seats per person due to limited capacity.
13th Annual Native Voices Short Play Festival
Don’t Mess with Auntie!
The Playhouse and Native Voices invite you to celebrate the matriarchs in our lives. Join us for an afternoon of short plays inspired by the warrior women we affectionately call “Auntie”! No one shapes us more in our communities than our women—our identities, our values, our tastes in food have all been cultivated by their strong hands and minds. And, in our Native communities, the list of those who rear us extends far beyond that westernized “nuclear family.”
Featuring plays by Lara Annette (Minnesota Chippewa Tribe and Red Lake Nation of Chippewa), Jennifer Bobiwash (Mississauga First Nation), Lee Cataluna (Native Hawaiian), Claude Jackson, Jr. (Gila River Indian Community), Alan Kilpatrick (Cherokee), and Maddox Pennington (Cherokee).
Sunday April 2, 1:30pm
Free to attend, reservations required
This event has passed. Please provide your name and email and we will contact you about future Native Voices events.
About Native Voices
Native Voices is devoted to developing and producing new works for the stage by Native American, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian, and First Nations playwrights. Native Voices provides a supportive, collaborative setting for Native theatre artists from across North America and is committed to putting Native narratives at the center of the American story in order to facilitate a more inclusive dialogue on what it means to be American.
Find out more information about Native Voices at The Autry Museum of the American West.
