I recently had the honor of speaking with playwright and LAFPI Co-Founder Laura Annawyn Shamas (Chickasaw Nation). She wrote Four Women In Red now playing at The Victory Theatre in Burbank.
The play is about four Indigenous women who are the survivors of their missing relatives and friends, who are devastated by the loss, and yet who continue to search for the missing against all odds of finding their loved ones. Laura said that it was hard writing the play because of the subject matter. But she is passionate about it and wants change and so she wrote a play. She realizes that it is hard on the actors and the director because they have to relive the trauma during the rehearsal process and performances. However, the director and the actors are willing to go to those places over and over in spite of the emotional toll doing the play has on them.
“The ending is something people have not seen before,” Laura said when we talked about the power and beauty of the production. The four women onstage create a memorable final stage picture of unity and determination … and defiance.
In the play, one of the female characters says, “It always falls to us.” It is the women who keep taking action. It is the women who support each other. It is the women who keep the hope alive. The four characters embody the strength and resilience of Native American Women, and the search for justice. Laura said that “these women” have been resisting systemic oppression for hundreds of years. They have been fighting against the oppression. What she means by “these women” are not only the four women in the play—but all Indigenous women.
She said, “Story is medicine. This is what is taught in the tribal way. This is what the tribes teach.”
Laura believes in the magic of theater and theater as an art form. She went on to say, “The playwright helps the audience to experience a temporary collective. There is an electrical, an alchemical response when sitting in the audience with others and watching actors perform on stage. A lived interaction. An aliveness. Something about the live interaction of experiencing the actors in real time – this is an active response. Not passive like watching a streaming video or a movie that takes place in the past, even if the story is in the present. Watching a play on stage is active – living and experiencing in the moment. We need this kind of collective experience now as a society. We need to cry and laugh together. This is what theater is about. This is the magic of theater. And we need the magic and the collective more than ever.”
With all the divisiveness and prejudices and everything else happening in the world, we do need the magic and the collective experience of live theater more than ever. As I sat in the audience and watched Four Women In Red, I felt as if I was experiencing the story and the journey of the characters in community. I felt the immediacy and aliveness of each moment. and I sensed the audience experiencing the same.
I asked Laura, what did she learn as a person as she wrote the play. Her answer encompassed more than the writing of the play, but the process and journey that began five years ago: “I will always need to keep learning. I will always try to keep learning. As an artist.”
Laura said she was at every rehearsal, wondering how to make it better, and that she changed words during the last of the rehearsals. She added, “I feel very humbled by the show. I still have a lot to learn about the topic.”
Laura hopes to bring attention to the important topic of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Relatives. She hopes to shine a light on the issue so that people will be aware of what is happening and to take action. And she says she is proud to have been a small part of the larger picture. “If some change happens, no matter how small, if someone takes action because they saw the play, then this five-year journey will be worth it.”
“My hope is that once they see the play, they can’t stop thinking about the issue – the issue of missing native women,” Laura continued.
The systemic oppression Native women experience is another issue that people need to bring attention and take action to in order for change to happen. “A chorus of voices to bring real action is what is needed now, “ she said.
I said that, to me, the ending of the play is a call to action. She thanked me for seeing that. She emphasized that, “There are a few calls to actions in the play.”
Laura suggested a few ways that we can help bring awareness and to take action:
- Call your Representative and ask what they are doing about the issue.
- Go to National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center (NIWRC) website and donate. The website is https://www.niwrc.org
- Be part of a search for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women.
During opening weekend, Tayana Viscarra (Piro-Tewa Pueblo, Apache, Kumiai, European) and Norm Sands (Apache, Yaqui, European), co-founders and leaders of Way of the Sacred Mountain, an indigenous-led, grassroots partnership providing healing and support for families and communities affected by Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW), talked to the audience after the performance. They talked about conducting searches, and they may be a place to find how to be part of a search. Their website is https://www.wayofthesacredmountain.org
At the end of our dialogue, Laura offered this advice to playwrights: “Write something you care about. Write what you’re passionate about. What is it you care most about and what do you want to tell the audience about?”
I thought of the plays that I’m writing and how I’m passionate about them and how I love the characters and how they are alive within my life and how I’m alive with their lives. And Laura’s advice makes me even more determined to finish the plays – even though one may always be working on the play, according to Laura – and get it out into the world.
“Four Women In Red” by Laura Annawyn Shamas (Chickasaw Nation), Directed by Jeanette Harrison (Descendent of the Onondaga Nation), Produced by Maria Gobetti runs through March 23, Friday and Saturday at 8:00pm and Sunday at 4:00pm, at The Victory Theatre Center in Burbank. For tickets call (818) 841-5421 or visit thevictorytheatrecenter.org.
