npan

Nez Perce playwright tackles ancient Greek tragedy

Mon, 15 Jun 2026 22:02:42 GMT

Broadcast: Friday, June 12

Sophocles wrote “Antigone” almost 2,500 years ago, but the themes in the story are timeless. Nez Perce scholar and author Beth Piatote was inspired to write an Indigenous version of “Antigone,” featuring a young woman torn between a moral duty to her family and ancestors and the will of the state. Playwright Beth Piatote joins us, along with Nathan Woodworth, one of the actors in a new production from the Native Performing Arts Network and Bag and Baggage Productions in Beaverton. We are also joined by Jeanette Harrison, Creative Director of the Native Performing Arts Network.

Beth Piatote’s ‘Antikoni’ finds parallels between today’s Native American cultural concerns and ancient Greek theater

Mon, 08 Jun 2026 22:44:02 GMT

Hillsboro’s Native Performing Arts Network and Bag&Baggage Productions stage the erstwhile Oregon writer’s Indigenized adaptation of ‘Antigone.’

Beth Piatote was furious. In summer 1996, the Eugene journalist had just learned about the discovery of the nearly 9,000-year-old bones of a man from the shores of the Columbia River near Kennewick, Washington. Scientists wanted to study the bones of what they called Kennewick Man , claiming he wasn’t Native American. Members of the Columbia River Tribes, who’d inhabited the area for ten millennia or more, claimed the Ancient One as one of their own, and demanded that his bones be released to them for culturally appropriate reburial, as their spiritual practices demanded.

The discovery set off a battle “between people who say the remains have so much to tell us about the ancient human past that they should remain available for research,” wrote Kevin Taylor in Indian Country , “versus people who feel a kinship with the ancient bones and say they should be reburied to show proper reverence for the dead.”

ANTíKONI to Close Bag&Baggage and NPAN's Season in Hillsboro

Wed, 03 Jun 2026 21:47:18 GMT

Beth Piatote's Nez Perce reimagining of Antigone will be directed by Jeanette Harrison at the Vault Theater.

Bag&Baggage Productions and Native Performing Arts Network will present the final production of B&B's 2025-26 season: Antíkoni , written by Beth Piatote (Nez Perce) and directed by Jeanette Harrison (Onondaga), Creative Director of NPAN.

Nez Perce stories are the heart of this bold reimagining of Sophocles' Antigone – showing how power distorts while offering ways to overcome. Set within a museum filled with Indigenous belongings, in a yet-unknown world after Nationalists have seized power, a Nez Perce family is caught between the demands of modern survival and the sacred traditions they are determined to uphold.

Arts Learning Project for Native Youth at Bag&Baggage Productions

Tue, 26 May 2026 23:08:44 GMT

Since 2021, high-school aged Native American youth from Oregon and beyond gather for a week at a performing arts camp with their peers. The program, Arts Learning Project for Native Youth or ALP4NY, run by Bag & Baggage Productions, gives students instructions in acting and writing with additional electives depending on their interests. It exposes them to a wide variety of skills in the performing arts, provides them with training, and facilitates relationships with professionals working in the arts.

This is a unique opportunity for these students. One 2019 study found that 25% of Indigenous students don’t have any arts instruction at all, a number that’s worsened since the pandemic and the closure of many arts programs.

Native Performing Arts Network To Premiere Antíkoni In Hillsboro

Tue, 26 May 2026 22:39:49 GMT

HILLSBORO, ORE (March 16, 2026) – Native Performing Arts Network announces the cast for its next production, the Pacific Northwest premiere of Antíkoni by Beth Piatote. The final show of Bag&Baggage’s 2025/2026 season, this co-production is a bold and urgent reimagining of Sophocles’ Antigone, framed through a Native American perspective.

Set within a museum filled with Indigenous belongings in a near-future world where Nationalists have seized power, a Nez Perce family is caught between the demands of modern survival and the sacred traditions they are determined to uphold. At the heart of the conflict is Kreon, a Native museum curator who complies with the new regime to protect his position, and his niece Antíkoni, who refuses to let go of her people’s truth—risking everything to honor what is sacred. This co-production between Native Performing Arts Network and Bag&Baggage is an investigation of resistance, ethical duty, and the enduring struggle to protect history, identity, and sovereignty.

Native Performing Arts Network nurtures new plays by Native writers

Mon, 18 May 2026 22:29:23 GMT

NPAN’s reading of Cherokee playwright DeLanna Studi’s new ‘I is for Invisible’ highlighted national commemoration of missing and murdered Indigenous women.

A few years ago, Cherokee playwright DeLanna Studi told her father about a new play she’d just drafted called I is for Invisible . It was partly inspired by the death of a Native friend of Studi’s who she’d worked with on a couple of films and TV shows. Authorities ruled the cause an accidental fall, but “a lot of people think it wasn’t investigated properly,” Studi told ArtsWatch.

That’s a tragically common occurrence in the lives of many Native Americans, she told her father, who, like many survivors of the often terrible boarding schools for Native Americans, “didn’t like to talk about the bad things,” she says.

Theater readings to raise awareness for missing, murdered indigenous women

Mon, 18 May 2026 22:29:19 GMT

PORTLAND, Ore. ( KOIN ) – A local performing arts group is stepping up as part of a movement to raise awareness for National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Relatives (MMIWR).

Hillsboro-based Native Performing Arts Network will present the play ‘ I is for Invisible ’ by Cherokee playwright and actress DeLanna Studi.

The group is inviting theatres of all sizes, universities and other organizations to participate in the national day of action on May 5.

Studi joined us on AM Extra, along with Jeanette Harrison, director and founder of the Native Performance Arts Network, to share the significance of this effort and to dive into the what the featured play is about.

Coast-to-Coast Readings Seek Justice for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Relatives

Mon, 18 May 2026 22:29:18 GMT

Native Performing Arts Network (NPAN), a new national home dedicated to Indigenous stories, artists, and youth, is proud to announce the plays by Indigenous writers selected for its National Day of Theater Readings for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Relatives (MMIWR). On May 5, 2026, theaters and universities nationwide will host staged readings, with additional events planned around that date, to raise awareness about the ongoing crisis of violence impacting Indigenous communities.

Four DC theaters to participate in National Day of Theater Readings for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Relatives

Tue, 23 Dec 2025 19:53:35 GMT

Arena Stage, Mosaic Theater Company, Theater Alliance, and Woolly Mammoth to join in readings of plays by Native American writers that address the crisis of violence facing Indigenous people in the Americas.

Native Performing Arts Network (formerly Native Theater Project) is organizing readings of plays by Native American writers that address the crisis of violence facing Indigenous people in the Americas.

Ninety-five percent of Native women who go missing in the US do not make the national news.

National Readings to Raise Awareness of Violence Against Indigenous Women

Fri, 05 Dec 2025 19:51:11 GMT

Theatres are stepping up for a national series of play readings by Indigenous writers, set for May 5, 2026, National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Relatives.

DeLanna Studi's play 'I is for Invisible' will be presented as part of the 2026 National Day of Theater Readings for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Relatives.

HILLSBORO, ORE.: Native Performing Arts Network (NPAN, formerly Native Theater Project) has organized a National Day of Theater Readings for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Relatives. These readings of plays by Native American writers will raise awareness of the crisis of violence and invisibility of contemporary Indigenous people in the Americas, particularly women, on May 5, 2026. Theatres of all sizes, universities, and other organizations across the country are invited to participate in this national day of action and shine a spotlight on the work of Native theatre artists, activists, and groups like the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center .

‘Antíkoni,’ a stunning new Native American interpretation of the ancient Greek play

Sun, 24 Nov 2024 20:04:52 GMT

Theatergoers are in for a very special occasion—a revelation, it’s not too excessive to say—if they will expand their horizons a bit and embrace a Native American perspective on view now.

Currently celebrating its 30th anniversary season, Native Voices presents the world premiere of Beth Piatote’s Antíkoni at the historic Southwest Campus of the Autry Museum of the American West, formerly known as the Southwest Museum of the American Indian, deemed the oldest museum in Los Angeles. According to DeLanna Studi, Native Voices Artistic Director, the work “developed during our 2020 Festival of New Plays,” and it “perfectly embodies our spirit and mission.”

Policy, Sovereignty, and Story in Native American Drama

Tue, 19 Nov 2024 20:01:31 GMT

Congress passed the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act ( NAGPRA ) in 1990. The law acknowledged that human remains, and cultural items removed from federal or tribal land belong first to the descendants of the people who lived in those homelands and created those cultural and spiritual items. In other words, contemporary federally recognized tribes and Native Hawaiian organizations could — finally — bring ancestors home. Native people often consider all remains and cultural objects as ancestors, in recognition of unbroken and spiritual kinship ties. The law established guidelines and frameworks for identifying descendancy and mandated compliance from any public or private institution receiving federal funds.

Remains and Resistance: Native Voices’ ‘Antíkoni’

Wed, 06 Nov 2024 19:56:04 GMT

A new adaptation of Sophocles’s classic will be staged at a museum that once held Native remains—but it’s hardly a staid museum piece.

The burial rites at the heart of Sophocles’s famous tragedy Antigone can seem arcane to many contemporary Western audiences. But a new adaptation at Los Angeles’s Native Voices , Beth Piatote’s AntíkoniN, reimagines the play as a complicated, humanizing tragedy about a Nez Perce family living in our nation’s capital, and caught between the pressures of the outside world and a nationalist party that threatens to silence their history. Merging Nez Perce storytelling with the struggle over ancestors’ remains being held in museums, the play is being performed in one of those contested museums, in a space what was formerly the Southwest Museum of the American Indian, Nov. 8-24 .

Beth (Nez Perce) joined the production’s director, Madeline Sayet (Mohegan), and Native Voices artistic director DeLanna Studi (Cherokee) in conversation recently on the relevance of Beth’s work and Antíkoni

’s themes at this moment in time.

Theater camp for Native youth held at PSU

Mon, 29 Jul 2024 23:37:54 GMT

OPB's Think Out Loud: Dave Miller interviews Jeanette Harrison and two students, Niyla Willow and Gia Fisher, about NPAN's annual summer camp.

Miller: Jeanette, first. Why did you decide to help start this camp?

Harrison: Well, the thing that we all keep saying is, we are building the program that we wish that we had had as students. We had to fight so hard to find our way to other Native theater artists, to Native storytelling, and it wasn’t something that was supported in most institutions. So I think one of the great joys, now, at this moment in time, is being able to build the program of our dreams.

Miller: Well, Jeanette, just to stick with you for a second – what did that mean for you? I mean, when you were a young person interested in theater, what was the terrain like for you?

Harrison: It was very western-centric. I went to school at a top research university with one of the best libraries in the entire country, and it wasn’t until after I graduated from college that I found my way to Spiderwoman Theater collective, and Bill Yellow Robe, and all these plays by Native writers. Nobody in college could point out a single Native play and – not to date myself – this was really before Google was a thing. So it was actually really hard to find work. I think that one of the joys now is that there is so much work being created, and our communities are so incredibly talented, and just finding more ways for that work to get out into the world.

Miller: Gia, why did you want to go to this camp? As I mentioned, this is now your third year.

Gia Fisher: I initially wanted to join this camp because it’s simply amazing that Natives are running this, and that I can meet other Native kids my age and create these amazing pieces of art. It’s just amazing, the family I’ve built here and I’m very grateful.