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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.