UMaine Is Host Site for Native American Theater Video Conference June 18

Contact: Margo Lukens, 581-1401; George Manlove, 581-3756

ORONO — The University of Maine’s Foster Center for Student Innovation will host a 5-hour, national videoconference Thursday, June 18, dedicated to reflecting upon and encouraging Native American theater and playwriting.

The conference, free and open to the public, will originate from the UCLA American Indian Studies Center, the home of Project HOOP, “Honoring Our Origins and Peoples through Native American Theater.” Details about the HOOP Project are available on its website (www.hoop.aisc.ucla.edu).

The videoconference will run from 1-6 p.m. in the Room 102 of the Foster Center. As part of the videoconference, a panel of women from the Penobscot Nation and a University of Maine professor will discuss theater in Native community contexts, and a group of actors from UMaine and from the Penobscot Nation on Indian Island will present a scene from Native American playwright William S. Yellow Robe’s “Pieces of Us.”

Yellow Robe, a part-time instructor at UMaine, will participate from Columbia University in New York, where he is attending rehearsals for his new play “Thieves.”

Videoconference participants will discuss creating two new nationwide associations: a national Native American playwrights’ association and a national Native American theater association. Further information is available at the Foster Center for Student Innovation, at 581-1401.