Public News Service promotes Sayet’s ‘Indigenous Shakespeares’ talk
The Public News Service advanced Madeline Sayet’s Oct. 17 “Indigenous Shakespeares” free, public talk at 4:30 p.m. in the Fernald APPE space in the Innovative Media Research and Commercialization (IMRC) Center. Sayet, executive director of the Yale Indigenous Performing Arts Program and a Libra Visiting Diversity Professor at the University of Maine, will discuss why many Native American theater artists are embracing Shakespeare. “At the Indian boarding schools, Shakespeare was taught. So there’s a kind of historical-like relevance and also defiance that comes with the relationship,” Sayet said in the article. “In many instances, the reason we have Shakespeare is because we were forced to give up our own languages.” In the last 10–15 years, Sayet said Native artists have used Shakespeare as a tool to reclaim their voices. Sayet also is developing a play with Penobscot playwright Maulian Dana based on the true story of Molly Spotted Elk from the Penobscot Nation. In the 1930s and early 1940s, Spotted Elk was a prominent dancer in Paris. She ended up fleeing France during World War II. “People are really attracted to both the idea that vaudeville is naturally a part of the world, and the cabaret Paris dance scene of that time period is an incredibly compelling imagistic time, but also of this Native woman in this time period doing these things that no one would assume that anyone did,” Sayet said in the article. The Mountain Dispatch in Tennessee ran the Public News Service article.