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Lily (Elizabeth Frances) and Jessie (Jane Lind) in The Frybread Queen. Photo Credit: Tony Dontscheff. |
By Ed Rampell
When it comes to depictions of America’s indigenous peoples, most audiences carry the heavy baggage of celluloid stereotypes and other cultural tropes, which the Native Voices at the Autry strives to dispel by presenting plays expressing aboriginal perspectives. Cherokee/Muskogee Creek Carolyn Dunn’s The Frybread Queen may be about Navajos and Cherokees, but this tribal playwright shares much in common with dramatists such as Anton Chekhov and Eugene O’Neill, who plumb the depth of the human soul plus family dynamics and dysfunction in classics like The Cherry Orchard or The Iceman Cometh.
(For the record, Dunn told me that her theatrical influences include not O’Neill, but Pulitzer Prize winner Sam Shepard, who wrote 1980’s True West.)
Frybread’s long night’s journey into day begins with 60-year-old Navajo Jessie Burns (Jane Lind, an Aleut) lightheartedly telling the audience her recipe for making frybread. This gives the audience the false impression that they’re in for some whimsical drollery. In any case, frybread and the various recipes for cooking it are a leitmotif for this four-woman show.
Jessie is proud of her award-winning prowess preparing this tribal staple diet, and indeed, she is considered by herself and others to be a frybread queen. However, as that other playwright, William Shakespeare, noted, “uneasy lies the head that wears the crown,” and there’s big trouble with a capital “T” in her majesty’s realm, as Jesse’s California-based daughters-in-law, Carlisle (Shyla Marlin, a Choctaw) and Annalee (Kimberly Norris Guerrero, a Cherokee) gather at Jessie’s ancestral home on the reservation, following a violent family tragedy.
Here, an indigenous aesthetic comes into play, as what would be typical theatrical family conflict filled with deep dark secrets and the like becomes enmeshed with Native beliefs in the spirit world. As in Toni Morrison’s Beloved, the ghosts symbolize the weight of a past caused by whitey’s brutal conquest and domination of people of color. It’s a sort of traumatic stress spiritual syndrome, wherein the souls of the oppressed can’t rest at peace until things are set right -- nor can the psyche’s of those still alive.
Your plot-spoiler-adverse critic won’t ruin the story for you, Dear Reader, and take away your joy (or sorrow, as the case may be) in discovery. Suffice it to say that this powerful, poignant four woman show and its ensemble cast, which includes Cherokee Elizabeth Frances as Lily (plus some ghosts), deftly directed by Robert Caisley, offers a quartet of outstanding performances. As Jesse’s granddaughter, Frances’ Lily dresses like a Goth -- and why not? No buckskins for her, thank you very much. Lily may be living with grandma at a Navajo rez at the Arizona/Utah border, but with her punk purple strand of hair, this teenager puts the “American” into Native American.
As a source of contention between Jesse and her daughters-in-law, Lily crackles with tension, laying bare her divided self. As for life on the rez with granny, Lily is split: to paraphrase The Clash hit, should she stay or should she go? Lily also has an awareness about the caricaturing Natives are subjected to, and her insightful recitation of a frybread recipe calls into question the origin of this food source and how healthy it is for Native Americans who, demographically, have troubling health statistics. Dunn’s naming of this character may be a reference to the “Tiger Lily” of Peter Pan fame, a popular if stereotypical image of the Native maiden or so-called “squaw,” who is here turned on its head.
Guerrero really shines as Annalee, an attorney who lugs around an oxygen tank as she fights to breathe (what a symbol for America’s struggling Natives!), stay alive and save Lily from a fate that she and sister-in-law Carlisle view as doomed. The stunning Shyla Marlin brings Carlisle -- the California Native who lives off the rez in the “modern” world -- to vivid life, secrets and all. As Jesse, who is suspicious of her daughters-in-law and of their intentions regarding Lily, Jane Lind bristles with contradictions, sharp wit, and not a few shocking secrets of her own. She can be forgiven for flubbing a few lines because she, like the rest of the cast, otherwise delivered a bravura performance.
After that show, the cast was joined onstage by members of the creative crew and took part in a talkback with the audience called “Peace Over Violence” about The Frybread Queen and the underlying issues of violence the drama delves into. However, some of the white theatergoers saw the violent plot as reinforcing the stereotype of Natives as “savages,” just as Alan Duff’s novel and the screen adaptation of Once Were Warriors was criticized by some (Native and non-Native alike) for perpetuating clichés about New Zealand/ Aotearoa’s Maoris.
Dunn maintains that Frybread’s purpose is to end the cycle of violence that persists in indigenous communities and families that began with the coming of the Europeans and their genocidal conquest of what we now call America, or, as Native Americans might call it: “How the West was lost.” Fair enough. However, Dunn’s verbal description of her play’s denouement, and that the survival of some of its characters escape an apotheosis of violence and go on to live full, healthy lives may be inferred from the action. But audiences aren’t mind readers, and Dunn needs to take her play, which has been extensively workshopped already, back to the creative drawing board in order to add a finale that makes this crystal clear. After all, Dunn won’t be able to explain what she really meant after each and every curtain fall, and again, playwrights should not expect ticket buyers to be clairvoyants. And ethnic nuances may fly right over the heads of unsophisticated viewers unfamiliar with the peoples being depicted.
Aside from this need for a clearer ending that sums up the playwright’s intent, my biggest beef with this play concerns the sets by scenic designer Susan Baker Scharpf. On the one hand, the interior of Jesse’s kitchen is highly realistic, and one almost expects her to whip up a batch of frybread there right before our eyes. On the other hand, the painted tree that forms the backdrop for the onstage exterior looks like it’s straight out of a junior high production of Sprigadoon or something and really does not belong on a professional stage. So much for that old chestnut of Natives living in harmony with Mother Nature!
Another beef I had is that the play gave me the munchies for some frybread, so during the intermission I went to the Autry Café where chef Carolyn Baer is offering frybread dishes during the run of this play. But it took too long to prepare and I had to skedaddle back to the theatre sans frybread in time to see the second act, and after the play and post-performance discussion, the museum’s eatery was closing, alas!
But these are mere quibbles that should not deter serious theatergoers interested in indigenous, family and female themed plays. With its Native Voices program the Autry Museum is making a major contribution to the deconstruction of the dominant majority culture’s imposition of the trite, timeworn, typecasting and stereotyping of America’s tribal peoples, by providing a vital platform for indigenous expressions and perspectives. Not bad for an institution that owes its existence to its namesake singing cowboy! And I for one hope that The Frybread Queen goes on to make lots of well-deserved dough for its creator, cast and crew.
Please note: There is an L.A. Native Women Playwrights Roundtable Following Frybread’s 2:00 p.m. performance, Saturday, March 19. Guest panelists include playwrights Carolyn Dunn, Larissa Fasthorse, and Laura Shamas. Moderated by Liz Frankle, Literary Manager of New York's Public Theater.
The Frybread Queen runs through March 27 at the Wells Fargo Theater, The Autry, 4700 Western Heritage Way, L.A., CA 90027. For information: 323/667-2000 ext. 354; www.NativeVoicesattheAutry.org
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