A conversation with Kirsten Bowen, Michelle Chikaonda, Alexandra Espinoza, and Trinity Norwood.

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In an effort to continue diversifying and expanding our theater coverage, we are spearheading a brand new initiative: The 3-in-1. The 3-in-1 offers three perspectives in one piece. Wild, we know! Here’s how it works: One writer gathers a group of three individuals with unique, distinct perspectives to see a show together. Afterward, they discuss the show, the writer records the conversation, and then we work together to edit that into a refined take on one show!  

We are thrilled to pilot the series with a 3-in-1 on Where We Belong by Madeline Sayet, which just closed at Philadelphia Theatre Company. Let us know what you think of this new model for theater coverage…and enjoy!

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In 2015 Mohegan playwright and director Madeline Sayet left her home on the unceded Mohegan land of Connecticut for London to pursue a PhD in Shakespeare, focusing on his relationship with Indigenous Americans. What she encountered was a country that tokenized her and refused to acknowledge its role in the exploitation and erasure of her culture.

Though British academics were impressed with her production of The Tempest, which imagined Indigenous character Caliban recovering his language, they were less receptive when Sayet told them that the lionization of the Bard has contributed to the erasure of Indigenous languages. Sayet found solace at the memorial erected by Mohegans in 2006 to Mahomet Weyonomon, a Mohegan Sachem, or chief, who died in England in 1736 while awaiting justice from the king when white settlers began encroaching on Mohegan land. Later, while touring the British Museum with a curator to give her opinion on their Indigenous holdings, she was shocked to learn that they are in possession of over 12,000 remains of Indigenous people—which they refuse to repatriate.

Sayet tells these stories and others about her history, both personal and Mohegan, in her one-person play, Where We Belong, which she also performs under the direction of Mei Ann Teo. The play meditates on ancestry, language, home, and the consequences to one’s identity and culture when these have been stolen and whitewashed by colonial powers. Throughout the piece, Sayet, whose Mohegan name translates to “Flying Bird,” returns to the idea of flying in both literal and metaphorical senses, from the transatlantic journeys she and her ancestors take to and from England, to the unmooring that occurs when you are far from your homeland.

In the summer of 2021, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company filmed Where We Belong in association with Folger Shakespeare Library. Now they have launched a national tour with Sayet, which will hit Philadelphia Theatre Company, Goodman Theatre, Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, Seattle Rep, The Public Theater, and Folger Theatre at Folger Shakespeare Library.

Sayet, who begins each performance with a traditional land acknowledgement, crafted an accountability rider for these presenting theatres, stipulating that “they will never present redface again, develop an ongoing relationship with the Native peoples whose lands they occupy, offer free tickets to the show to all Native audiences, present work by local Native artists, and organize events supporting local language revitalization initiatives.” Philadelphia Theatre Company, where the show will run until May 8, presented Sharing Native and Indigenous Voices: A Reading of Local Writers on April 26 and hosted a gallery of work by Indigenous artists Priscilla Bell and Tailinh Agoyo in their upper lobby.

On April 21, 2022, I attended Where We Belong at Philadelphia Theatre Company on the traditional land of the Lenni-Lenape, with three other local writers: non-fiction writer Michelle Chikaonda; playwright, director, and dramaturg Alexandra Espinoza; and short story writer, poet, and Lenape citizen Trinity Norwood. Like Sayet, they write about identity, displacement, and colonialism in their work. We met in person for the first time at our seats in the theatre, but quickly found that we had a lot to discuss afterward when we convened at Treble + Bass, the lobby lounge of the Cambria Hotel up the street. Here are excerpts from our conversation.

Trinity: The piece was obviously very personal for [Madeline], but the struggle [of erasure and displacement] is felt similarly amongst many tribal communities up and down the East Coast. And her acknowledgment of the land that she is currently on was significant and very traditional. Even as a kid, when I was going on family vacations, we'd take the time to acknowledge the Indigenous people of that land. So, it was very personal and emotional, but also equally uplifting to see a Native voice on that stage.

Michelle: [The play begins with Madeline going through customs in Stockholm and an agent asking her if she voted for Brexit] I have made decisions about where I will transit through in the world because British immigration can be particularly brutal if you are perceived to be of the wrong nationality. I [have papers for both the US and Malawi], and I'm treated differently coming into Britain as a Malawian than as an American, to the point where I [finally] said, "I'll just enter as American now because this is too difficult." I loved her bringing that experience to life, especially with the way they used the [fluorescent strobe lights hanging from the ceiling], because those lights are that bright, and there's also a transparent door that will allow you through or keep you out, which talks to those integration angles.

Alexandra: To be honest, it took me some time to drop into the play, because I wanted to be closer to the performer. To me, in a successful one-person show, the space must be the other character. I think that the set [by production designer Hao Bai] achieved that, without a doubt. It was exciting to see the set transform itself [to a customs gate or the British Museum], but I don't think that the [Suzanne Roberts Theatre] was transformed. I felt far away for a long time, and I almost wish they had done the show in the upstairs lobby. There's so much in that play about presence, and I wish I could have heard her breathe a little more. She's saying these really real things about what happens when you're in a stale environment, where humanity is treated like specimens, and I think the space made me feel like a specimen. So I was dealing with some of that, but also, the rest of the audience.

Kirsten: I felt that too, that the proscenium stage in this cavernous space gave the piece a presentational quality at first, and it was hard not to be aware of the mostly older, white people surrounding us who were falling asleep.

Alexandra: I felt myself really open up when she talked about the rock that had been brought to England as an offering to her ancestor [Mahomet Weyonomon], as someone who has lived in a lot of different places. And there are a lot of things about my background and my heritage that are, data wise, unknowable [because of colonialism]. That was really resonant and impactful—this idea of finding something that feels like home when you're all alone and when you're far away from any kind of home.

Trinity: I liked her transformation of the definition of home throughout the play. At one point in time, it was physically tangible Mohegan. Then she had to find her new definition of home while she was across time, at the grave site of her ancestor—that's home, that's the closest she's going to get to it. I have been blessed to grow up in Lenapehoking, but that is rare for many Indigenous people. When I say Indigenous, I mean across the world, people have been displaced due to colonialism. And so finding that little piece of home that you cling onto in the middle of a storm of being displaced just kept on reverberating every time she found her little sweet spot where she'd kind of nudged in and be like, "Okay, I'm home here."

Kirsten: I kept coming back to language as a connecting force, and the disconnection from your identity and history when it’s taken.

Michelle: I went to a [boarding] school in Malawi where it was forbidden to speak our national language, [Chichewa], outside of the gates of the hostels: you could get punished if you were heard speaking that language [in the main campus area]. And that was happening long after colonialism [ended]—I went to that school in the late 1990s. You're learning the white man's language, you're learning white ancestry, you're learning about World War II. [But] you're not learning about Apartheid that started three years after World War II. In the show, Madeline says, "they want you to become them," but I don't think that's true. We'll never be the white man. We're expected to learn from them so that we can position ourselves below them, and that's always where we are.

And I sometimes think about that, in terms of where we are now [in Malawi]. Though [most] of us still speak [Chichewa], increasingly, people are teaching their kids English over Chichewa—a fascinating reality. But what does that mean for who we [eventually] become? I think this play meditates on that, through the [literal and metaphorical images of] flying, which implies separation, because you're going up into the sky. You're creating this bridge, but the necessity of the bridge implies this separateness, and you're using your language to hopefully bridge that—but there was a severance that happened generations ago [and is still happening]. [Madeline] says at the end, “You can go home,” but I think in saying this, there is also the flip side question of, “Can you?”

Trinity: Every time she would say, "I fly, fly, and then I land." Which I could really appreciate, because to me, it was symbolic of the leaps you try to take as a BIPOC person, and then you're smacked down. Because you can feel like you get your wings, you feel like, "My voice is being heard,” and in some room, you will immediately feel shut down, and I could feel that sense with that saying being repeated.

Alexandra: There is a way of talking about how people of color engage with white culture that the zero sum of it has to be assimilative. If Madeleine loves Shakespeare, she's a Mohegan who loves Shakespeare.  If we touch anything that a white person created, then it's because we want to be white, and not, "Oh, I want to write a story about intergenerational tension and the inability to let go of power. Well, let me just [use] King Lear, because it's right the fuck there." And that's something that I felt really energized by Madeline saying. Those questions where she would answer, "No, I saw something in Shakespeare that was my experience of the world," and that's not because Shakespeare's great, it's because her experience is so necessary to understanding the value of any conversation about intruders, so of course she belongs in The Tempest.

Kirsten: I keep coming back to the many examples in the play of the damage done by institutions to marginalized people. How Shakespeare is treated as an institution and used as a weapon of assimilation by the West. Or museums refusing to return precious artifacts and remains, or the story Madeline tells of Samson Occom, who traveled to England to raise funds for an Indigenous school, which were then diverted to form Dartmouth College. And now she is touring to institutions that are predominantly white theatres and demanding via the accountability rider that they do something besides produce the work.

Alexandra: But at the same time, did we see this accountability? [Did we see that acknowledgment of wrongdoing and pledge to the Indigenous community in the lobby?] As audience members, did we walk in there and say, "Wow, this white institution is in partnership, or has sought equity, or has sought collaboration, or has stepped back in order for other institutions to hold up." That was not my experience. It's a charge on theater-makers, that [question of] "where does the story start?" I don't think it's fair to ask one performer, one writer, for the weight of that story to start when the lights go down. And I think that's a large question for the entire industry.

Michelle: It's almost like a meta meditation on the main piece. That question is interrogated in the play, and then it is being interrogated by virtue of this relationship I have with the space I was in.

Alexandra: I just want to offer energy to Madeline. I think that the work she's doing is really exciting, and she does have a long road ahead with a tour. And I really feel that.

Michelle: And doing it by herself. When you think about what that means at a meta level, you're thinking about this as a landscape, as being like, "Who's listening? Who's really listening?" But she still goes up night after night after night.