Staging (during) Crisis: Indigenous Zoomlets in the Pandemic

Abstract

Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic with its lockdowns and social distancing whirled theaters worldwide into an economic and cultural crisis. The San Francisco Playhouse, however, implemented an experimental theater genre based on computer-mediated communication (CMC) that proved to be highly productive and successful. The “Monday night Zoomlets” presented short plays by, among others, Indigenous authors, embedded in discussion by director, actors, and playwright, with a second reading of the play applying the insights gained. The presentations took advantage of technical finesses, as well as informality and humor, and the Zoom spectators in their home settings could interact via a chat function. This article analyzes three of the innovative Zoomlets focusing on crises in contemporary Native American families, crises that have arisen through the “slow violence” (Nixon) of centuries-long hegemonic colonization. DeLanna Studi’s Flight, Claude Jackson Jr.’s Cashed Out, and Lee Cataluna’s Funeral Attire. All these plays show young Native Americans attempting to reclaim rituals or knowledges through forms of “remembering,” a feature of twenty-first-century Indigenous theater according to engagé drama theorists Jaye Darby, Courtney Mohler, and Christy Stanlake’s Critical Companion to Native American and First Nations Theatre and Performance (2020). Relevant theories of transformations of chronotope, fourth wall, and third skin in performance within the Zoom environment are considered.