PRELUDE Festival 2023
PERFORMANCE
This Play is Native Made
Opalanietet
Theater
6:30PM EST
Friday, October 20, 2023
Torn Page, 435 W 22nd St, New York, NY 10011, USA
Despite being in a revitalized era of civil rights and land acknowledgements, one Lenape gets confronted with a stark reality that can only begin to be resolved with a group journey through four hundred years of history. At times surreal, at times absurd, and at times brutal, This Play Is Native Made is a quintessential untold story of America through the lens of one member of an indigenous nation that is one of the longest continuous democracies on Earth.
Directed by Ash Marinaccio
Content / Trigger Description:
Opalanietet is a member of the Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape tribal nation of New Jersey. He is currently a PhD student at The Graduate Center at the City of University of New York (CUNY), and the Founder and Artistic Director of Eagle Project, www.eagleprojectarts.org. Upon graduating from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, Opalanietet has performed in workshops and productions at such renown New York theatrical institutions as the Public Theater, Nuyorican Poets Café, New York City Opera, and Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. In November of 2020, Opalanietet made history by giving the first-ever Lenape Land Acknowledgement at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade on NBC.
Ash Marinaccio (Director) is a multidisciplinary documentarian working in theatre, photography, and film. She is dedicated to storytelling highlighting the socio-political issues defining our times and regularly works throughout the United States and internationally. For her work, Ash has received the Lucille Lortel Visionary Award from the League of Professional Theatre Women, a Drama League Residency, fellowships from the Mellon Foundation, NY Public Humanities, and National Endowment for the Humanities, been listed as one of Culture Trip’s “50 Women in Theatre You Should Know”, and is a two time TEDx Speaker. Currently, Ash is a Ph.D. Candidate in Theatre and Performance at the CUNY Graduate Center. Ash is the founding artistic director of the United Nations recognized NGO Girl Be Heard and founder of Docbloc, dedicated to bringing artists across documentary genres together for live performance collaborations. Website: ashmarinaccio.com/ Instagram: @ashmarinaccio
Eagle Project
Founded by Opalanietet (Ryan Victor Pierce) in 2012, Eagle Project is the only Lenape-led performing arts company in New York City. Its mission is to explore the American identity through the performing arts and our Native American heritage, deciphering what exactly it means to be American while using the Native American experience as the primary means for which to conduct its investigation. Since its inception, Eagle Project has produced six full productions, numerous readings and workshops, and has collaborated with the Public Theater, Nuyorican Poets Café, Rattlestick Theater, and Ashtar Theater in Palestine. For more information, visit www.eagleprojectarts.org.
Photo by Ash Marinaccio