Free event!!! Join us at the Autry National Center, Sat. Jun 27th!

Just got back from a wonderful week of rehearsals and rewrites and the most awesome phlegm-producing brownies a person could ask for down in San Diego. Thank you to all who came out and helped workshop my play The Frybread Queen at the La Jolla Playhouse on Saturday, June 21st!

The Frybread Queen is the story of a family coming to grips with the suidice of a beloved son, husband, and father, and all of the ghosts that such a death can bring about. I had the pleasure of working with director Scott Horstein, with whom I had worked with before as an actor in Julie Pearson Little Thunder's play The Girl Who Was Captured By Ghosts, and dramaturg Robert Caisley. Rounding out the team is our Directing Intern Jennifer Bobiwash and stage manager Joan Marie Hurwit. Scott is the director of play development with Cornerstone Theatre in Los Angeles and Rob is a well-known playwright and director and they are so much fun to work with and be a drama nerd with. Jenn was my AD on Arigon Starr's staged reading of The Red Road in 2006 and directed our last staged reading of The Frybread Queen in November 2008. Joan is a recent SDSU School of Theatre grad and a wonderful dramaturg and blogger who worked on my good pal Joy Harjo's Wings of Night Sky, Wings of Morning Light.

We were so blessed to have our entire cast return from last fall's reading: my very best Creek/Kickapoo girlfriend, the multi-talented Arigon Starr reads as Annalee Hayne, the former wife of the deceased; LaVonne Rae Andrews (Tlingit) portrays matriarch Jessie Burns; stage and screen vet Kateri Walker (Saginaw Chippewa) portrays Carlisle Burns, Jessie's daughter-in-law, and the lovely and talented 16 year old going on 30 Rayanna Zaragoza (Tohono-O'odham) reads as Lily, Jessie's granddaughter who must come to terms with her father's death.

The staged reading at the La Jolla Playhouse was the first of two readings this summer of The Frybread Queen; the next one will be at the Wells Fargo Theater at the Autry National Center in Griffith Park in Los Angeles Saturday June 27th, at 1:00 pm. This staged reading is FREE and is a wonderful opportunity to see not only my work but Terry Gomez' Carbon Black and Dawn Dumont's The Fancy Dancer. Carbon Black reads on Friday evening, the 26th at 8:00, and The Fancy Dancer, which also features Kateri Walker, reads at 4:00 on Saturday.

Did I mention the readings are FREE?