July 24, 2019
Page 5
Native Comedy Packs
Hard Hitting Truths
o PinionAted
J udge
by
d arleen o rtega
Over the next few weeks, I will
get to all the reasons for making
a trip to the Oregon Shakespeare
Festival in Ashland before it clos-
es in October. This week, I’ll begin
with the best and maybe even most
urgent reason to do so.
“Between Two Knees” is a feat
of theater magic so satisfying that,
after seeing it three times, I am de-
termined to savor it at least twice
more before it closes in October.
Commissioned as part of OSF’s
American Revolutions series of
plays about significant moments in
American history, this play packs
in more hard-hitting historical truth
than most other plays of any genre,
though I don’t expect to read that
description in the dominant culture
media. It offers OSF’s predomi-
nantly white audiences a precious
opportunity to absorb some ne-
glected pieces of American history
in an overheard comedic conversa-
tion among indigenous people—
how indigenous people talk about
you when you’re not listening.
“Our mission has always been to
make Indians laugh,” says one
of the playwrights, Sterling Har-
jo. “If other people find us funny,
then cool, but Indians are who we
do this for.” And, as Larry (Justin
Gauthier), who functions as the
play’s host, remarks at the top of
the action, “We’re gonna talk about
war, genocide, PTSD, and molesta-
tion, so it’s okay to laugh.”
The play is the creation of the
1491s, an intertribal Indigenous
sketch-comedy collective whose
five members have been perform-
ing together for a decade. (Check
out their YouTube channel for a
sampling.) Some combination of
spirits and ancestors must have en-
gineered this OSF commission (not
to denigrate the humans involved);
the talent of this group of indige-
nous men is not the sort of thing
that typically grabs backing from
the dominant culture, and the group
clearly is not angling for main-
Photo by J enny g raham
Derek Garza (Isaiah) and Shyla Lefner (Irma) star in “Between
Two Knees,” a sketch comedy that takes a fictional Native
family through several generations of American history. The play
was written by the 1491s, an intertribal indigenous collective,
and is being performed at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in
Ashland.
stream approval. In the tradition of
Monty Python, the 1491s are ad-
ept at using comedy to sneak past
our defenses the sort of truth we
most want to avoid—like, say, war,
genocide, PTSD, and molestation.
“Between Two Knees” does that to
genuinely hilarious effect, taking
one fictional Native family through
several generations of American
history in between the 1890 massa-
cre at Wounded Knee and the 1973
occupation of Wounded Knee led
by members of the American Indi-
an Movement (AIM).
Along the way, two Lakota
men demonstrate contrasting van-
tage points that indigenous people
stake in order to avoid annihila-
tion, and the play’s protagonists,
Irma and Isaiah, escape a brutal
Indian school and make it their
mission to free scores of other In-
dian children from the clutches of
murderous molesting priests. The
two go on to encounter a world-
class cultural appropriator, to lose
one descendent to World War II
and nearly lose another to Viet-
nam, and to assist the AIM-led oc-
cupation. Since most accounts of
Native American history (such as
they are) stop at about the 1890s,
the play covers a large swath of
history unexplored in the domi-
nant culture—and for all the hu-
morous extremes depicted, the
essential (and very extreme) facts
are not exaggerated.
It would be a treat to see this
play with a predominantly people
of color audience—but since that
is unlikely at OSF, I will affirm
that I found seeing it with a major-
ity white audience to be strangely
healing, in its way. Watching a tal-
ented cast of mostly Native actors
(who built this world premiere
with the 1491s in a very uncon-
ventional process) put everything
out there in service of such chal-
lenging material is inspiring; I felt
that the show was built for me as
a descendent of colonized people
even before I learned that it ac-
C ontinued on P age 12