From the Old Wood Forest: A Play by Sierra Rosetta

This program will be held in-person at the Newberry. Please register below.

In the late 1960s, Annie Ford and Elwood Morris classically meet and fall in love at their annual high school dance. Annie is from an old-school white family, while Elwood, his brother, and aunt are the only Native Americans living in their rural Wisconsin town. The two families intertwine as tension mounts over Annie and Elwood’s relationship, generational trauma, and unforeseeable tragedy. Based on the true story of the playwright’s paternal grandparents.

Dancing Pony Productions will present a reading of Sierra Rosetta’s original play, From the Old Wood Forest, which won the 2024 Yale’s Young Native Play Competition. The script will be published as part of an anthology marking ten years of the Yale Indigenous Performing Arts Program’s Young Native Playwrights Conference, as part of the celebration of the YIPAP’s tenth anniversary.

A local drum will play an honor song to open the reading. There will be a brief Q&A after the reading to collect audience reaction and feedback.

Speaker

Dancing Pony Productions is a boutique production company based in Chicago that develops and creates theater, film, music, and music video projects for a variety of clients. Among them was a 2024 live production of Madeline Sayet’s original play, Where We Belong. The video was screened at Native organizations throughout the Midwest, allowing young Native creatives an opportunity to see someone that looks like them perform her work on some of the top stages in the world.

Sierra Rosetta (she/her) is an Indigenous theater artist and scholar (Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Lake Superior Chippewa) whose work focuses on Ojibwe stories, Indigenous archives, public humanities, dramaturgy, and pre-colonial performance. Named one of Theatre Communication Group’s “Rising Leaders of Color” in 2024, Sierra wears many hats in her dramaturgy, playwriting, acting, and academic practices.

Cost and Registration

This program is free and open to all. Advance registration required.

Registration opens December 1.

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Past Public Programs

Check out video recordings of past Newberry public programs on our YouTube channel.