Bio
Rhiana Yazzie is a Navajo playwright based in Minnesota. This year she is a Playwrights’ Center 2010/2011 Jerome Fellow. This is the second time she’s won the award since 2006/2007. She is a Playwrights’ Center Core Member and is commissioned by the Ashland Oregon Shakespeare Festival and the Public Theater to write a play for American Revolutions: the United States History Cycle.
In the 2008/09 seasons, Rhiana saw the production of three new plays in the Twin Cities: RAINBOW CROW, a commission by Stepping Stone Theatre for Youth Development in Saint Paul; LAS MADRES commissioned by Teatro del Pueblo for their 2009 Political Theatre Festival; and RED INK, a commission by Mixed Blood Theatre. In the 2010 season ADY, a commission by Pangea World Theatre will be produced. ADY received a Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian Expressive Arts grant and was a 2009 SPF finalist. Also in 2010, her Theatre for Young Audiences play, CHILE POD, commissioned by the La Jolla Playhouse, will tour to Southern California schools in February and March.
Though originally from Albuquerque, New Mexico, Rhiana relocated to Minnesota from Los Angeles after receiving a Playwrights’ Center Jerome Fellowship in 2006. She is also an award winning writer of plays for radio and for youth. She was invited to workshop and present her play WILD HORSES at the biennial Bonderman National Theatre for Youth Symposium at Indiana Repertory Theatre in March 2009. In 2006 she was invited to The Kennedy Center’s New Visions/New Voices theatre for young audiences residency.
She is the three time winner of the Native Radio Theatre annual new play contest; her TYA radio play THE BEST PLACE TO GROW PUMPKINS received an Honorable Mention at the ImagiNative Film Festival in Toronto for Best Radio. An appreciated voice in her community writing about the contemporary Native American experience, she was honored by “First Americans in the Arts” in Los Angeles, California, with an award for Outstanding Achievement in Writing in 2007.
A few of her other plays include ASDZANI SHASH: THE WOMAN WHO TURNED INTO A BEAR (finalist in the 2005 Bay Area Playwrights Festival; 1st annual Two Worlds Festival of Native American Theatre, 2008); THE LONG FLIGHT (translated into Spanish and presented at the 30th World Congress of the International Theatre Institute – UNESCO in Tampico, Tamaulipas, Mexico; and a 2002 finalist for the Princess Grace Playwriting Award); THIS LAND HAD SEEN WAR BEFORE was published in a 2008 anthology, BIRTHED FROM SCORCHED HEARTS: WOMEN RESPOND TO WAR, edited by MariJo Moore that includes contributions from Amy Goodman, Paula Gunn Allen, and Matilde Urrutia.
Rhiana is also very active as a radio/audio theatre writer and director. In May of 2008, Rhiana directed and coordinated, BOOZHOO AND WASTE’ YAHI FROM MINNEAPOLIS, A NATIVE RADIO THEATRE VARIETY SHOW, which brought together over 20 regional Native artists on a nationally distributed radio program produced by Native American Public Telecommunications (Boozhoo and Waste’ Yahi are Ojibwe and Dakota words for “hello,” both tribes are indigenous to Minnesota). In 2009, Rhiana created and co-hosted First Nations Radio, a community affairs program targeted to the Twin Cities Native American and broader community.
Some of Rhiana’s plays are available published online in university libraries across the country through Alexander Street Press.
*
Rhiana’s been writing articles too, here’s a few of her favorites:
MN Playlist, “Meet First Nations Theatre”
Renaissance Indian, “Karaoke with the Elders”
Native Peoples Magazine, “The Art of Translation”
And here’s a few that’s been written about Rhiana:
Theater Mania.com about American Revolutions Cycle
MN Post.com and Three Minute Egg about RAINBOW CROW
MN Stories and Three Minute Egg about LAS MADRES