Neechie nee/chee/ n. 1. An Indigenous(Anishinaabe or Cree) word for a friend, a bestie, a bud, sometimes a cousin. 2. A member of your tribe/your nation/your people/your crew/your squad.
A A reunion with her 3 childhood friends is short-lived when Spencer and her Neechies wind up in jail. Now they have to convince the police the "smoking gun" was fired with the best intentions.
Neechie-Itas is a digital presentation that will be featured at Stories From Home: A New Play Series at the Drayton Arms. The selected scene is performed by the Oklahoma Indigenous Theatre Company and is directed by Sarah dAngelo.
Photos, Drayton Arms, November 15th, 2021
Creative Team
Jo MacDonald, Playwright
Jo (She/Her) is Anishinaabe and living on Treaty 1 Territory. She is a budding beader, awesome scrunchie maker, short film creator, playwright, and a member of Prairie Theatre Exchange’s (PTE) Emerging Playwrights Unit. She created Winn Nipi, an audio piece for PTE's Winnipeg Stories Safe at Home Manitoba Project. Her play Neechie-itas won the Native American New Play contest and was produced in Oklahoma, by the Oklahoma Indigenous Theatre Company. She is currently working on her comedy play Land Claim.
Sarah dAngelo, Director
Sarah dAngelo is an interdisciplinary theatre worker of Mohawk descent whose creative practice intertwines storytelling with re-presentations of Indigeneity, rematriation, social and environmental justice. In addition to serving as artistic producer with the Oklahoma Indigenous Theatre Company, she is an actor, director, dramaturg and a voice and dialects designer with production credits throughout the U.S. and Canada. She is a certified Michael Chekhov Teacher candidate with the Great Lakes Michael Chekhov Consortium. Currently she serves as an Assistant Professor at Brown University and teaches performance, directs and designs voice and dialects for productions in the Theatre Arts and Performance Studies Department.
Production Credits
Filmed and Edited by Daniel Leeman Smith (Choctaw) Stage Managed by Kateri Daffron (Wichita/Kiowa/Comanche) Dramaturgy by Carolyn Dunn (Cherokee/Choctaw/Creek/Tunica-Biloxi)
CHARACTERS Spencer Houle ................... Carolyn Dunn (Cherokee/Choctaw/Creek/Tunica-Biloxi) Maggie Dunning ................ Summer Wesley (Choctaw) Carm Tadoule .................... Summer Rae Morgan (Kiowa/Apache/Pima) Linda Shepard ................... Maya Torralba (Wichita/Kiowa/Comanche) Officer Bradburn ................ Thomas Cummings (Muskogee Creek) Officer Lenna .................... Matthew Cross (Kiowa)
The Gathering Song by Mankillers Drum Group The Red Road written & performed by Carolyn Dunn (Cherokee/Choctaw/Creek/Tunica-Biloxi) SPECIAL THANKS TO: President Michael Burgess and the Pawnee Nation Community College; the Kiowa Language Program; the Muskogee Little Theatre; Angela Lansbury and Izzy Llama.