Mohegan history as radio theater
HartBeat Ensemble presents ‘Up and Down the River,’ a series of 5 plays about generations of native people
For the holiday season, the Mohegan tribe is offering a much-needed history lesson of indigenous people, a gripping drama of communal struggle against oppression performed by HartBeat Ensemble as a special form of theater created for the COVID era.
“Up and Down the River” is a series of five plays about generations of native people who cared for the land alongside it from the 17th to 20th centuries, the struggles of Mohegan leaders and the sacrifices they made to preserve the Mohegan Nation. The plays can be heard but not seen. They’re radio dramas which encourage listeners to use their imaginations. The dramas conjure up famous native people from local history that precede the founding of Connecticut, and track the Mohegan community into the present day.
Melissa Tantaquidgeon Zobel and Madeline Sayet collaborate on the play.
Sayet has directed plays throughout the world, including in her native Connecticut for the Connecticut Repertory Theatre, Flock Theatre, the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center; she would have done “The Great Leap” at the Long Wharf Theatre this past
May had the shutdown not happened.
Zobel is a screenwriter, playwright, historian and novelist whose biographical blurb cheerily states that “her goal is to share the enduring traditions, humor, challenges, joys, and spirit of historic and contemporary Native New England.”
The women are related: Zobel is Sayet’s mom. They are frequent collaborators.
They are also members of the Mohegan tribe, whose centuries-long history they tell in “Up & Down the River.” The project was commissioned by HartBeat Ensemble, premiered last week and is streaming for free through the end of the year.
“These are stories I heard a version of growing up,” Sayet says. “I grew up in a household where my mother would say at the dinner table ‘OK, Mohegan history pop quiz!’ This was my first time working on plays where the characters are people I know. We wanted to take these historical moments and see how they might be relevant now. We were looking at these moments, and these different places, from a new angle. What was interesting was talking about them as plays. We were thinking about theater as an oral tradition. I believe deeply that stories are capable of healing and warming. What stories can offer us wisdom?”
The five playlets, which each last between 10 and 17 minutes, all feature real-life characters taken from Mohegan history. Sayet explains that the first one, “Up and Down the River: Sachem Uncas (1598-1683) Founds the Modern Mohegan Tribe,” needs to “set up most of the historical information,” while later episodes can be more character-driven.
“Some of the first drafts were very historical,” Sayet says, and the co-writers strove to make them both informative and entertaining. “Between history and plays, there’s this in-between space,” and that’s where the collaboration apparently flourished. Sayet was working on a
everyone felt about it, giving tribal members a voice.”
Sayet credits HartBeat Ensemble’s artistic director Godfrey L. Simmon’s sincere support for the success of the program, in which she produces “Down the River” as well as co-writes and directs. “It’s kind of normal in native American theater that the director will do the casting, because we know the native American actors. It was nice of Godfrey to realize that.”
All five “Down the
River” playlets can be heard for free through Dec. 31. Tickets can be “purchased” at hartbeatensemble.org using the ShowClix service, which provides a link and a password to experience the shows on Soundcloud.
Christopher Arnott can be reached at carnott@ courant.com.