The Council by William Yellow Robe Jr.

Several INHCC members recently participated in a live table reading of William Yellow Robe Jr.’s 2009 play “The Council.” This presentation was part of the UNH 2020-2021 Sidore Lecture Series, “Honoring the Mother of All People; Contemporary Indigenous Leadership in Revitalizing Environmental and Cultural Sustainability.” The University of New Hampshire Center for the Humanities sponsors these programs. “The Council” appears in William Yellow Robe’s book Where the Pavement Ends, published in 2009 by the University of Oklahoma Press.

Arguably the pre-eminent Native American playwright working in the United States today, Mr. Yellow Robe has written over 45 plays. They’ve been performed nationally and internationally at such prestigious venues as the Public Theater in New York and the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, which awarded him the Native American Achiever’s Award. Mr. Yellow Robe is a force in every major Indigenous performing company, serving on the advisory boards for The Eagle Project Company in New York and the Red Eagle Soaring Theater Company, among others. He’s published three collections of his plays, including his most recent, Restless Spirit, published last year by SUNY Press, with an introduction by the Cherokee scholar Jace Weaver. An enrolled member of the Assiniboine Tribe of the Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes of the Fort Peck Indian Reservation in Montana, where he grew up, Mr. Yellow Robe has made his home in New England for many years now. He teaches English at the University of Maine and has forged deep ties to Indigenous communities in the northeast, mentoring emerging Penobscot writers, and receiving honors including a 2010 recognition from the Tomaquag Museum in Rhode Island and a New England Excellence in Theater Award.

Cast & Crew
Director………………. William Yellow Robe Jr. (Assiniboine and Sioux)
Being One…………… John Scott Richardson (Haliwa-Saponi Nation)
Being Two…………… Danielle Soames (Mohawk of Kahnawake)
Being Three………… Albert “Abby” Ybarra (Pascua Yaqui)
Being Four…………… Denise Pouliot (Cowasuck Band of the Pennacook Abenaki People)
Being Five…………… Paul Pouliot (Cowasuck Band of the Pennacook Abenaki People)
Being Six…………….. Melissa Wells
Woman Six………….. Svetlana Peshkova
Being Seven………… Libby Schwaner
Music…………………. Charlie Jennison
Stage Manager……. Alix Martin
AV Support…………. Andy Dolph
Producer…………….. Siobhan Senier