Qwo-Li Driskill: Dragonfly Rising

Background

I grew up involved in community theatre in rural Colorado, and when I was eighteen years old I entered a musical theatre program at the University of Northern Colorado. As I began to develop a political consciousness I became increasingly critical of commercial performance. Three years into the program, I changed my degree to an interdisciplinary studies BA that could incorporate my work in performance while paying specific attention to issues of race, gender, sexuality, and social justice.

After completing my BA I relocated to Seattle to pursue an MA at Antioch University, where I continued looking at relationships between theatre, writing, story, activism and how they can be used in Indigenous communities to create coalitions that work for decolonization and continuance. I designed a grassroots theatre organization, Knitbone Productions: A First Nations Ensemble and began working part-time as an administrative assistant for Red Eagle Soaring, a Native youth theatre organization.

During my MA work I was familiarized with Augusto Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) work and became a TO practitioner. I facilitate workshops on issues of concern to Indigenous communities, other communities of color, and GLBT communities. I am also a graduate of the Centre for Indigenous Theatre's Summer Program South (2006).

In 2006, I co-founded and served as assistant director for Transforming Theatre at Michigan State University, a project of the Office of Inclusion and Intercultural Initiatives, an rom 2007-2008 I served as the ensemble's artist-in-residence. Transforming Theatre uses performance to engage the MSU community in dialogue to create a more enlightened and inclusive climate. Through improvisational performance, storytelling, and script creation the ensemble works closely with MSU's students, faculty, and staff to interrogate our behaviors, heal social fractures, and challenge oppression.

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Plays

Bird Names in Lenape (pdf). Short Play. Yellow Medicine Review. Marshall: Southwest Minnesota State University, April 2007. 127-132.

Originally performed as a staged reading at the Capitol Hill Arts Center in Seattle, WA on September 11, 2003 as part of the Democracy Playhouse Playwriting Competition. Third Place Winner. This play is available royalty-free to grassroots performance and activist organizations. Please contact me if you are interested in performing this piece: qwo-li at dragonflyrising dot com.

Scholarship

Mothertongue: Incorporating Theatre of the Oppressed into Language Restoration Movements (pdf). Nurturing Native Languages. Eds. Jon Reyhner, Octaviana V. Trujillo, Roberto Luis Carrasco, and Louise Lockard. Flagstaff: Northern Arizona University, 2003. 155-163.

Theatre as Suture: Grassroots Performance, Decolonization and Healing (pdf). Aboriginal Oral Traditions: Theory, Practice, Ethics. Eds. Renate Eigenbrod and Renée Hulan, Fernwood Publishing: Halifax, 2008. 155-168.