SUNY Oneonta will present the play “Patriot Act” by Native American author Eric Gansworth as an installment in its Identity Play Reading Series at 5:30 p.m. on Thursday, February 10, in Lecture Hall #1 of the Instructional Resources Center. Admission to the reading is complimentary, and members of the community are invited to attend.
Grammy Award-winning composer and musician Joanne Shenandoah, who is a member of the Oneida Nation, will read the lead role, a character named Bonnie Door. The play, which explores how tribal rights became a matter of U.S. national security, follows the story of Door, whose life off the reservation is a struggle for acknowledgment and for the chance to claim what is hers.
Gansworth is a member of the Onondaga Nation and professor of English and Lowery Writer-in-Residence at Canisius College in Buffalo. He is the author of several books, all of which feature paintings as integral parts of their narratives. His first full-length performance/play, “Re-Creation Story,” which includes over 100 paintings as part of its text, premiered as a staged reading in 2008 at the Native Theater Festival at the Public Theater in New York City.
The Identity Play Reading Series at SUNY Oneonta is supported by an Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity Action (IDEA) grant from the college. More information about the play and the series is available from Assistant Professor Andrew Kahl of the Theatre Department at (607) 436-3125 or by email to kahlag@oneonta.edu.