The Yale Indigenous Performing Arts Program (YIPAP) is pleased to announce the 2025 New Native Play Festival and Annual Contest Winners. This year’s events include three staged readings at the Yale Cabaret April 9-11th.
The plays developed this year will be: From Above by Drew Woodson, Tourniquet by Honokee Dunn and Feast for the Dead by Madeleine Easley. Each year YIPAP’s New Native Play Festival brings together professional actors, directors, and dramaturgs, alongside Yale students to develop new Native plays.
Honokee Dunn is the winner of this year’s 10th Annual Young Native Playwrights Contest for their play Tourniquet.
Honokee Dunn (they/them) is an enrolled member of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians. They also claim Mvskoke Creek, Cherokee, Seminole, Tunica-Biloxi and Creole ancestry. The Two-spirit artist has been in works such as “Round Dance” by Arigon Starr, “Diné Nishłį” by Blossom Johnson, and “Chat Rats” by Mary Sue Price. They have also had their own work produced by Native Voices at the Autry for their Fourteenth Annual Short Play Festival: “Who you callin’ Stoic?”, a ten-minute short play titled “Stoic Indian.”
Tourniquet by Honokee Dunn
Acclaimed playwrights Drew Woodson and Maddie Easley will be our guest playwrights for this year’s festival, with their plays From Above and Feast for the Dead. (Drew Woodson was also the 2021 recipient of the Yale Young Native Playwrights Contest.)
From Above by Drew Woodson
In the middle of an unnamed desert sits a lone church just at the edge of town. Sister Karina, Sister Maggie, and the Father all lead the small Native congregation that comes through its doors. In the five years since Sister Karina has found God and joined the church, calamity has struck the small town, leading to a string of deaths that some in the community believe to be God punishing them. Inside his darkened room, the Father believes he’s hearing the voice of God, and what God has told him to do reverberates through the Native community, causing an uproar inside and out. Leading to a decision that the community must make that tears each other apart.
About Drew Woodson
Drew Woodson is a Western Shoshone playwright based in New York City. He has had his work read in multiple theaters across New York, including Rattlestick Theater, where he was asked to open the first annual Northeastern Native Arts Festival with his play, Your Friend, Jay Silverheels. For this same work, Drew was named Yale’s Young Indigenous Playwright of 2021. Recently, Drew served as the Native Artist for the Four Directions Artist Residency, a four-week program held across four states that culminated in a reading of his new work, Smoke, at Kansas City Repertory Theater. He also recently completed a workshop of his play, From Above, at NYU. As a writer, Drew seeks to tell stories where Native people are allowed to take up space, be complicated, and ultimately be more than a storytelling device. Drew is an MFA Graduate from the Dramatic Writing department at NYU. Drewwoodson.com
Feast for the Dead by Maddie Easley
After the fall of the Indian Child Welfare Act in the days leading up to the zombie apocalypse, Kay was illegally adopted out of her Tribe by a wealthy family who then abandoned her when they escaped the carnage by sea. Seven years later, Kay is a thriving citizen of a Confederacy of Tribes who took over governance of Turtle Island after the settler government fell. Just as suddenly as they appeared, the zombies fall apart, and the one percent return from the sea, ready to re-colonize. The only solution? Revive the centuries-old Huron-Wendat tradition of holding a Feast for the Dead.
About Maddie Easley
Madeline (Maddie) Easley is an NYC-based playwright and dramaturg. Born in Kansas City, Madeline is a citizen of the Wyandotte Nation of Oklahoma. Her work tells epic stories to provide a framework for living in decolonial futures. Madeline’s plays and films have been presented at the La Jolla Playhouse, Kansas City Repertory Theater (KCREP), Native Voices at the Autry, Rattlestick Theater, the American Indian Community House (AICH), REACH at the Kennedy Center, the TCL Chinese Theatre, and more. She is a 2025 First Peoples Performing Arts Fellow, a 2023 Four Directions Playwright in 2023, a 2022 Resident at SPACE on Ryder Farm, and a 2021 First Peoples Fund Cultural Capital Fellow.
This year also marks the 5th Annual Misty Upham Award for Young Native Actors.This award is named in memory of Misty Upham, for her dream of uplifting more Native Youth in the performing arts. We are so excited to honor Misty’s legacy with this annual award celebrating young Native actors. We were so humbled by all of the talent that submitted this year and we hope that every year this award will inspire more and more Native actors to continue to submit and to pursue their dreams. The winner of this year’s acting award is Madison Moore.
Madison Moore is a 21-year-old actor and writer who is currently based in Los Angeles, CA. So far she has completed two years of her BFA training at Mason Gross School of the Arts and has had the wonderful opportunity to work with such esteemed theatre directors as Rebecca Miller Kratzer, Cameron Knight, and Valeria Ortiz. Madison proudly belongs to the Cherokee and Navajo Nations, and she hopes the work she does will lead to more Indigenous representation in the arts.
The Finalists for this year’s Misty Upham Award for Young Native Actors were: Elise Bear (Osage/Iowa of OK) and Isabella Madrigal (Cahuilla/Turtle Mountain Chippewa).
The winner of this year’s Special Youth Prize for Native actors under 18 is 11-year-old Clarissa Samson-Murphy (Inuk).
The schedule for this year’s festival is below. All performances will take place at the Yale Cabaret (217 Park St, New Haven).
Wednesday, April 9th at 8 PM: Staged Reading of From Above by Drew Woodson
Thursday, April 10th at 8 PM: Staged Reading of Tourniquet by Honokee Dunn
Friday, April 11th at 8 PM: Staged Reading of Feast for the Dead by Maddie Easley
You can register for events by emailing madeline.sayet@yale.edu.