Truman Pipestem Winner of this Year’s Yale Young Native Playwrights Contest
Sophia Madrigal Winner of the Misty Upham Award for Young Native Actors
Fiyero Barehand, Winner of the Special Youth Prize for Native Actors Under 18
The Yale Indigenous Performing Arts Program is pleased to announce the 2023 New Native Play Festival. This will be our first year holding these events back on Yale Campus, since March of 2020. We are so grateful for everyone who joined us online for the 2021 and 2022 festivals. This year’s events include two staged readings and the YIPAP Awards Ceremony, all hosted at the Yale Off Broadway Theater.
The two plays developed this year will be: Uktena’s Shedding by Truman Pipestem (Eastern Band Cherokee/Osage/Otoe-Missouria), Directed by Madeline Sayet (Mohegan) and Yuchewahkenh (Bitter) by Vickie Ramirez (Tuscarora), Directed by Daniel Leeman Smith (Choctaw). Each year the Yale Indigenous Performing Arts Program brings together professional actors, directors, and dramaturgs, alongside Yale students to develop new Native plays.
Truman Pipestem is the winner of this year’s 8th Annual Young Native Playwrights Contest for his play Uktena’s Shedding. Sierra Rosetta was also named a finalist for this year’s award.
Truman Pipestem (Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians/Osage/Otoe-Missouria) is a junior at Yale University pursuing a B.A. in the Humanities. Pipestem, who has contributed to the Annual YIPAP Festival twice before as an actor, is delighted that YIPAP has selected his debut play for the 2023 Festival. He is co-president of the Native and Indigenous Students Association at Yale and a member of the 2022-2023 Cohort of the United National Indian Tribal Youth’s 25 Under 25. He also performs with Lux Improvitas, a long-form improv troupe at Yale. His play Uktena’s Shedding is the result of a conversation between Truman and Brenda Toineeta Pipestem, his mother. It follows the story of four Cherokees reckoning with tourism, storytelling, and belief on the Qualla Boundary.
Vickie Ramirez will be our guest playwright for this year’s festival. She brings an inspiring career worth of professional experience to Yale Campus. Vickie Ramirez (Tuscarora) is a founding member of Chukalokoli and Amerinda Theater. Her work has been developed and/or produced at Native Voices at the Autry, Alter Theater, The Public Theater, The Roundabout Theatre Company, Labyrinth Theater Company. Honors: Resident-New Dramatists through 2027, Winner-2020 Smith Prize for Political Theater (NNPN), The Kilroys-Honorary Mention 2019 for Pure Native and 2014 for Standoff At Hwy#37, Semi-finalist-Bay Area Playwrights Festival 2019, Semi-finalist Eugene O’Neill National Playwright’s Conference 2018, Alumna-Public Theater’s Emerging Writers Group (2009). Productions: Pure Native - Alter Theater (Summer 2022) and Native Voices at the Autry, Standoff at Hwy#37 – NV Autry and the University of South Dakota, Glenburn 12 WP - Summer Shorts at 59E59, Smoke - Mixed Phoenix Theatre Group at Pershing Square Signature Center. Published: Monologues for Actors of Color: Women, Monologues for Actors of Color: Men and Contemporary Plays by Women of Color Edition 2: (Routledge Press). Member: Dramatists Guild, PEN America Consultant: Outer Range for Amazon TV
There will be a staged reading of her play Yuchewahkenh on May 4th.
Summary: Myra Henhawk’s sister has disappeared, but Myra is in denial. Elie is an activist. She saves people; she’s not a victim. As Myra digs deeper, she uncovers many possibilities. Did Ellie get into trouble partying? A jealous fight with her boyfriend? An encounter with a woman she was trying to help? With the help of the Creator’s brother, Bad Mind, Myra explores all the possibilities. This play examines the lasting impact of systemic racism, generational trauma, and self-colonization as it impacts the MMIW crisis.
This year also marks the 3rd 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 Sophia Madrigal.
Sophia Madrigal is an enrolled member of the Cahuilla Band of Indians and is of Turtle Mountain Chippewa descent. An avid writer and actress, she is a freshman at Harvard. Sophia graduated from Orange County School of the Arts in 2022, where she resided within the El-Erian Acting Conservatory. Sophia Madrigal is the founder and co-director of the Luke Madrigal Indigenous Storytelling Nonprofit. The play and production of Wildflower: Indigenous Spirit earned Sophia her Inaugural GSUSA Gold Award. For her work, Sophia spoke at the United Nations’ Day of the Girl Summit: Girls Speak Out Event in 2020. Wildflower also earned Sophia her Rupert Costo Medal in American Indian Affairs from the 2022 UCR Writers Week. Under the nonprofit she has performed alongside her sister Isabella Madrigal in the original Cahuilla play Menil and Her Heart, in over 20 different venues including for the California State Legislature in 2022.
The winner of the Special Youth Prize for actors under 18 was Fiyero Barehand. Fiyero Barehand (Gila River/Navajo) will be seen next in Kevin Costner’s epic western, “Horizon,“ as an Apache Sentry. He also has a role in the new episodic television series, “Even the Darkness.” He continues to study with OlyActing but wants to pursue engineering as a profession. He loves snowboarding, playing soccer and Tae Kwon Do.
Sophia Madrigal, Fiyero Barehand, and Truman Pipestem will all be honored at the YIPAP Awards Ceremony at the Yale Off Broadway Theatre Wednesday May 3rd, following the reading of Uktena’s Shedding.
The schedule for this year’s festival is below. All events will take place at the Yale Off Broadway Theater: 41 Broadway, New Haven, CT 06511.
Wednesday May 3rd at 7 PM: Staged Reading of Uktena’s Shedding by Truman Pipestem
Wednesday May 3rd at 8:30 PM: YIPAP Awards Ceremony
Thursday May 4th at 7 PM: Staged Reading of Yuchewahkenh (Bitter) by Vickie Ramirez
Please email any questions to madeleine.hutchins@yale.edu or madeline.sayet@yale.edu,