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Review: Mixed bag of Native works in 'Red Ink'
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Filed Under: Arts & Entertainment

"In a short monologue that closes Red Ink, a collection of 10 short pieces by seven Native American playwrights (delivered with decidedly mixed impact in a kaleidoscopic 90 minutes), performer Juanita Blackhawk delivers what might be the emblematic line of the evening. "This," she says (in text written by Diane Glancy), "is the shifting world coyote made."

Life is a trickster, in other words, and the tricks ain't always nice. But clearly the task set forth by this seven-member ensemble is to depict Indian country as a complex intersection between the historical and the personal—with a good deal of stereotypical baggage to unpack along the way. (Much of that baggage is dispensed with in the opening "...But Can You Throw a Tomahawk?" in which a Hollywood producer looks to perpetuate as much savage-warrior hokum as possible. Cochise Anderson's hungry actor's response? "I'll do it.").

Writer Yvette Nolan contributes a couple of the stronger snippets, both featuring Anderson, who lends a mature gravity to a night that often comes across with more energy than cohesion. In the first, he's portaging a canoe through suburbia past a startled homeowner, noting that it's his backyard, too. In the second, Anderson is in the backseat of a police car, subject to the whims of an angry cop (Ernest Briggs), while explaining his status as a City Hall insider by dint of his position as a Native representative in a sea of white faces.

From here the mood shifts at a whiplash pace, and you'll either give yourself over to the experience or feel as though you're witnessing something half-baked. (The show, directed by Sarah Rasmussen, seems to be working out the question for itself. It seeks small truths in a sprawling format and tries for mood over precision, which might well be the smart gambit)."

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Mixed Blood’s 'Red Ink' offers moody mixed bag by Native American playwrights (Minneapolis City Pages 4/28)