A moving, funny, mystical journey along the Trail of Tears

HANOVER, NH—In the 1830s, federal Indian removal actions that became known as "The Trail of Tears" forced an estimated 100,000 Native Americans to relocate from the Southeastern United States to the West.  Some 15,000 died on the journey. Among the survivors were ancestors of award-winning Cherokee actress, writer and activist DeLanna Studi.

Now Studi has created a riveting solo show that revisits that genocidal federal policy as she unfurls an epic tale about walking, with her father, a 900-mile section of the trail.  Studi will perform And So We Walked on Friday, January 10, 7:30 PM, and Saturday, January 11, 2:00 pm and 7:30 pm, at the Hopkins Center for the Arts at Dartmouth College.

The show is being presented in conjunction with a ten-day Hood Museum of Art residency by Native photographers Kali Spitzer (Kaska Dena) and Will Wilson (Diné). On January 10 at 6:30 pm, there will be a free discussion about contemporary native arts by Spitzer, Wilson and (via Skype) Thomas Studi, Delanna Studi's father and collaborator on And So We Walked. Jami Powell, the Hood's curator of Native American Art, will be the moderator.

On an evocative stage set of wooden boards and a few plain furnishings, with a backdrop of wide cloth strips that capture projected images that help set the scenes, Studi recounts her journey along the same trail her great-great-grandparents took from their home in western North Carolina to Oklahoma, where Studi was raised.

Moving back and forth in time and voicing several dozen distinct characters, she recounts her childhood, her father's experience in an Indian boarding school, the history of the Trail of Tears, and the people and situations she encounters on her journey--by turns comic, mystical and always more than what they seem. Her career decisions to pursue an acting career, her vivid, prophetic dreams, and a furtive romance also play their part in the enthralling narrative.

So far seen in only a few select venues around the country, And So We Walked was called "intensely powerful" by Broadway World, and theater blogger Judy Nedry wrote: "Studi's storytelling is magical … And So We Walked is a journey of Biblical proportion."

Part of the Hop's ongoing commitment to Native voices and themes, And So We Walked is being programmed in conjunction with CIPX Dartmouth: Kali Spitzer and Will Wilson, a project and exhibit at the Hood Museum of Art, January 6 through March 15.

Studi developed the work in close collaboration with producer and director Corey Madden, who, over a 30-year professional career, has been the creator, director and/or producer of more than 300 site specific, interdisciplinary and new works that have premiered across the country and in Europe. 

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DeLanna Studi (Cherokee) most recently starred in Astoria: Part One at Portland Center Stage and Indiana Repertory Theatre's Finding Home: Indiana at 200. Studi's Off-Broadway debut in Informed Consent, at the Duke Theater on 42nd Street, was a New York Times Critics' Pick, which described her performance as "moving gravity." She was a company member of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival for two seasons, where she was one of only 10 Native people (onstage and off) to have done so. She performed in the First National Broadway Tour of the Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winning August: Osage County. She has won awards for her performances in Hallmark/ABC's Dreamkeeper and Chris Eyre's Edge of America. Studi also tours in the Encompass "Compassion Play" KICK, a one-person show, written by Peter Howard, which explores the power of images, stereotypes and Native American mascots. She recently starred in the short film Blessed and can be seen in ABC's General Hospital, Showtime's Shameless and SyFy's ZNation. She is the current chair of the SAG-AFTRA National Native American Committee. Her next project (in addition to And So We Walked) will be Portland Center Stage's Astoria: Part Two. She is currently writing the memoir counterpart to And So We Walked. She is the niece of actor Wes Studi (Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Dances With Wolves).

Over a 30-year professional career, Corey Madden has been the creator, director and/or producer of more than 300 site specific, interdisciplinary and new works that have premiered across the country and in Europe. Recent original works premiered by her company L'Atelier Arts include Tales of the Old West presented at the Autry, Sol Path and Rain After Ash commissioned by Pasadena's AxS Festival and Day for Night presented during Santa Monica's 2011 GLOW Festival and restaged for the 2012 Transatlantyk Film and Music Festival. Madden is currently Executive Director of the Kenan Institute for the Arts at the UNC School of the Arts and has been Associate Artistic Director of the Center Theatre/Mark Taper Forum, Producing Director of Performing for Los Angeles Youth, Director of Artist Programs for the Pasadena Arts Council, and on the Artistic Staff for the Actors Theatre of Louisville and its Humana Festival of New American Plays.

And So We Walked is the result of four years of work, research and experiences. On a research expedition in July 2014, Studi and Madden discovered Studi's ancestral homestead on government maps archived at the Museum of the Cherokee Indian. When the two women visited the spot by the river in Murphy, NC, they knew they had a story to tell.

The next summer, Studi started the journey to retrace the path her great-great grandparents took in the 1830s during the forced relocation of more than 17,000 Cherokee. By her side were a documentarian and her father Thomas, a full-blooded Cherokee who helped by interviewing tribal culture bearers in their native tongue. Madden joined the team whenever she could.Studi and Madden continued to work on the show in residencies with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Process Series in 2015 and the Native Voices at the Autry Museum in Los Angeles, CA, which presented the show in its spring 2016 Festival of New Plays.The Native American Theatre Project—a three-week long creative co-laboratory—was held in Cherokee, NC, July 18-August 16, 2016 with support from the Cherokee Preservation Foundation. She also performed the work in Portland, OR, in 2016 in a high-profile residency.