Interview with Hanay Geiogamah.

In December of 2007, as part of its Native Theater Festival, the Public Theater brought Native theater professionals from around the U.S. and Canada to New York City for a series of readings and discussions. The five-day festival included play readings, post-performance discussions, concerts, roundtables, and the performance of Darrell Dennis' 'Tales of and Urban Indian.' This video documents an interview with Hanay Geiogamah, conducted by Graydon Wetzler as a part of a supplementary Native Theater Festival interview series. Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics

A member of the Kiowa-Delaware Tribes from Oklahoma, Hanay Geiogamah is a professor of theater in the School of Theater, Film and Television at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). Mr. Geiogamah is also the director of the UCLA American Indian Studies Center and for the past ten years has served as principal investigator for Project HOOP, the national initiative to promote development of Native American theater and performing arts. With an extensive background in the theater as a director, playwright and producer, he is actively involved in American Indian studies and research and serves as the founding artistic director of the internationally-acclaimed American Indian Dance Theater. Professor Geiogamah was senior producer for the two-part documentary series, 'Indian Country Diaries, ' broadcast nationally on the PBS network in November, 2006 as a production of the Native American Public Telecommunications Consortium. In March of this year he staged the dance sequences for the critically praised opera 'Wakonda's Dream' at Opera Omaha, serving as guest artist for the premiere performances with members of the American Indian Dance Theater. Mr. Geiogamah is the author and editor of a number of books and articles on Native American theater and performing arts and serves as series editor for the Native American Theater Series of the UCLA American Indian Studies Center Press. His first collection of plays, 'New Native American Drama, ' is published by the University of Oklahoma Press and has been in print for 27 years. Graydon Wetzler is a filmmaker and a PhD candidate at the Department of Performance Studies at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, where he is currently writing his dissertation on performance and surveillance. Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics