Madeline Sayet on Where We Belong

Folger Shakespeare Library: Shakespeare Unlimited

Folger Shakespeare Library

Arts

4.7 • 837 Ratings

🗓️ 22 June 2021

⏱️ 34 minutes

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Summary

In her play "Where We Belong," Mohegan director playwright, and performer Madeline Sayet recalls her 2015 journey to the UK to pursue the PhD in Shakespeare that she never ended up getting. The play, now available in a world premiere film adaptation produced by Woolly Mammoth Theater Company and the Folger, explains why she left the degree behind and explores what it means to belong in a complicated world. We talk to Sayet about growing up Mohegan in Connecticut and her evolving relationship with the Shakespeare today. Stream "Where We Belong," produced in association with Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, on-demand through July 11. Madeline Sayet is a Mohegan theater-maker. She serves as the Executive Director of the Yale Indigenous Performing Arts Program (YIPAP) and Co-Artistic Director of Red Eagle Soaring: Native Youth Theatre. In addition to "Where We Belong," her plays include "Up and Down the River," "Antigone Or And Still She Must Rise Up," and "Daughters of Leda." This fall, she joins the faculty in the English Department at Arizona State University with the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published June 22, 2021. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This podcast episode, “Farewell, Master, Farewell, Farewell,” was produced by Richard Paul. Garland Scott is the associate producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Ben Lauer is the web producer. Leonor Fernandez edits our transcripts. We had technical help from Andrew Feliciano at Voice Trax West in Studio City, California.

Transcript

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0:00.0	What does Shakespeare's Tempest mean to you? If you see yourself as Miranda or Prospero, maybe it's
0:07.4	one thing. If you're Stefano, it's something else. But what if you see yourself as the great,
0:13.3	great granddaughter of Caliban? What does it mean then? From the Folger Shakespeare Library, this is Shakespeare Unlimited.
0:28.6	I'm Michael Whitmore, the Folger's director.
0:31.6	That question about Caliban is at the center of a new play by playwright and director,
0:36.6	Madeline Syed. It's called Where
0:39.5	We Belong. When Madeline staged it in 2019, she became the first Native American
0:45.7	playwright to have her work performed at Shakespeare's Globe. Now she's produced a new version
0:51.7	that's being made available by DC's Woolly Mammoth Theater
0:55.5	in association with the Folger starting June 14th.
1:00.1	Madeline is Mohegan, and that heritage is central to where we belong.
1:06.1	She's the great grand-niece of former Mohegan medicine womanys Tantacquijian, who founded Connecticut's
1:12.9	Tantiquidian Indian Museum in 1931. Madeline's mother, medicine woman Melissa Tantacquijian
1:20.2	Sobel, fought to re-establish Mohegan tribal status in the 1970s. But Madeline's play is also about Shakespeare. Madeline once intended to get
1:31.2	a PhD in Shakespeare studies, and the play spends a lot of its time and energy explaining all the
1:37.4	reasons why that didn't happen. Within this Shakespeare mohigan nexus, where we belong is a play about language, about colonization, decolonization, erasure, and family.
1:52.1	Madeline Syatt joined us from an apartment in downtown D.C. where she was rehearsing the play for a podcast we call Farewell, Master, Farewell, Farewell.
2:02.6	In the States, I direct plays. As a native person, I promote Native stories. In the UK, I study Shakespeare.
2:10.6	My area of research is the relationship between the Indigenous peoples of America and Shakespeare's plays.
2:16.6	Today's story isn't about
2:20.2	to Shakespeare, though. It's not a traditional Mohegan story either. Today's story is how I became
2:27.7	a bird. Madeline is interviewed by Barbara Bogave. So Maddie, is the protagonist you?
	...

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