AND SO WE WALKED

CREATIVE TEAM

DeLanna Studi, Creator and Performer

Corey Madden, Director

John Coyne, Scenic Design

Andja Budinich, Costume Design

Norman Coates, Projects and Lighting Design

Bruno Louchouarn with John-John Grant & Sarah Elizabeth Burkey, Sound and Original Music

Russell Snelling, Tour Production Manager

Randi Byrd, Cultural Consultant

Aimee Lynn Phillips, Associate Sound Design

Shirley Fishman, Dramaturg

Project Description

DeLanna Studi, Cherokee performance artist, activist and Artistic Director of Native Voices at the Autry, shares a powerful, multi-faceted dramatic memoir in And So We Walked: An Artist’s Journey Along the Trail of Tears. This frank, heartwarming and inspiring story about a contemporary Cherokee woman (Studi), who, with her father embarks on an incredible 900-mile journey along the Trail of Tears to truly understand her own identity and the conflicts of her nation. The play recounts the six-week journey, which retraced the path her great-great grandparents took in the 1830s during the forced relocation of 17,000 Cherokee from their homelands. And So We Walked draws on extraordinary interviews, historical research, and the artist’s personal experience to convey the complexities and conflicts with which the Cherokee wrestle. Engagement is central to the experience of And So We Walked – whether connecting with local Native nations and individuals, conducting workshops, or joining local Indigenous advocacy efforts.

Creative Team

DeLanna Studi

Originally from Liberty, Oklahoma, DeLanna Studi is a proud citizen of the Cherokee Nation. Her theater credits include the First National Broadway Tour of the Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning play August: Osage County; Off-Broadway’s Informed Consent at Duke Theater on 42nd Street; and regional theater credits at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Portland Center Stage at The Armory (Astoria: Part One and Two), Cornerstone Theater Company, Indiana Repertory Theater and others. DeLanna has originated roles in more than 18 world premieres, including 14 Native productions. She has done more than 800 performances of the Encompass “Compassion Play” KICK, a one-person show written by Peter Howard that explores the power of images, stereotypes and Native American mascots. Her roles in the Hallmark/ABC mini-series Dreamkeeper and Chris Eyre’s Edge of America have won her numerous awards. She is an ensemble member of America’s only Equity Native American theater company, Native Voices at the Autry. DeLanna serves as chair of SAG- AFTRA’s National Native Committee, which has, under her leadership, produced an award-winning film about American Indians in the entertainment industry and created a “Business of Acting” workshop that tours Indian Country.

DeLanna was the winner of the 2016 Butcher Scholar Award from the Autry Museum of the American West. She mentors for the Mentor Artist Playwright Program, Young Native Playwrights and American Indian Film Institute’s Tribal Touring Program. Her artist-in- residencies include the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of Wisconsin (where she co-taught “Native American Oral Histories and Storytelling” and “American Indians in Film”) and Brown University. And So We Walked is her first play.

Corey Madden

Corey Madden is an award-winning writer and director as well as a national leader in the performing and visual arts. Corey has worked on And So We Walked since its inception seven years ago supporting DeLanna Studi’s research and writing, as well as directing the play at the Carthage International Theatre Festival, Portland Center Stage, Triad Stage, Trinity Repertory, Native Voices Theatre, and the Process Series at UNC Chapel Hill. Corey was Associate Artistic Director of the Mark Taper Forum from 1993-2007 where she produced 300 premieres by Robert Lepage, Anthony Minghella, Anna Deavere Smith, Tony Kushner, Lisa Loomer, August Wilson, Luis Alfaro, and many, many others. In 2007 with her late husband, Bruno Louchouarn Corey founded L’Atelier Arts which created multi-disciplinary projects including Sol Path and Rain After Ash  commissioned by Fulcrum Arts’ A×S Festival; Tales of the Old West for the Autry Museum; Rock, Paper, Scissors for Childsplay Theatre (Best Production, Arizona Theatre Awards); and Day for Night presented at GLOW in Santa Monica and restaged in Poland for the Transatlantyk Film and Music Festival. Madden is the current Executive Director of the Monterey Museum of Art and the former Executive Director of the Kenan Institute for the Arts. Madden’s newest project Numbered Days will premiere in a podcast produced by The Fountain Theatre in Los Angeles next February.

Performance History

  • Audible at Minetta Lane Theatre (NYC)

  • Pittsburgh Playhouse (Pittsburgh, PA)

  • Vassar College (Poughkeepsie, NY)

  • Virginia Tech’s Moss Arts Center (Blacksburg, VA)

  • Indiana Repertory Theatre

  • Weidner Center for the Performing Arts (Green Bay, WI)

  • Carthage International Theatre Days Festival (Tunis, Tunisa)

  • Hopkins Center for the Arts at Dartmouth (Hanover, NH)

  • ASU Kerr Cultural Center (Scottsdale, AZ)

  • The Lensic Performing Arts (Santa Fe, NM)

  • Portland Center Stage at The Armory (Portland, OR)

  • Trinity Rep (Providence, RI)

  • Triad Stage at The Hanesbrands Theatre (Winston-Salem, NC)

NATIVE WOMEN RISING

DeLanna Studi was featured on the cover of AMERICAN THEATRE and in the article “Native Women Rising” by Madeline Sayet. Read the full article here.

Commission and Development Partners

This project would not have been possible without the generous support of many partners. In particular, the support of UNC School of the Arts and participation by students and faculty in this production have been instrumental and an example of how our arts schools play a role in the future of American theatre.

MAP Fund, Indiana Repertory Theatre, Portland Center Stage, Triad Stage, Eastern Band of Cherokee, Indians Cherokee Nation, The Sheri and Les Biller Family Foundation, Siletz Tribal Charitable Contribution Fund, Spirit Mountain Community Fund, Hobbs Straus Dean & Walker, LLP, Mount Hood Cherokee, Native Voices at The Autry, The Kenan Institute for the Arts, American Indian Center, UNC-Chapel Hill, Process Series, UNC-Chapel Hill, National Trail of Tears Association, Museum of the Cherokee Indian, The Autry Museum of The American West, Junaluska Memorial Site & Museum, Remember the Removal Bike Ride, Cherokee Historical Association, Unto These Hills, Cherokee Preservation Foundation, University of North Carolina School of the Arts, School of Filmmaking University of North Carolina School of the Arts School of Drama, Center for the Study of The American South, UNC-Chapel Hill, PlayMakers Repertory Company at Chapel Hill, Bob King Auto Group, Brown Department of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies, Brown Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America Native American and Indigenous Studies at Brown, Trinity Repertory Company, Yale Indigenous Performing Arts Program