Colorado Voices
Immersive theater production grapples with history of Sand Creek Massacre
Clip | 4m 10sVideo has Closed Captions
Immersive theater production invites audiences to engage with history in a new way.
An interactive theater performance offers non-Native audiences a unique perspective to learn about Colorado’s difficult history of colonization.
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Colorado Voices is a local public television program presented by RMPBS
Colorado Voices
Immersive theater production grapples with history of Sand Creek Massacre
Clip | 4m 10sVideo has Closed Captions
An interactive theater performance offers non-Native audiences a unique perspective to learn about Colorado’s difficult history of colonization.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
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Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorshipWhat I understand of historical trauma is that it happens on both sides, the perpetrator side and the survivor side.
I'm a direct descendant of those who fled from Sand Creek Massacre, so I know I have worked to heal my survivor historical trauma in my body and in my family.
This project is designed to help heal the perpetration, the descendants of the perpetrators, to face this history, to feel it in their body, to reckon with what happened here so that they can create an emotional release in the body to open the door to healing.
The show is called “Breathing Healing into the Banks of Sand Creek.
” The Sand Creek Massacre, it is the deadliest day in Colorado history.
The morning of November 29th, 1864, several regiments of Colorado military attacked a peaceful camp on the banks of Big Sandy Creek.
They killed several hundred Cheyenne and Arapaho people, mostly women, children and old folks.
We see this as an opportunity to bring people to some of the sites where this history is embedded and to engage them in interactive and participatory storytelling around that history so that we can then help heal from it, and then really encouraging direct concrete action in the world.
Today's rehearsal was our first with test audiences.
Immersive theater is really pulling people into the play There was a scene that we tested today that asks audience members to embody the experiences that Indigenous people have gone through across this continent.
Interacting with people speaking different languages, trades and agreements being made through interpreters.
Everything to reservation boundaries, children being taken from their families.
And it's putting the audience in that space.
I think the interactive nature of the play really draws people in to what can be sometimes a difficult subject matter and allows for a safe space where everyone is involved in what's going on as opposed to more of a lecture type format.
I think too often we learn this stuff in a cognitive sense and everything stays in our brain.
But healing has to happen through the body.
We're tackling hard history and we're facing hard truths here, but we're also handling it with care.
So I think anyone who has fear of guilt around this, anyone who is afraid to come, I would just extend the invitation that you're going to be cared for through this experience.
And we hope that you leave feeling lighter having celebrated going on this journey with us.
I definitely had some anxiety responses to different topics that can be very guarded and difficult for a lot of people to talk about, especially among strangers.
But I also think that being physically involved in the performance helps alleviate that a little bit and just process what's going on without setting up defensive reactions.
Reading history has an effect on us, but it's in a page and it comes alive in our head.
This manner of performance, I love.
It asks the audience to be part of the world, instead of to look at it through a frame.
Through doing that, the audience becomes culpable.
They become agents within the work.
They make choices.
They act out parts of the history.
Back!
Back it up!
Oh, I see a hostile here!
This type of artistic experience is not as easy I find to leave behind as, you know, you go and see a show in a theater, you clap and you leave it there in the black box, the void that theater is supposed to happen inside of.
Here instead, it's embedded in your world and it's embedded in you because you participated in it.
You gave voice to things.
As a Cheyenne writer and artistic lead, I think the main message I want people to come away with is understanding that no one's innocent.
Colonization is still ongoing, which means each of us has a responsibility to do something about that.
I really make it my mission to speak about this and to make sure that other people are aware it's not enough just to be aware.
We need to make steps to repair what had happened there.
And that's what this project is aimed to do.
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Colorado Voices is a local public television program presented by RMPBS