A play by Dr. Bret Jones, assistant professor of communication, has been selected for a week-long workshop Nov. 11-18 [SUNDAY-SUNDAY] in Los Angeles.
His play, "Native Skin," will have a staged reading at 8 p.m. Nov. 17 [SATURDAY] in the 2007 Festival of New Plays at Native Voices at the Autry, a program which develops and produces new works for the stage by Native American playwrights.
Native Voices at the Autry is part of the Autry National Center, formerly known as the Museum of Western Heritage, which was co-founded by Gene Autry to exhibit and interpret the heritage of the West and show how it influences America and the world.
Jones, who is Muscogee (Creek), will work with professional actors, directors and dramaturges for a week, hopefully to sharpen his "Native Skin" script, he said.
"It is a Native-American play set near Muskogee in 1918," Jones said. "It is loosely based on my great-grandparents.
"A half-Creek, who is a U.S. marshal, has to solve a series of murders around New Hope, Okla. Someone has been killing Creeks in the area for a period of years," he said. "It involves history at this point: followers of Crazy Snake, a Creek who was against allotments, are still around. Someone has betrayed them and that’s why the killings are happening. World War I is involved as well as the flu epidemic that hit that area in 1918 and other historical events from the period."
Jones has written two other plays that deal with the Native American experience in Oklahoma, "Kindred" and "War Paint." Both have won the Garrard Playwriting Award from the Five Civilized Tribes Museum in Muskogee.
Jones will submit "Native Skin" for the Garrard competition next year.
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