Four Indigenous playwrights also receive $250 stipends to amplify plays about Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Relatives for the MMIW National Day of Awareness on May 5th
Press announcement via Native Theater Project
HILLSBORO, OR: As part of national efforts to bring attention to the crisis of violence facing Indigenous people, and in recognition of May 5th as the National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives (#MMIW #MMIR), Native Theater Project will collaborate with DeLanna Studi to develop I is For Invisible, an MMIW, MMIR play, to be presented publicly on May 5th, 2026, the National Day of Awareness for #MMIW, #MMIR.
Additionally, Native Theater Project is awarding four $250 cash prizes to playwrights with new plays addressing MMIW and MMIR. The four awardees, each receiving $250, are Marci Rendon, Carolyn Dunn, Isabella Madrigal, and Honokee Dunn.
“Native playwrights have been writing about this issue [of MMIW and MMIR] for decades. It’s the 20th anniversary of Marie Clements’ powerful MMIW play, The Accidental and Unnatural Women, which tackles 30-year-old murders of Native women,” says Jeanette Harrison, creative director for Native Theater Project. “It’s past time to shine a spotlight on these stories.”
In addition to these writers, Harrison curated a list of 15 recommended plays that address #MMIR on the New Play Exchange. “My hope,” says Harrison, “is that other theaters across the country will also develop and produce these plays, and we can inspire change.”
MMIW and MMIR are a national crisis
The underlying causes of the disproportionate rates of murder and violence in Native communities are complex. In some communities, the murder rate of Native women is 10 times the national average. In 2021, Secretary Deb Haaland began the Missing and Murdered Unit to improve reporting and better coordinate federal and state law enforcement efforts and to address the fact that of 5,712 missing Native women and girls in the U.S. in 2017, only 116 were logged into the Department of Justice’s missing person database. A direct cause is the man camps that bring temporary workers to extract resources like oil, gas, and lithium. When the Bakken pipeline began, crime rates rose 82%. Jurisdictional issues create law enforcement loopholes that do not hold accountable non-Native perpetrators of violence against Native people. This week, the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center and others join together to raise awareness for Missing and Murdered Indigenous People (#MMIR #MMIW).
DeLanna Studi’s play, I is for Invisible
Studi’s play I is for Invisible, will receive additional development throughout the year with Native Theater Project and AGE, culminating in a public staged reading on May 5, 2026, at Bag&Baggage’s Vault Theatre. DeLanna is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation. I is for Invisible, which follows a family pulling together to find a missing loved one when the authorities refuse to help.
DeLanna Studi is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation. An award-winning actor, playwright, and current artistic director of Native Voices in Los Angeles, her one-woman show And So We Walked toured across the United States, including a stop at Portland Center Stage. She is appearing at Geva Theatre in New York in Pure Native by Vickie Ramirez.
“I have loved this play from the moment I read it,” says Andréa Morales, AGE Program Director. “DeLanna has the superpower of writing about incredibly difficult subject matter with empathy and humor. She tackles MMIW with a story that is both relatable to the lived experience of Native people and accessible to the general public. This play will make you laugh, make you cry, but most importantly, make you think. It inspired me to look closely at the ramifications of MMIW and raise consciousness in my community and beyond. Partnering with NTP on this project will allow me to do so, and for that, I feel so honored.”
AUTHORS
Jeanette Harrison, creative director for Native Theater Project, says MMIW, MMIR awareness has long been an important topic. “In my work with Native youth, almost two-thirds choose to write about MMIR. This topic is so front of mind for our youth. Our kids need us to address this issue so they can thrive.”
Harrison noted the importance of honoring and supporting four Indigenous playwrights with a $250 stipend. “One of the things I love about this group is that it’s multi-generational, celebrating longtime genius writers like Marci Rendon and Carolyn Dunn, and also reflects the promising young voices writing today,”
Here are the four playwrights and a description of their projects.
Marci R. Rendon for Say Their Names. Rendon is a published author whose work spans genres, including poetry, drama, and the award-winning Cash Blackbear murder mystery series. Oprah named her in her 2020 List of Native American authors to read. Awardees include two winners of Yale Indigenous Performing Arts Program (YIPAP)’s Young Native Playwright Award, in 2020 and 2025.
Marcie R. Rendon is a citizen of the White Earth Nation. Rendon is the best-selling author of Where They Last Saw Her, Penguin/Random, and the award-winning Cash Blackbear murder mystery series. Rendon’s poetry book, Anishinaabe Songs for the New Millennium, was released in 2024, and Stitches of Tradition, a children’s picture book, was released in October 2024. Rendon’s script, Say Their Names, was performed on February 13, 2025, at the White Earth Nations Heart/Health Conference. Out of Hand Theater in Atlanta, GA, and the History Theater in St. Paul, MN, hosted staged script readings. Rendon’s Sweet Revenge had a sold-out staged reading at the Jungle Theater in 2024 and will be produced by Mni Giizhik Theatre Ensemble in 2026. The creative mind behind Raving Native Theater, Rendon curated a community-created performance Art Is… Creative Native Resilience with TCPublic Television, June 2019. She was the 2020 McKnight Artist of the Year, recognized as a 50 over 50 Change-maker by MN AARP and POLLEN in 2018, and was listed in Oprah’s 2020 list of 31 Native American Authors to read.
Carolyn M. Dunn‘s life as a storyteller encompasses poetry and playwriting with works about family, grief, resilience, and the landscape in all genres and in between. In addition to the award-winning Outfoxing Coyote (That Painted Horse Press, 2002), her books include Coyote Speaks (with Ari Berk, HN Abrams, 2008) Echolocation: Poems, Stories and Songs from Indian Country: L.A. (Fezziweg Press, 2013), The Stains of Burden and Dumb Luck (Mongrel Empire Press, 2017), a forthcoming collection of plays, The Frybread Queen, Soledad, and Three Sisters: Three Plays by Carolyn Dunn (edited and with an introduction by Sarah dAngelo, No Passport Press, 2025) and Decentered Playwriting, coedited with Leslie Hunter and Eric Micha Holmes, Routledge, 2023). Her plays The Frybread Queen, Ghost Dance, and Soledad have been developed and staged at Native Voices at the Autry, and her current works in progress are the pow wow comedy Chasing Tailfeathers, commissioned by Oklahoma Indigenous Theatre Company, and Coyote Woman, a TYA play commission for Rising Youth Theatre in Phoenix. Stage acting credits include Four Women in Red, Desert Stories for Lost Girls, Neechie-itas, Sliver of a Full Moon, and the musicals Distant Thunder and Missing Peace. A Louisiana Acadian Creole, Dr. Dunn is a non-enrolled Freedman tribal descendant of three Oklahoma-based tribes; and is a Tunica/Choctaw-Biloxi and Atakapas-Ishak descendant and community member. Dr. Dunn is a member of the Dramatists Guild and Actors’ Equity. She lives part-time in Los Angeles, where she is a full-time faculty member in the Department of Theatre and Dance at California State University, Los Angeles, and part-time in Oklahoma with her family.
Honokee Dunn (They/them) is an enrolled member of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians. They also claim Mvskoke Creek, Cherokee, Seminole, Tunica-Biloxi, and Creole ancestry. The Two-spirit artist has been in works such as Round Dance by Arigon Starr, Diné Nishłį by Blossom Johnson, and Chat Rats by Mary Sue Price. They have also had their work produced, first by Native Voices at the Autry for their Fourteenth Annual Short Play Festival: “Who you callin’ Stoic?”, a ten-minute short play titled “Stoic Indian”, and a staged reading of Tourniquet, which won the Yale Young Native Playwrights contest.
Isabella Madrigal first wrote Menil and Her Heart when she was 16.
Isabella Madrigal is an enrolled member of the Cahuilla Band of Indians and is of Turtle Mountain Ojibwe descent. A playwright, actress, and screenwriter, her artistry is invested in the ways Indigenous cultural knowledge systems, artistic expressions, and oral tradition practices are crucial to the health and well-being of Indigenous people. Isabella recently graduated from Harvard College, where she majored in English and won the Harvard Hoopes Thesis Prize for her screenplay, Menil and Her Heart. Isabella and her sister, Sophia, are the Co-Directors of the Luke Madrigal Indigenous Storytelling Nonprofit, which empowers, preserves, strengthens, and amplifies Indigenous ways of knowing through performance art. Isabella’s play Menil and Her Heart was a winner of the Yale Young Native Storytellers Contest in 2020 and has been featured at sixteen venues across the nation, including the United Nations and the California State Capitol in 2022, for legislators voting on issues surrounding Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives. Isabella currently sits on the Youth Advisory Board for the Center for Native American Youth (where she was previously named a Champion for Change). As an actress, Isabella is best known for her roles in Menil and Her Heart, Rutherford Falls, and Marvel’s Echo. Isabella is also featured in the fifth issue of the bestselling series Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls: Inspiring Young Changemakers and her essay on sisterhood was published in the 2023 Anthology Dear Rebel. Isabella was a 2023-2024 filmmaking recipient of the Center for Cultural Power’s Culture Bearer Award and is a 2025 recipient of the California Arts Council Impact Grant. Isabella is also a recipient of the First Peoples Fund’s 2025 Native Performing Arts Fellowship.
About Native Theater Project
A resident program of Bag&Baggage, Native Theater Project (NTP) develops and collaboratively produces plays by Native playwrights. NTP partners with tribal nations, community organizations, and other theaters to offer career development, leadership, and performing arts education programs. NTP’s first production was the world premiere of Diné Nishłį (i am a sacred being) Or A Boarding School Play, which performed at B&B’s Vault Theater in Hillsboro, OR, as well as Native American Youth and Family Center (NAYA) in Portland’s Cully neighborhood, and at Portland State University’s Native American Student and Community Center (NASCC).
About Bag & Baggage Productions
Bag & Baggage Productions (B&B) is a social impact theatre company that employs artistic expression to elicit cultural connections and unify the community through meaningful engagement and transformative learning opportunities. B&B is in its 20th Anniversary Season. Memberships for B&B’s 21st Season, “Living History,” go on sale May 4th. Members will receive free admission to I is for Invisible.
About AGE:
Advance Gender Equity in the Art (AGE)’s mission is to invest in theatremakers who have historically been denied opportunities because of gender, race, or age. AGE’s ambition is to transform the American Theatre through the artists served and the audiences they represent.
B&B Box Office: (503) 345-9590 x1 OR boxoffice@bagnbaggage.org
This story was produced from a press release provided by Native Theater Project. Content has been adjusted for length and clarity.
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