EnrichMint Event with Jace Weaver

Saturday September 28 after the Matinee

Get more insight into the life & career of Lynn Riggs from Jace Weaver, the founding Director of the Institute of Native American Studies at the University of Georgia. Weaver has written about Lynn Riggs several times, including in his seminal work of Native American literary history That the People Might Live: Native American Literature and Native American Community.

Excerpt from Jace Weaver’s Forward to The Cherokee Night and Other Plays:

Silence—even taciturnity—seldom makes for great drama, but Lynn Riggs knew Oklahomans. More so than his contemporary John Steinbeck, he heard them and gave them voice. In his preface to Green Grows the Lilacs, writing of the task of a dramatist, he concluded, “And sometimes, his characters may do stirring things he could never have calculated. And sometime, if he is fortunate, he may hear from the people he has set in motion (as Shakespeare and Chekhov often heard) things to astonish him and things to make him wise.”

"The Way Them Men Done": Sex and Gender in the Plays of Lynn Riggs
with JESSE MARCHESE - Dramaturgical Advisor

Wednesday October 9 after the matinee

Lynn Riggs’ identity, as a gay Cherokee, made him particularly sensitive to issues of sexuality and presumed gender roles in Indian Territory and the early years of Oklahoma’s statehood. This discussion will explore the way in which those themes emerge in his body of work, including Sump’n Like Wings and beyond.

Did you know?

Many of our EnrichMint Events have been recorded and are available for viewing online.