Intertribal Theatre Project

The FLC club Intertribal Theatre Project began during the Fall term of 1997, shortly after the arrival of Dr. Paul Rathbun in the FLC theatre department. During the next five years, the club produced seven different shows, and toured the Four Corners Region. During the summer of 2002, Dr. Rathbun and ITP agreed to develop an unused building owned by the Benally family in Kayenta, Arizona and perform there for the summer. By the end of the Summer ITP had incorporated as an Arizona theatre organization and applied for 501(c)3 non-profit status as an educational institution.ITP Monument Valley, Arizona

The next Fall, ITP toured Mark Medoffs dark comedy--DOING A GOOD ONE FOR THE RED MAN--to stages and schools in the Durango area.

During the Spring of 1999, ITP produced Bruce King's EVENING AT THE WARBONNET for the Hozhoni Days PowWow, then toured the show into the FLC theatre building for the public.

In the Winter of 2000, the members of ITP enrolled in Dr. Rathbun's Children's theatre class and collaborated on a piece that was destined to garner quite a bit of attention for the club. COYOTE TAILS began as a campus project, a series of narratives drawn from Native tales about tricksters, especially Coyote. That semester, the show grew into a performance including drumming, Pow-Wow dancing, the Bala Sinem choir, and life-size puppets who comment on the performance. COYOTE TAILS performed for a packed house during the Hozhoni Days Pow-Wow, and the show toured the area from Durango to Farmington, to the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. That summer, a new cast assembled to recreate COYOTE TAILS and performed at the La Plata County Fairgrounds in Durango, Colorado.

During the Fall of 2001, ITP worked as a group on a Fourth Wall Theatre Club production of INDIAN RADIO DAYS, a play by LeAnne Howe and Roxy Gordon. RADIO DAYS takes a comic look at historical moments as if on an American Indian Radio tour of American Indian history.

During the Winter of 2002, ITP once again performed DOING A GOOD ONE FOR THE RED MAN, once again the club staged this show as part of the Hozhoni Days celebration.

As his senior theatre project at Fort Lewis College, Beau Benally directed a stage version of part of the Navajo creation narrative, as related by medicine man Gomo Martinez, entitled OF COYOTE AND WATER MONSTER, based on Navajo Emergence narratives. Paul Rathbun constructed masks for the cast of 25, and conscripted his advanced acting class to perform onstage. The show included 15 foot high puppets, and a narrated text in both English and Navajo.