Minnesota actor and playwright makes history at Kennedy Center

Even as the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts has been embroiled in chaos because senior leaders and half of the board were sacked by President Donald Trump, who then installed himself as chairman and performers have canceled their appearances, a Minnesota artist has quietly made history.

Playwright and director Rhiana Yazzie has become the first indigenous woman to write and direct a show at the Washington, D.C., arts center. Yazzie’s “The Other Children of the Sun,” based on some of the lesser-explored characters in the Navajo creation story, premiered Feb. 22 and runs through March 9.

“I’m just really proud to be a Minnesotan and to represent all the different hats that I wear,” Yazzie said Tuesday by phone from New Mexico, where she was driving with her father on their way to the nation’s capital.

Also a filmmaker and actor, Yazzie founded Minneapolis-based New Native Theatre in 2009. She was commissioned by the Kennedy Center nearly three years ago as part of a national project to create superhero-based works for diverse children and families.

She and the cast arrived to rehearse “Children of the Sun” the day after Trump’s inauguration. Yazzie did not consider scrapping her work, which would seem to be in the political bull’s-eye against woke culture.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt had said: “The Kennedy Center learned the hard way that if you go woke, you will go broke.”

Yazzie wants to see her play complete its full run at the venue.

“Even before the administrative changes, it was very hard for BIPOC people, let alone Native American writers, to get their work onstage at the Kennedy Center,” Yazzie said. “For the first time, someone like me gets to flex her creative muscles there. It’s important to have a Native voice at the Kennedy Center, and it’s doing so much good.”