Swander’s latest play opens June 9 in Amana

‘Squatters on Red Earth’ was developed for the stage in downtown Kalona

By Cheryl Allen
Posted 6/7/23

Unaware tourists often stumble into Mary Swander’s AgArts office on B Avenue, Kalona, expecting the next antique or gift shop on their downtown shopping tour.   Until the award-winning …

This item is available in full to subscribers.

Please log in to continue

E-mail
Password
Log in

Swander’s latest play opens June 9 in Amana

‘Squatters on Red Earth’ was developed for the stage in downtown Kalona

Posted

Unaware tourists often stumble into Mary Swander’s AgArts office on B Avenue, Kalona, expecting the next antique or gift shop on their downtown shopping tour.  Until the award-winning writer begins stocking the entryway with copies of her books, she sometimes has to keep the storefront’s door locked. 

May 22 was one such day; musician Laura Hudson Kitrell and actor Rip Russell were in the house, along with director Brant Bollman and artist Shelley Buffalo via Zoom, for a dress rehearsal of Swander’s new play, “Squatters on Red Earth.”  

Swander Woman Productions will present three opening performances of the work:  on June 9 at 8 p.m. at Amana Performing Arts Center, Amana; and June 10 at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. at Wieting Theatre, Toledo, IA.  All three performances are free and open to the public.

“We were told this land was empty,” Russell projects from one side of the office, now turned makeshift theater, “But we clearly saw there were people here.  They lived among the timber.  We imagined the sawmill, the boards cut straight and true, all in order, the way we lived in Germany, the old country we had to flee.”

Thus begins the play, an exploration of that moment in history when Europeans sought new lives on the North American continent, displacing the Native Americans already here.  Swander focuses the story close to home, on the Amana Colonies, where a German Utopian group, the Inspirationists, settled on what had been Meskwaki land.  

This is not the story you may be expecting.  

When the Inspirationists settled the Amanas by 1855, the Meskwakis had already been forcibly relocated to a reservation in Kansas.  When they petitioned the state of Iowa to buy back some of their land, the Inspirationists helped them, and the two groups co-existed peacefully and cooperatively.  

This is a more nuanced story, one about the forces acting on both the settlers and Indigenous people, as well as one that asks us to consider the concept of private property, the native ecology of the prairie, and differing systems of agriculture.  

“I thought it was an important story to tell because here we are in 2023 trying to discover these ‘new’ agricultural techniques that the Native Americans had been using the whole time,” Swander says. “There’s a little bit of awareness now that we have altered this landscape so dramatically, and we’re getting to confront what we’ve done with it, and what we’ve done with the people who lived here before.”

Swander admits that she struggled with just how to tell that story.  She consulted Shelley Buffalo, Food Sovereignty Coordinator for the Meskwaki Settlement near Tama, and Johnathan and Suzanne Buffalo, Meskwaki historians, for how she might proceed.  When Shelley suggested the story of the Amana settlers and Meskwaki, Swander knew that was the way she wanted to go, as the story had never been told for a wide audience.

“It took me a year just to research this,” she says.  “I didn’t want it to be a little local history pageant; it had to have wider implications, because this was going on while the whole continent was getting taken over by one white settler after another.”

The “what” having been decided, Swander next had to puzzle out the “how.”  Her theatre company, Swander Woman Productions, doesn’t have its own performance space; it tours instead.  

“You have to keep the plays pretty small,” she explains.  “You can’t have 10 or 12 people touring because the logistics are just really hard, and it costs a lot of money to do that.”

How could she tell the story with as few people as possible?  Inspiration struck one morning: “It could be one Inspirationist telling the story with a crankie that will show the rest of the scenes,” she thought.

And so it is.  Shelley Buffalo built a crankie, a medieval puppetry device that is essentially a large wooden box (hinged, so it can fold in half and fit into a vehicle for easy transport) with an open window through which to see scenes illustrated on scrolled paper, which are revealed by turning a crank.   Monica Leo of Eulenspiegel Puppets in West Liberty made shadow puppets, and Laura Hudson Kitrell of Coralville composed music that is part of the performance, as per crankie tradition.

Rip Russell of Iowa City narrates the story as the Inspirationist and turns the crank of the crankie.  

Russell admits, “Monologues are always challenging.  This was basically a monologue after monologue after monologue.  But they have a nice flow to them.”

For Kitrell, who sings and plays the bajolele in places throughout the performance, you might think that having to sing in four languages – German, Spanish, French, and English – would be a challenge.

“That actually wasn’t too bad,” she says.  “I just hope that there’s no native speakers in the audience,” she laughs, aware that she may be singing with an unusual accent.

Although they weren’t present at the dress rehearsal, members of the Meskwaki Settlement School Youth Theatre Group will round out the cast at the performances this weekend.  

The theatre company’s work on “Squatters on Red Earth” is supported by grants from Anon was a Woman Environmental Art Fund (The New York Foundation for the Arts) and The Iowa Historical Society, Inc.  

Tickets to the three performances are free; first-come, first-serve at the door or reserve by putting “Tickets” in the subject line to agartsoffice@gmail.com.  The play runs one hour with audience discussion to follow.

And for hungry theatre-lovers: after the 2 p.m. performance in Toledo, IA, there will be frybread.  Just sayin’.

“Squatters on Red Earth” will be performed June 9 at 8 p.m. at Amana Performing Arts Center, 39 38th Ave., Amana, and June 10 at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. at Wieting Theatre, 134 S. Church, Toledo, IA.