The newly established Native Playwrights PDX, co-organized by director Amber Kay Ball, Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians, is providing Native theater makers a platform to accurately and respectfully tell the stories of modern Indigenous people. Support from this community funded arts project will combat the lack of Indigenous representation in media while amplifying the work of up-and-coming playwrights and directors.
Native Playwrights PDX was co-organized by Ball in 2024. After hosting a staged reading for their self-written play “Finding Bigfoot” in collaboration with the Fertile Ground Festival at Barbie’s Village last year, Ball, who uses the pronouns she/they, felt that it was more impactful and accessible to showcase work in a community space rather than a major theater.
“It felt more significant than presenting it in a theater to me at the moment when I could just showcase it with community,” Ball recalled.
Since that first staged reading, the idea has only grown.
“It really just starts with the ideation of looking for a place to support early career Indigenous writers,” Ball said.
An actor, playwright and visual artist, Ball was raised in Portland, Oregon, and studied theater and Native American studies at the University of Oregon. Her post-graduation mentor was Murielle Borst Tarrant, Kuna/Rappahannock, who is a member of the family behind the famed Spiderwoman Theater. The Brooklyn-based Spiderwoman Theater, founded in 1976, is the longest-running Indigenous theater company in the United States. Ball studied with Tarrant and her family of matriarchs and participated in productions. Her experience led to the realization of the importance of feminist theater companies.
Native Playwrights PDX will utilize the funds raised through the Portland Institute of Contemporary Art and the Precipice Fund to create a space for the development of new work, offer resources for directors, host focus groups, share writing opportunities and showcase plays in the community.
This past February, while Ball was chatting with their niece, co-organizer Lofanitani Aisea, had written a script. “Fo’i Lole,” a Tongan word for “sweet like candy,” started off as a short film before transitioning into a play.
“Fo’i Lole” can be described as “hottie, unapologetic and joyful.” In 2023, Aisea, who is of Modoc, Klamath, Tahlequah, Tongan and Black heritage, was studying Pacific research on Tongan stories. She had a hard time finding stories that centered women in a powerful way that didn’t involve violence or trauma. In the face of that, Aisea felt inspired to write a creation story based around femme and queer goddesses.
“I wanted to make space for myself and for those kinds of stories to be told,” said Aisea. “It was also a call for community, a call for creation and a call to tell our own stories.”
Aisea had taken a break from writing the play to focus on other endeavors including art, acting, filmmaking and modeling until that conversation with her aunt. From there, she continued working on “Fo’i Lole,” up until moments before the performance. Ball and Aisea reached out to community members, the end result being an all-Indigenous cast. Despite the 90-degree heat, people still came out to Barbie’s Village, filling the room with laughter.
At the event, they showcased 20 pages and two extra scenes of the comedy to workshop with the community. After the reading, actors engaged with the audience in a panel to answer questions about the importance of fostering Indigenous talent, both onstage and behind the scenes.
Throughout a 16-year study published by USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, less than 0.25% of speaking roles went towards American Indian actors. Across 1,600 top-grossing films, 99 of the 133 speaking roles featured Native actors, 64 individual Native actors filled those 99 roles, and 15 individual Native actors worked more than once. Only 23% of these characters were female-identified.
“What is happening is there’s a lot of under-representation, undervaluing of our stories,” Ball said. “So when I approached Jillene Joseph and Chenoa Landry [from Future Generations Collaborative], it just seemed like Barbie’s Village is such a special place to host it… what better way to bring people together through healing and laughter?”
The “Fo’i Lole” has kickstarted the official establishment of Native Playwrights PDX. Ball is working on building a template of how to keep doing the work they do and how to support Indigenous writers best. Despite the hard work it’s well worth the effort for Ball.
“It’s such a joyful process because it’s folks who we worked with this past year, folks that we know in our communities,” Ball said. “We get to come together, read the story, share it out loud and get feedback. Words I’ve heard are that it’s a healing experience too, because we get to see Indigenous folks in empowered places and sharing stories to the audience.”
No one has a formal title at Native Playwrights PDX, and that for now, Ball considers everyone who contributes to the organization as collaborators.
Ball mentioned other existing organizations in the state that also support Native playwrights. In Eugene, Marta Lu Clifford and Theresa May created a theater group called illioo (joyful in the Kalapuya language). Other Indigenous playwrights such as Portland-based actor Anthony Hudson, Grand Ronde and Siletz, have created space for artists to create new work. If it wasn’t for the work of these theater practitioners, Native Playwrights PDX might not have had the groundwork to exist.
Though funding continues to limit Native Playwrights PDX from expanding its operations, for “Fo’i Lole,” a team of organizations were able to help them still make the event happen. Barbie’s Village was the fiscal sponsor; the Artists Repertory Theater let them borrow the stands for the stage reading and the Native Arts and Culture Foundation provided the LED lights to backlight the stage.
Ball, a 2025 Miller Foundation Spark Awardee, is using the recognition to bring more light to Native Playwrights PDX. The grant is awarded to twenty mid-career artists in the performing arts each year.
“This grant also helped me do projects like this, because we are producing our own work,” Ball said, “a lot of that work is underfunded.”
To keep the arts accessible to Indigenous theater practitioners and the community members, more funding is essential for Native Playwrights PDX to keep moving forward.
“What we’ve seen this past year is the cutting of funding for arts and artists in an industry that was already not funding Indigenous artists,” Ball said. “The number one barrier is always just funding artists, the investment of the work of these institutions creating space, not only with the artists but with the communities they represent.”
Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to clarify the co-organizers of Native Playwrights PDX as a community funded arts project.
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