BURBANK, Calif. — Indigenous women are currently facing an epidemic of violence, with some of the highest rates of physical and sexual violence in the nation. “Women and girls are disappearing, and no one will look for them,” says Victory Theatre Center producing artistic director Maria Gobetti. “It’s horrifying.” Gobetti’s latest project is the world premiere launch of Laura Shamas’ play Four Women in Red.
“It breaks my heart,” says Shamas (Chickasaw), author of some 40 plays who now addresses this all too timely topic. “I wrote this play to raise awareness about this very real crisis. Congressional hearings were held in November 2024 to try to address some of these issues, but most Americans are unaware of this horrible ongoing emergency, and we must take action.” The election of Donald Trump to a second term earlier that month could all but wipe out whatever positive outcomes might have emerged from those hearings.
Carolyn Dunn (Tunica-Choctaw/Biloxi, Mvskoke), Harriette Feliz (Chumash), Zoey Reyes (Dinéh and Chicana) and Jehnean Washington (Yuchi, Seminole and Shoshone) star as Lynda, her daughter Jo, Sadie and Marie, four First American women desperate to find missing relatives and lovers as the possible clues start dwindling in the face of apathetic law enforcement in and around the tribal lands. Are their loved ones lost? Were they taken? Are they even alive? Someone knows, but will they ever come forward? Must these tribal women take the search into their own hands?
As a community of four women gradually assumes form, they vow to seek answers against all odds. Their roller coaster journey involves mystery, grief, prayer, and rare moments of discovery and joy.
Many of the deaths and disappearances occur in the vicinity of “mancamps,” transitory housing for a mostly male working population in oilfields and rural construction sites, frequently placed near tribal lands. Men are often armed, and are protected by a collective vow of silence. Even local hotel and motel operators could be complicit. One thing is certain: Where the mancamps are, assault cases go up. Sometimes missing women even turn up abroad, where they’ve been trafficked away into oblivion and virtual slavery. And sometimes women’s used and abused bodies, shot or strangled—or pieces of them—are discovered in ravines, forests and riverbeds.
Jeanette Harrison (Onondaga) directs her all-woman cast at the Victory Theatre Center in Burbank.
Four Women in Red was first developed by Native Voices, the only Actors’ Equity theater company in the country dedicated to developing and producing new plays by Native artists. Written during the pandemic for a virtual Native Voices Short Play Festival, an expanded, full-length version was selected for the 2022 Native Voices Festival of New Plays. The Victory’s world premiere production marks the first time a play developed by Native Voices has been produced by another Los Angeles theater. The play is the recipient of a prestigious Los Angeles New Play Project (LANPP) grant. In addition, the production is supported in part by a Burbank Community Arts Grant.
“Four Women in Red exposes an issue that touches nearly every Native family, yet one that most people are completely unaware of,” explains director Harrison. “Deb Haaland, the outgoing Secretary of the Interior under Biden—the first Native woman ever appointed to a cabinet position—has started the Missing and Murdered Unit (MMU), so this is a particular moment in history. If we can let people know the true impact of programs like this, it may help.” Again, though, will the Trump administration lend support to it?
Scenes in this one-act play shift smoothly between the waiting room at the local sheriff’s department and Lynda’s dining room table, snapshots of women at their windows crying out to the night air for a clue or sign, expeditions out in the field where a drop of blood or an article of clothing could be the necessary lead to an answer, and a local television studio where the women tape an appeal for funding the searches. If hope is in short supply here, at least this video will air for years to come and potentially bear fruit sometime in the future.
Lynda has served on her tribal council and has strong organizational skills, but it’s not clear that the tribal officers themselves are any more dedicated to the search than the sheriff’s office. One of the issues brought out by the playwright is that with constant disappearances a part of the background of Native life, mothers are afraid to let their daughters out of sight. The ever present threat of crime sets a pall over all aspects of normal existence. Women are intimidated, afraid to put themselves forward and become possible targets.
The creative team for Four Women in Red includes costume designer Lorna Bowen (Muscogee Creek Nation, Seminole and Cherokee); lighting designer Grayson Basina (Ojibwe); production designer Evan Bartoletti; sound designer Jose Medrano Velazquez; graphic designer Nipinet Landsem (Ojibwe and Michif, descendant of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa and a citizen of the Manitoba Métis Federation); dramaturg Gail Bryson; and photographer Tim Sullens. The associate producer is Lisa Lokelani Lechuga and the stage manager is Ngan Ho-Lemoine.
Four Women in Red runs through March 23 with performances Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. and Sun. at 4 p.m. at the Victory Theatre Center, 3324 W. Victory Blvd. in Burbank 91505. For information and to purchase tickets, call (818) 841–5421 or go to thevictorytheatrecenter.org.
We hope you appreciated this article. At People’s World, we believe news and information should be free and accessible to all, but we need your help. Our journalism is free of corporate influence and paywalls because we are totally reader-supported. Only you, our readers and supporters, make this possible. If you enjoy reading People’s World and the stories we bring you, please support our work by donating or becoming a monthly sustainer today. Thank you!
CONTRIBUTOR
