Native American Playwriting Festival in Arlee

The third annual KwKwusm Theatre Project's Native American Playwriting Festival returns July 29.

This year, the project features educator and playwright William S. YellowRobe Jr. as its artistic director. It is also features Linda Grinde, KwKwusm Theatre Project’s director, who will lend her many years of directing, acting and theater-planning expertise to the project’s workshops and readings.

KwKwusm Theatre Project’s goal is unique from other American Indian Playwriting festivals, commercial and academic, in that plays and performances are developed directly on the Flathead Indian Reservation to strengthen theatrical expression to benefit not only the playwright but also the community.

The project blends both the cultural traditions of the indigenous nations with American theater to create and maintain American Indian expression by cultivating a strong and clear voice to the heart, and to share this sincerity in support of the American Indian voice in theater of the Americas.

Projects and creative development work take place July 29 through Aug. 2, and the festival readings are scheduled for Aug. 5 through 9. A partial schedule is as follows:

• Missoula Public Radio has asked Jennifer Finley permission to run her play, "The Hell Gate Treaty," as a radio play. The parts are cast, and YellowRobe will be directing the voices. Once ready, the cast will record July 31 at Salish Kootenai College’s media center and send the program down for airing on Missoula Public Radio in the near future.

• KwKwusm Theatre Project will partner with the Salish Institute's Youth Storytellers to develop fresh new work for the festival readings via workshop rehearsals under the direction of Grinde and YellowRobe. Rehearsals with the Salish Institute will take place during the week of July 29 through Aug. 2.

• A series of theater workshops will be offered through the week of July 29 through Aug. 2 in acting, directing and playwriting.

• Performance readings of original plays will take place at 7 p.m. nightly from Aug. 5 through 9 at Hangin’ Arts Gallery, U.S. 93 South, Arlee. A freewill donation is requested. Each reading will be followed by a conversation with the playwright, moderated by YellowRobe.

For more information, visit ww.npustin.org or contact Donna Mollica, KwKwusm Theater Project operations director, at (406) 370-3358.