An Evening with Madeline Sayet, an event where Madeline Sayet performed excerpts from her show “Where We Belong,” and spoke on her life and play’s impact, took place at the EZ Blackbox Theatre in the Center for Performing Arts Wednesday. Jessica Vallejo hosted the event which was compromised of 15-minute excerpts of Sayet’s show, a conversation between Sayet and Vallejo and an opportunity for questions. Before the event started, a land acknowledgment was read aloud.

Sayet is a Mohegan theatremaker named in Forbes 30 Under 30, a TED fellow, an NCAIED Native American 40 under 40, an MIT Media Lab Director’s Fellow and received the White House Champion of Change Award from former President Barack Obama. She is an assistant professor at Arizona State University in its English department and the executive director of the Yale Indigenous Performing Arts Program.

“Originally, I trained to be an actor, I grew up doing a lot of Shakespeare because that was what was available. Now I have a very complicated relationship with Shakespeare because I now recognize the systemic structures in place that means that Shakespeare is everywhere,” Sayet said. “When I got to school, my final year of undergrad, there was a course being taught in contemporary Native drama. It was completely revolutionary to me because I didn’t know Native theater existed and that comes up for a lot of different Native theater artists. Suddenly it was like these stories that resonated and were important to me and felt so deep and so connected. I shifted into directing first as a way to facilitate community spaces with other Native artists.”

Sayet’s original play, “Where We Belong,” was first performed at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London and received four out of four stars from The Chicago Tribune. Sayet’s website describes the play as “a search for belonging in a globalized world. It is at once a rich investigation into the impulses that divide and connect us as people, but it is also about a wolf that learns how to become a bird and fly.” Two excerpts from the show were performed at the event.

“When I wrote [“Where We Belong”], it was because it’s something needed to be processed that I couldn’t process any other way other than on stage,” Sayet said. “Because it was so specific, and because it was so personal people found different resonances with the story. That also helped heal other people, which wasn’t something I had foreseen or realized. And that’s ultimately why I kept telling the story was because when I would perform it, I’d get notes for people in the audience that would like that would tell me how much it meant to them.”

Jessica Vallejo, who hosted the event, is Dine, Yoeme and Xicana. She is a doula, licensed massage therapist, wellness practitioner and birth keeper who offers traditional family support at Sacred Spaces 216. She also serves as the secretary for the Committee of 500 Years of Dignity and Resistance and serves in Diversity Equity and Inclusion for the Cleveland Cavaliers, Monsters, Charge, Legion and Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse Events. Vallejo spoke on how much Sayet’s work meant to her.

“A lot of Native folks have struggled through creating an identity for themselves in this world, post-colonial,” Vallejo said. “Our community has struggled for visibility and against the backdrop of racist imagery for 100 years. We are beginning a journey and this is part of it, telling our stories and giving that visibility back to our lived experiences and the ongoing barriers that we have to access that as an identity in 2023. I’m a little emotional.”

Sayet’s “Where We Belong” is currently touring the nation produced by the Wo0lly Mammoth Theatre Company in association with the Folger Shakespeare Library, and is published by Bloomsbury.

Lex Ogilvie is a reporter. Contact her at [email protected].