Four Playwrights Receive Cash Award From Native Theater Project

May 5th is the National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives. As part of national efforts to bring attention to the crisis of violence facing Indigenous people, Native Theater Project is amplifying theatre work that sheds light on this crisis, awarding four cash prizes to playwrights with new plays addressing MMIR. Native Theater Project will also join together with Advance Gender Equity in the Arts (AGE) and Bag&Baggage Productions (B&B) to develop an MMIR play over the coming year, and present it publicly on May 5, 2026, in conjunction with next year’s National Day of Awareness for MMIR.

The four awardees, who will each receive $250, are Marci Rendon, Carolyn Dunn, Isabella Madrigal, and Honokee Dunn.

I is For Invisible by DeLanna Studi will receive further development, including a workshop with actors, a director, and dramaturg, and a public reading at Bag&Baggage’s The Vault Theater in Hillsboro, Oregon.  I is for Invisible follows a family pulling together to find a missing loved one when the authorities refuse to help. 

“I have loved this play from the moment I read it,” says Andréa Morales, AGE Program Director. “DeLanna has the superpower of writing about incredibly difficult subject matter with both empathy and humor.  She tackles MMIW with a story that is both relatable to the lived experience of Native people, and accessible to the general public. This play will make you laugh, make you cry, but most importantly make you think. It inspired me to look closely at the ramifications of MMIW and to raise consciousness in my own community and beyond. Being able to partner with NTP on this project will allow me to do so, and for that I feel so honored.”

DeLanna Studi is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation. An award-winning actor, playwright and current artistic director of Native Voices in Los Angeles, her one-woman show And So We Walked toured across the United States, including a stop at Portland Center Stage. She is currently appearing at Geva Theatre in New York in Pure Native by Vickie Ramirez.

Award winners include Marci R. Rendon for Say Their Names. Rendon is a published author whose work spans genres, including poetry, drama, and the award-winning Cash Blackbear murder mystery series. She was named by Oprah in her 2020 List of Native American authors to read. Awardees also include two winners of Yale Indigenous Performings Arts Program (YIPAP)’s Young Native Playwright Award, in 2020 and 2025 respectively:  Isabella Madrigal, who first wrote Menil and Her Heart when she was 16, and Honokee Dunn, whose play Tourniquet just received a staged reading at Yale. Rounding out the list is Carolyn Dunn, whose one-act play How We Go Missing celebrates the resilience of Native women. 

“One of the things I love about this group is that it’s multi-generational, celebrating longtime genius writers like Marci Rendon and Carolyn Dunn, and also reflects the promising young voices writing today,” says Jeanette Harrison, creative director for Native Theater Project, which also runs a performing arts education program. “In my work with Native youth, almost two thirds of them choose to write about MMIR. This topic is so front of mind for our youth. Our kids need us to address this issue, so that they can thrive.”  

The underlying causes of the disproportionate rates of murder and violence in Native communities are complex. In some communities, the murder rate of Native women is 10 times the national average. In 2021, Secretary Deb Haaland began the Missing and Murdered Unit, to improve reporting and better coordinate federal and state law enforcement efforts, and to address the fact that of 5,712 missing Native women and girls in the U.S. in 2017, only 116 were logged into the Department of Justice’s missing person database. A direct cause is the man camps that bring in temporary workers to extract resources like oil, gas, and now lithium. When the Bakken pipeline began, crime rates rose 82%. Jurisdictional issues create law enforcement loopholes that do not hold accountable non-Native perpetrators of violence against Native people. This week, the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center and others join together to raise awareness for Missing and Murdered Indigenous People (#MMIR #MMIW).

“Native playwrights have been writing about this issue for decades. It’s the 20th anniversary of Marie Clements’ powerful MMIW play, The Accidental and Unnatural Women, which tackles 30-year-old murders of Native women,” says Harrison. “It’s past time to shine a spotlight on these stories.”

“Jeanette is a trailblazing director and champion of this work,” says Morales, “and AGE feels honored to collaborate with her to bring DeLanna's work to Hillsboro and the Portland community.”

In addition to these writers, Harrison curated a list of 15 recommended plays that address #MMIR on the New Play Exchange. “My hope,” says Harrison, “is that other theaters across the country will also develop and produce these plays, and we can inspire change.”