Celebrate Indigenous Peoples Day with an evening of puppetry, live music, and intercultural star teaching by Dakota and Maya elders. This family-friendly event is free and open to anyone. Bring a lawn chair, if you can, and gather at the Neighborhood Development Center lot, at Lake Street and Chicago Avenue in Minneapolis. (See the flyers below for location and how to get there.)

The featured puppet play, Star Girl Clan (Chumil Ali Alaxik), is a magical realism adventure into Maya cosmovision about an Indigenous grandmother whose spiritual conflict with internal racism leads her on a journey into an enchanted jungle and starworld. Inspired by dreams, identity, struggles, and the spirit realm, Star Girl Clan is an intergenerational story of emergence and healing transformation. This show is calling on our ancestors and cellular memory to inspire a new generation of descendants to look up into the stars and to care for the earth.

Traditional Pre-Columbian music score by Curandero (Rico Simon Mendez, Gustavo Lira, & Xilam Balam). Created by a collaborative team (Star Girl Clan) Magdalena Kaluza & Rebekah Crisanta de Ybarra. Directed by Rhiana Yazzie, artistic director of New Native Theatre, and co-presented by New Native Theatre and Electric Machete Studios.

Originally created as part of a PuppetLab Fellowship at In the Heart of the Beast Puppet & Mask Theatre, this production is being remounted with generous support from Monkeybear’s Harmolodic Workshop, The Jim Henson Foundation, and The Creative Response Fund, a program of the Office of Arts, Culture and the Creative Economy in the City of Minneapolis and also in part by The Kresge Foundation for Indigenous People’s Day 2021.

Schedule

7 p.m.—Music, kids art activity with Cempasúchitl Collective, short films

7:10 p.m.—PUPPET PLAY: Star Girl Clan 

7:30 p.m.—Songs and star knowledge cultural exchange by Jim Rock (Dakota), Director of Indigenous Programming, Marshal W. Alworth Planetarium, University of Minnesota Duluth, Gina ‘Kan Balam’ Miranda (Maya), and Daykeeper

8p p.m.—LIVE MUSIC: Curandero

About the lead artists

Magdalena Kaluza (they/them) is a life-long gardener and bike rider, having learned a huge love for nature from both their parents. A Maya K’iche’ + Polish/French-Canadian queer punk, Magdalena was raised between Phillips, South Minneapolis and Guatemala. Magdalena loves cooking, dancing, playing with their partner & stepkid, and making poetry, puppetry, and street art about a world healed and free.

Rebekah Crisanta de Ybarra (she/her, Maya-Lenca tribal citizen) is a Twin Cities-based antidisciplinary artist, musician (Lady Xøk), and culture bearer whose work is rooted in Indigenous Futurisms. She is a 2021-22 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow. Rebekah creates immersive multimedia interdisciplinary and experimental storytelling. With deep gratitude to local collaborators, her ongoing installation performances have been developed in part by Redeye Theatre, New Native Theatre, Monkeybear’s Harmolodic Workshop, Catalyst Arts, and Art Shanty Projects. She performs at the La MaMa Puppet Fest, Oct. 21-24, at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club in New York City.