Murielle Borst-Tarrant will perform Tipi Tales from the Stoop at PAC NYC this week (photo by Justin Barbin)
Who: Murielle Borst-Tarrant
What: Tipi Tales from the Stoop
Where: Perelman Performing Arts Center (PAC NYC), 251 Fulton St., Manhattan
When: January 9-11, $20-$40
Why: “New York City has always been a gathering and trading place for many Indigenous peoples, where Native Nations intersected from all four directions since time immemorial. It was a place to gather and sometimes to seek refuge during times of conflict and struggle,” Jersey-based Murielle Borst-Tarrant (Kuna/Rappahannock Nations), who was born and raised in Red Hook, writes about her solo show Tipi Tales from the Stoop, running at PAC NYC from January 9 to 11. “My family first came to New York City in the late 1800s from Virginia and bought a house in Brooklyn and raised four generations. This story is about my family’s blood flow that is here on this land of New York City. How we as a family had to keep tradition alive. The survival of genocide, relocation, the boarding school system, and the outlaw by the United States government that we could not practice our cultural traditions. The story is about my family’s triumph of will, dysfunction, and historical trauma through laughter. My personal tapestry of stories being brought up in Brooklyn in a Mafia-run neighborhood when we were the only Natives on the block. And this is just one Tipi Tale of the city.”
Borst-Tarrant (More than Feathers and Beads, Don’t Feed the Indians — A Divine Comedy Pageant!), an author, playwright, director, producer, cultural artist, educator, and human rights activist, was influenced by such comedians as Richard Pryor, Joan Rivers, and Charlie Hill, who all interspersed sociopolitical issues into their performances. In a talkback following a workshop presentation of Tipi Tales from the Stoop at Brown, where she is the 250th Anniversary Visiting Assistant Professor of the Practice and Visiting Fellow, she explained about audience members who might not like some of the things she brings up: “You’re offended by this, I get it, but Native people spend their whole lives being offended, no matter what. People don’t know we exist.” The sixty-minute piece is directed by Mildred Ruiz-Sapp and Steven Sapp (Purgatory, UniSon) and coproduced with Safe Harbors NYC, where Borst-Tarrant is the founding artistic director, and Spiderwoman Theater, where she started her career. There are five chances to catch the show; Borst-Tarrant will participate in a discussion after the January 9 show.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]