Mary Kathryn Nagle

“I was eleven years old when I realized: I had to be a lawyer. After listening to our story of survival, I knew I had to study the law.” - Mary Kathryn Nagle

Playwright Bio

Mary Kathryn Nagle is a playwright, lawyer, and citizen of the Cherokee Nation. She works at the intersection of justice and drama to secure the rights and sovereignty of Native nations.

When Nagle realized that United States Supreme Court cases covering Native laws were not at all covered in law school, she taught herself every Supreme Court case regarding American Indians. Nagle learned that the Supreme Court still cites antiquated cases that use racist and oppressive language. Having studied theatre as an undergraduate at Georgetown, Nagle recognized the power of storytelling to change public perception of issues facing the indigenous community. Rather than pursuing either law or playwriting exclusively, Nagle decided to advocate for her people by combining her areas of expertise.

Nagle is currently a partner at Pipestem Law, where she specializes in federal Indian law and appellate litigation. Nagle filed an amicus brief in Dollar General v. Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians on behalf of the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center (NIWRC) in pursuit of ending domestic violence and sexual assault. According to the NIWRC, “Nagle has drafted and filed numerous briefs in the United States Supreme Court articulating the connection between preserving tribal sovereignty and ensuring safety for Native women and children” (niwrc.org). Nagle is a frequent speaker at law schools regarding protections for Native women, tribal sovereignty and self-determination, and indigenous constitutional rights. Law schools including Harvard, Stanford, New York University, and Yale have hosted readings of her plays. Nagle received her J.D. from Tulane University, where she graduated summa cum laude and was the recipient of the Judge John Minor Wisdom Award.

Nagle is a leading voice among indigenous theatre artists. She served as Executive Director of the Yale Indigenous Performing Arts Program, a program designed to support and develop the work of Native artists. Nagle is an alum of the 2013 Emerging Writers Group at the Public Theater, and an alum of the Civilians 2014 Research & Development Group. Her plays have been produced at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Yale Repertory Theatre, Arena Stage, University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, and Smithsonian's Museum of the American Indian.

A head shot of playwright Mary Kathryn Nagle.
An image of Mary Kathryn Nagle. Photo by Justin T. Gellerson for The New York Times.

Highlighted Play: SOVEREIGNTY

A production image from Nagle's play Sovereignty. Three actors portraying 19th-century Cherokee leaders are looking at and signing a document.
Three men in 19th century Native attire. One leans on a table signing a document and the other two looking over either of his shoulders. Photo by Colin Hovde for American Theatre.

Summary of Action

Slipping back and forth between the 19th and 21st century Cherokee Nation, Sovereignty tells the story of the Ridge and Ross families working together to gain sovereignty for their community. The play chronicles how the rift that occurred between those families led into the Trail of Tears, and the impact on their descendants generations into the present. Mirroring her great-great-great-grandfather’s interracial relationship, the play’s present-day protagonist, who is a lawyer, marries a non-Native white man who physically abuses her. She then undergoes a legal battle for sovereignty over her own body. The play navigates the landscape of certain historical and contemporary laws and treaties, and the sovereignty they strip away from Native lands and personhood.


Educational Purposes/Artistic Applications

This play could be used to model a number of artistic or aesthetic elements including:

  • Non-linear storytelling

  • Using family history as source or pre-text

  • De-centering whiteness (structure and content)

Sovereignty can also illuminate learning in a variety of educational contexts:

  • Sovereignty can be presented at American law schools across the United States, which often do not include any rigorous engagement with tribal law.

  • Courses in American or Native American history, feminist studies, ethnic studies, and other related subjects can have students read Sovereignty aloud as a form of embodied learning to introduce relevant concepts the play explores.


Discussion Questions

  • What effect did reading lines in Cherokee have on you as a reader? How might having characters (e.g. Major Ridge) speaking in Cherokee impact audience members?

  • What aesthetic elements does Nagle employ, and are they effective at achieving the perceived desired impact of the play?

  • How might we critique plays by BIPOC playwrights while also acknowledging what they add to the canon?

  • Nagle has stated that the purpose of her life’s work as both a playwright and as a lawyer is to overturn the Oliphant decision. What else can theatre be? What are ways in which you could imagine decolonizing theatre in your specific context?


Sample Activity

An artistic exploration of personal histories and stories “we don’t already know” using a non-linear storytelling approach

This lesson plan outline could be done with a group of students studying and/or making theater and could be adjusted to fit fifth grade and beyond. This could also work as an artistic provocation for a group of theater artists or those working independently. Depending on the end goal, this activity could also be modified to happen across mutiple sessions or in one sitting.

  • Land Acknowledgement - Begin the day acknowledging whose stolen lands on which you sit.

  • Create Brave/Safer Space Agreements rooted in the seven grandmother/father teachings of:

    • Wisdom, Love, Respect, Bravery, Honesty, Humility, Truth

  • Story circle - Bring an item that reminds you of an ancestor. Share a memory you have with them or a story you have heard about them, something that speaks to what you cary of them with you.

  • Quiet writing - Reflect on a history surrounding this person or the time that they lived that is not well known. Alternatively, this question could be posed before the day of this activity so participants have time to interview family members to get to a story that intrigues them.

  • Pair share - Share your reflections with a partner or two. They should practice active listening. At the end of each turn, have partners state aloud moments of resonance. Once all partners have shared, each person should take 60 seconds to identify a time/moment/experience in their own life that resonates with or in some way relates to what they shared about their ancestor’s unknown history. Even the tiniest thread of connection will suffice. Each partner now shares just one line of dialogue that describes or relates to that moment/experience.

  • Quiet writing - Starting with that line of text, each participant writes a monologue or scene dramatizing their own event/moment/experience. Once complete, they should return to the written ancestor history reflection and find ways to weave together these separate but related events. Remember the thread that connected them and play around that thread when stuck. Consider: time travel/jumping; parallel timelines; characters who exist across times; actors who play multiple roles across times; telling the story from end to beginning; other ways of thinking about time.

  • Pair Share - Each partner shares their work and partners give feedback using the Liz Lerman Critical Response Process

  • Group work - Each participant shares their work. On a large sticky note or butcher paper, someone is tracking common themes, moments, or elements.

  • If desired, use that list to begin to weave each individual story into a larger, group piece.

Additional Works

MANAHATTA


A production photo from Manahatta when it was performed at Yale Repertory Theatre. In the photo, three characters from the 21st century plot line of Manahatta are distressed as the stock market crashes in 2008. Falling stock prices are projected on the set. One character is seated at a desk with a tulip on it; the other characters are standing. All characters are looking out at the audience.
Three people, two standing and one sitting looking out towards the audience. Projected behind them is the market crashing. Photo by Joan Marcus for Yale Repertory Theatre.

Summary of Action

Jane Snake, a securities trader and Lenape woman, begins working in Lehman Brothers’ residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS) group on the precipice of the 2008 mortgage crisis. In the wake of her father’s death, bankers convince Jane’s mother to take out a mortgage she cannot afford. Jane is promoted to CFO at Lehman Brothers on the day the stock market crashes in 2008. She returns home to Oklahoma to find that her family has fallen victim to the high-inflation mortgages of which she was suspicious early on in her career but had ultimately ignored.

Meanwhile, a parallel plot unfolds in the 17th century: Jane’s Lenape ancestors begin trading (furs and wampum rather than stocks and bonds) with the recently-arrived Dutch, who systematically kill the Lenape and seize the island of Manahatta for themselves.

Educational Purposes

Manahatta provides an opportunity for students to explore the impacts of only learning about history from the victor/conqueror’s point of view. As Nagle has stated, “our failure to understand how Wall Street began in 1654 is what allowed the crisis of 2008 to happen. The dehumanization of the first people to live on this land actually dehumanizes us and harms us all now” (Derr). History teachers could incorporate this play into a unit on early origins of the United States, and economics teachers could use this play to contextualize the financial crash of 2008 within a larger pattern of predation rooted in colonialism throughout American history.

A publicity image from a reading of Nagle's play Sliver of a Full Moon presented at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. The image depicts an indigenous woman in black and white looking defiantly at the camera.
A post card for a reading of the play, featuring the face of a woman with two braids and half of her face covered in black. Photo from Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University.

SLIVER OF A FULL MOON

Summary of Action

Sliver of a Full Moon interweaves stories of survival from native women (both real and composite characters) with the action of how they fought to get reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) in 2013 to include tribal jurisdiction. This gave tribes the authority to prosecute non-Indians for acts of violence committed against Native women on Native lands. The play’s title hinges on the fact that this reauthorization did not include provisions for 228 out of 229 Alaskan tribes, a major sub-conflict addressed in the play, and that it only covered issues of domestic and dating violence and violation of protection orders, but not rape and murder.

Applied Utilization

In an applied context, this play could be used as a tool to demonstrate how to build a script or or other theatrical performance based on real-life events and real-life stories. This text could also be used to investigate how to build a play that educates an audience about policy or laws.

Comprehensive List of Plays

  • Katrina Stories (2008)

  • Welcome to Chalmette (2008)

  • Waaxe's Law (2009)

  • To the 7th Degree (2009)

  • Manahatta (2013)

  • Sliver of a Full Moon (2013)

  • Miss Lead (2013)

  • Fairly Traceable (2013)

  • In My Father's Eyes (2013–14)

  • My Father's Bones (2013–14)

  • Diamonds... Are a Boy's Best Friend (2013–14)

  • Sovereignty (2015)

  • Crossing Mnisose (2017)

  • Reclaiming One Star (2020)

Additional Resources

Interview with Mary Kathryn Nagle.

Full reading of Sliver of A Full Moon.

Bibliography

Information for this web page compiled by Quenna L. Barrett and Saya Jenks (2020).