Category: Lenni Lenape

Manahatta: A Smart Focus on Who Really Owns Manhattan – New York Stage Review
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Elizabeth Frances and Joe Tapper in Manahatta at The Public Theater. Joan Marcus

Manahatta | 1hr 45mins. No intermission. | Public Theater | 425 Lafayette Street | 212-967-7555

Every history play has its moral. The Trojan Women: Victory in war brings shame to all. Richard III: Power may be gained (not held) by hypocrisy and murder. A Man for All Seasons and The Crucible: Convictions are worth dying for. So what’s the takeaway from Mary Kathryn Nagle’s Manahatta, which juxtaposes the 17th-century Dutch colonization of this island and the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis? Hard to choose one. White folks monetize, steal, and destroy everything they touch? Ownership is the root of all evil? Ancestors never die?

Maybe the clue is something Bobbie (Sheila Tousey) says to Luke (Enrico Nassi). She has leveraged a bank loan on an adjustable-rate mortgage in order to pay for her late husband’s crushing hospital bills. Debt-ridden Bobbie now faces foreclosure. Luke, like Bobbie, is Native American, working for his (white) father at the bank. He’s guilt-ridden over helping Bobbie into this financial quagmire. She’s philosophical about it. “[W]e need folks like you, to walk in both worlds,” Bobbie says. “You can talk their talk, walk their walk, but the moment you forget who you are, they have you. And then you’re walkin’ in one world, not two.” 

It’s a powerful warning, one I wish Nagle had heeded. By running a Lenape family’s misfortunes through a dual-era structure, she prioritizes time-jumping echoes—between the “purchase” of Manahatta in 1626 and the housing market crash—over credible human drama. What it means, in practice, is an academic concept that looks good on paper, but yields shallow characters, wooden dialogue, and a perverse sense of historical fatalism.

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Joan Marcus

Audiences attending New York theater are used to hearing the announcement at the beginning of many productions—that the venue they are sitting stands on land that was the original homeland of the Lenape people. In the program for the Public Theater’s production of Mary Kathryn Nagle’s 2013 play, Manahatta (to Dec. 23), the statement has grown in declarative emphasis. “The Public stands in honor of the first people and our ancestors…We acknowledge the painful history of genocide and forced removal from this territory. We honor the generations of stewards, and we pay our respects to the many diverse indigenous peoples still connected to this land.”

The play, directed by Laurie Woolery, takes place in two time zones and places—the year of the financial crash in 2008 in Manhattan and Oklahoma, and then 17th century Manahatta (popularly known as Manhattan Island), where Dutch settlers land, and—first by inquisitive charm, then by brute force—displace the Lenape. The play contrasts the echoing themes of the two different eras: the violent centrifugal spin of money, racism, trade, power, and identity. The company of actors play different characters with similar characteristics in both eras.

Present in both old and modern storylines are the Lenape—a people in the 17th century selling furs and at home in what we know today as Downtown Manhattan. In the 17th century, we see the incipient forces of capitalism destroy the Lenape in their own homeland; in 2008, we see a modern Lenape family in Oklahoma threatened with losing their home because of the financial crash.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Source: www.thedailybeast.com

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Review: ‘Manahatta’ Shows the Brute Forces of New York—Then and Now0)if(e&&”performance”in e&&e.performance&&”function”==typeof e.performance.setResourceTimingBufferSize)e.performance.setResourceTimingBufferSize();!function(){if(BOOMR=e.BOOMR||{},BOOMR.plugins=BOOMR.plugins||{},!BOOMR.plugins.AK){var n=””==”true”?1:0,t=””,a=”eyckraaeaaanajqacqnryaaaa5sxm2af-f-f448605b0-clienttons-s.akamaihd.net”,i=”false”==”true”?2:1,o={“ak.v”:”36″,”ak.cp”:”1314783″,”ak.ai”:parseInt(“790502″,10),”ak.ol”:”0″,”ak.cr”:4,”ak.ipv”:6,”ak.proto”:”http/1.1″,”ak.rid”:”5a025a1c”,”ak.r”:46578,”ak.a2″:n,”ak.m”:”dscr”,”ak.n”:”ff”,”ak.bpcip”:”2604:a880:400:d0::”,”ak.cport”:35342,”ak.gh”:”23.40.178.205″,”ak.quicv”:””,”ak.tlsv”:”tls1.3″,”ak.0rtt”:””,”ak.csrc”:”-“,”ak.acc”:”reno”,”ak.t”:”1702258693″,”ak.ak”:”hOBiQwZUYzCg5VSAfCLimQ==a2KGZdOK2FXPB3V/CyRjVR9qjmfcNLP8DFoXWzJgDDDAzxOMaOCten4Iw98B+xBqWFMYB5MF611zjDNTHitWLDUWhckbbu1hikWPfnRBdw/79j/m0QF/DxYwQvB/5uOFySPx3Gvb9slYqhEAcz/OOj0mmuzUfODQ2wuqxRUa8ZXC/yX97cO96BusGRd+bGuqpwoJnfuCboeIULZz1uaX6exjB1ETbvGjKXlRkZxBTvxDSsFMWzcSXYra505cjDyrtTiNsMhNCYtqNLtwljhP8RJvE1LG22GAUQRL8DeHb8Ypvuxe3GaZMHga6/uh5eCgLtn8EEog1UoykvMhVJRtNKV6kiOztT5R0lzjyROIXj3zmdHHES6m61Dx9NyAdyY0/s3cMBVCOHoDqDu+1Btmka8juRM5RAl35If+/tYj+No=”,”ak.pv”:”30″,”ak.dpoabenc”:””,”ak.tf”:i};if(“”!==t)o[“ak.ruds”]=t;var r={i:!1,av:function(n){var t=”http.initiator”;if(n&&(!n[t]||”spa_hard”===n[t]))o[“ak.feo”]=void 0!==e.aFeoApplied?1:0,BOOMR.addVar(o)},rv:function(){var e=[“ak.bpcip”,”ak.cport”,”ak.cr”,”ak.csrc”,”ak.gh”,”ak.ipv”,”ak.m”,”ak.n”,”ak.ol”,”ak.proto”,”ak.quicv”,”ak.tlsv”,”ak.0rtt”,”ak.r”,”ak.acc”,”ak.t”,”ak.tf”];BOOMR.removeVar(e)}};BOOMR.plugins.AK={akVars:o,akDNSPreFetchDomain:a,init:function(){if(!r.i){var e=BOOMR.subscribe;e(“before_beacon”,r.av,null,null),e(“onbeacon”,r.rv,null,null),r.i=!0}return this},is_complete:function(){return!0}}}}()}(window);]]>

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Manahatta Review – New York Theater c&&(c=a.length);var d=a.indexOf(“?”);if(0>d||d>c){d=c;var e=””}else e=a.substring(d+1,c);a=[a.substr(0,d),e,a.substr(c)];c=a[1];a[1]=b?c?c+”&”+b:b:c;a=a[0]+(a[1]?”?”+a[1]:””)+a[2]}return a};var l=0;function m(a,b){var c=document.createElement(“script”);c.src=a;c.onload=function(){b&&b(void 0)};c.onerror=function(){b&&b(“error”)};a=document.getElementsByTagName(“head”);var d;a&&0!==a.length?d=a[0]:d=document.documentElement;d.appendChild(c)}function n(a){var b=void 0===b?document.cookie:b;return(b=h(b.split(“; “),function(c){return-1!=c.indexOf(a+”=”)}))?b.split(“=”)[1]:””}function p(a){return”string”==typeof a&&0 Skip to content Scroll to Top :first-child”; var relocateNode = document.querySelector( selector ); relocateNode.parentNode.insertBefore( adNode, relocateNode ); ]]>

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Doylestown, PA—On December 4th at noon, in the house where the songs and lyrics for some of the most famous musical theater shows were written: Oklahoma, Carousel, The King and I, South Pacific, and The Sound of Music, a press conference led by Greg Roth, President of The Oscar Hammerstein Museum & Theatre Education Center informed the community that the property was purchased earlier in the day and the nonprofit is now finally the owner of Highland Farm.

Present at the event was Pennsylvania State Senator Steve Santarsiero, Doylestown Township Supervisor Jenn Herring, Executive Director of the Bucks County Industrial Development Authority, TJ Lonergan, IDA Board member Mary Smithson, former Doylestown Mayor Ron Strouse, members of the Oscar Hammerstein Museum and Theatre Education Center Board and very special guests, family members Will and Mandee Hammerstein and Jenny Hammerstein.

The board worked tirelessly for years to raise enough funding, approximately two million dollars, and after purchasing the property yesterday, they will now embark on a new campaign to raise the funds necessary to renovate the entire property and build a theatre education center where the plan is to provide theatre, music, and performance programming for the community.

Greg thanked former and current board members Jamie Rogers, Vice President, Christine Junker, Secretary and Treasurer, Judy Abrams, Matt Britten, Amy Cinque, Van Dean, Sasha Eisenberg, Lori Kesilman, Vanessa Kirchner, Mike Peters, Grace Alfiero, Keith Fenimore and Meg Roth for their work in creating awareness and helping to raise the funds necessary for the purchase. Former board member Lori Kesilman commented, “I know that Oscar would be so proud of our mission to educate children of all backgrounds who are interested in all aspects of writing and musical theater arts. Today’s purchase is a result of the hard work of so many people. I am truly…

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December 5, 2023 @ 7:00 PM

“Manahatta” is an event.

Mary Kathryn Nagle’s play about the overthrow and the genocide of the Lenape Nation on the island of Manhattan returns to that historic locale, as well as the Public Theater where it was originally commissioned and workshopped in 2014. Professional regional productions of the play have followed, but “Manahatta” finally comes home in more ways than one. On Tuesday at the Public, Nagle’s play premieres in its titular locale.

It is the story of the American Holocaust, and as stories go, “Manahatta” possesses all the horrific and devastating narrative power of Hitler’s Holocaust. The difference is that the extermination of six million Jews has been the subjects of dozens of plays, from “The Diary of Anne Frank” to “Leopoldstadt.” American guilt has been much harder for Americans to write about, and until now, there hasn’t been much written on the subject in the theater beyond the ubiquitous Off Broadway apology that “this theater is built on the land of the Lenape Nation.”

Nagle could have limited her play to the “purchase” of the lower tip of the island of Manahatta. She dramatizes that $24 transaction by the Dutch from the Lenape in the 17th Century with powerful precision to show the clash of two cultures: the Lenape have no concept of ownership, which is essential to the European identity. When the Dutch merchant Peter Minuit (Jeffrey King) asks members (Enrico Nassi and Elizabeth Frances) of the Lenape Nation if the land they are “selling” belongs to them, they answer that it is their home.

That same monetary disconnect is reflected later in Nagle’s play when Bobbie (Sheila Tousey), a member of the Lenape now living in Oklahoma, needs to take out a loan on her house. The bank needs…

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