"Coyote Hunts the Sun" Closing

Ranae Hedman

I tried things a little differently last night. Just before I left, I was listening to Jetty Rae on YouTube and got all inspired to be a musician. So I started playing on my box drum that I’m borrowing from my mom. I packed it with me to the theater, and when house opened, I was the

house music!

Ranae Hedman, Waylon Lenk

The show went fantastically again, and the talk back was once again longer than the show itself. People’s concerns about it maybe moving too fast in parts, script-wise, were apparent to me last night – it did feel like a race across the continent, as opposed to the 20 days one story says it actually took Pihnêefich. Afterwards, during the talk-back, we were able to focus in on where the play needs to be developed. I need to further develop Chris’ characters – the child, the Messiah, and Makataimeshkiakiak – and I need to explore the possibilities of setting it in a class room. After all, the Schoolteacher is the glue that holds Coyote Hunts the Sun together. And, to Ranae’s credit, she makes the role happen. I asked if maybe I should change her stories into the kind that exist in most text-books. Reidy Estevez, one of my students, showed me quite clearly that the answer is “no.” The Schoolteacher’s and Pihnêefich’s tellings of “Coyote and the Sun” form the bookends to the play and the journey – without her telling the colonial histories, there is little or no excuse for her to tell the pikvah.

Chris Petty

Waylon Lenk, Ranae Hedman

So what’s next for Coyote Hunts the Sun? Well, rewrites. I need to explore and develop the characters and their worlds. There are two stories that it seems I need to tell that don’t quite fit into Coyote Hunts the Sun. One is the Ghost Dance story – as I’ve mentioned earlier, I have a pretty strong bias against that particular ceremony, and what that tells me is that I need to learn more about it so that I’m not walking around carrying bad thoughts about those that did it. The second is the cannibal story that I try to tell during the Messiah scene. It was the first scene that I wrote for this play, but I’m realizing more and more that it isn’t part of Coyote Hunts the Sun, but is obviously a story that I feel compelled to tell. I need to tell it separately and get it out of the work at hand.

Ranae Hedman

It was a fun process, and now I have the post show blues. But while this phase of the project is over, we certainly haven’t seen the last of Coyote Hunts the Sun!

Waylon Lenk


 



Waylon Lenk



Ranae Hedman

Waylon Lenk, Chris Petty, Ranae Hedman, Darci Faye