Hello from UCLA in Los Angeles to all American Indian theater people in all your homes and work places across Indian Country, early November, 2008. Finally, the big election is behind us, and it seems possible now that all artists in this country can hope that more assistance and financial support form the federal government might be forthcoming somewhere soon down the line. America is a country blessed with so many wonderfully talented and gifted artists in many fields, and the contributions that all these folks can make to healing and beautifying and strengthening our nation would be enormously helpful in many ways.    Renewing our faith and our commitment will be a good start to all of this.

Project HOOP is humming along here, with three new books on American Indian theater in the works, one of  them in the final stages of production, one just nearing completion, and the third waiting for re-writes from the various contributors. Please click on HOOP Publications in this re-furbished Poject HOOP website for more information on these forthcoming additions to the Native Theater Series published by Project HOOP at the UCLA American Indian Studies Center. 

Planning is now underway for the next HOOP Conference, with dates for this event to be scheduled within the next week. The conference will be held here in Los Angeles, in the facilities of the Los Angeles Theater Center in the heart of a fantastically revitalized downtown Los Angeles, and Indian playwrights, directors, actors, designers and producers will travel from all parts of the country to attend. A special performance of What’s An Indian Woman To Do?, a theater piece for one Indian actress by Ojibwe playwright Mark Anthony Rolo and starring the wonderful Delana Studi is also being planned. An e-blast announcing the HOOP conference will be circulated in the very near future.

HOOP Theatricals, the play producing unit of Project HOOP, will be presenting a professional production of Bruce King’s great play, Evening  at the Warbonnet, with  a cast of American Indian actors from the Los Angeles area, also at the Los Angeles Theater Center in spring 2009.  A staged reading of this master work of the American Indian theater was presented at LATC in late July of this year.

On top of all of this, Project HOOP is now well along into a funding campaign aimed at raising $275,000 for Project HOOP activities over the next calendar year.   Jose Leon, a recent graduate of UCLA, has joined the HOOP team here to move this effort forward.   Monies raised in this campaign will be applied toward five different HOOP programs, including the Artists in Tribal Communities Project and the continuing Play, Reading and Development program  in the Los Angeles tribal community. If you have any extra money to contribute in these hard, hard times, Project HOOP is a very worthy cause and can use all the support we can receive to keep this unique operation in business. If you have any questions, suggestions, special needs or requests, call or e-mail us:   hoop@aisc.ucla.edu, or 310/825-7315.  

Keep checking this website.   It is undergoing a major updating and re-furbishing. Aho, thank you.

Hanay Geiogamah
Professor of Theater, UCLA School of Theater Film and Theater
Director, Project HOOP