The Hunger Cycle Plays
Playwright Larissa FastHorse serves up a feast of culture with a side of satire in Urban Rez, Cornerstone’s seventh play in The Hunger Cycle.
Called “engaging and informative” by the LA Times, Urban Rez becomes a hotbed of chaos when guests are presented with an opportunity that could change everything — federal recognition. This potentially lucrative offer threatens to upend familial bonds and relationships as community members are confronted with the insidious and absurd task of figuring out who’s out and who’s in. How far is the tribe’s self-appointed leader willing to go to beat the system, stay out of jail, and protect what is sacred? You may not find fry bread at Urban Rez, but you will find a thought-provoking immersive theater experience that’s sure to feed your curiosity.
Urban Rez
Thank you for joining us at Urban Rez!
Urban Rez Artwork by Steven Paul Judd, 2016 / Postcard Design by Raymond Tejada, 2016
Larissa FastHorse
Playwright
Larissa FastHorse is a playwright, director, choreographer and performer based in Santa Monica. Larissa was awarded the NEA Distinguished New Play Development Grant, Joe Dowling Annamaghkerrig Fellowship, AATE Distinguished Play Award, Inge Residency, Sundance/Ford Foundation Fellowship, Aurand Harris Fellowship, and numerous Ford and NEA Grants. Larissa's produced plays include Landless, Average Family, Teaching Disco Squaredancing to Our Elders: a Class Presentation, and Cherokee Family Reunion. She has written commissions for Cornerstone Theater Company, Children’s Theatre Company of Minneapolis, AlterTheater, Kennedy Center TYA, Native Voices at the Autry and Mountainside Theatre. She developed plays with Arizona Theater Company, the Center Theatre Group Writer’s Workshop and Berkeley Rep’s Ground Floor. She is a current member of the Playwright’s Union, Director’s Lab West 2015, Theatre Communications Group board of directors and is an enrolled member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, Lakota Nation. www.hoganhorsestudio.com
Michael John Garcés
Director
Michael has been at Cornerstone since 2006. Directing credits at the company include California: The Tempest by Alison Carey, Plumas Negras by Juliette Carrillo, Café Vida by Lisa Loomer, Making Paradise by Tom Jacobson, Shishir Kurup and Deborah Wicks La Puma, 3 Truths by Naomi Iizuka, Someday by Julie Marie Myatt, attraction by Page Leong, and The Falls by Jeffrey Hatcher (at the Guthrie Theater). For Cornerstone he has also written Consequence, out of story circles with students, teachers, administrators and parents in South Kern County, and Los Illegals, created in residence with communities of day laborers and domestic workers. Los Illegals was subsequently produced by Teatro Bravo in Phoenix; it is published in Theatre Magazine (Yale School of Drama/Duke University Press - More info on this Publication).
Directing credits at other theaters include, most recently Seven Spots on the Sun by Martín Zimmerman (The Theatre @ Boston Court), Lights Rise on Grace by Chad Beckim (Woolly Mammoth Theatre), Wrestling Jerusalem by Aaron Davidman (Intersection for the Arts), Stephen Adly Guirgis' The Motherfucker with the Hat (South Coast Repertory) and red, black and GREEN: a blues by Marc Bamuthi Joseph (Premiere at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts; toured nationally to many venues including Z Space, REDCAT and The Brooklyn Academy of Music), and he has worked at many other theaters across the country. His full-length plays include THE WEB (needtheatre), points of departure and customs
(INTAR Hispanic American Arts Center) and Acts of Mercy (Rattlestick Playwrights Theater); a solo performance, agua ardiente (The American Place); short plays include A Parable (Great Plains Theatre Festival), Grief (Active Cultures), hymn in three parts (Chalk Rep), inhabited and in the Zone (Red Fern Theatre Co.), tostitos (EST Marathon of One-Act Plays), on edge and the ride (Humana Fest.), audiovideo (The Directors Project) and sandlot ball (Mile Square). He collaborated with composer Alexandra Vrebalov on the oratorio Stations, which received its premiere at the Rhode Island Civic Chorale and Orchestra and was also performed at the NOMUS Festival in Novi Sad, Serbia.
Michael is a recipient of the Rockwood Arts and Culture Fellowship, the Princess Grace Statue, the Alan Schneider Director Award, a TCG/New Generations Grant, the Non-Profit Excellence Award from the Center of Non-Profit Management and is a Southern California Leadership Network Fellow. He is a company member at Woolly Mammoth and a proud alumnus of New Dramatists.
Our community partners for Urban Rez include:
UCLA Department of American Indian Studies
The Red Circle Project
Rancho Los Alamitos
California State Parks
Gabrielino / Tongva Springs Foundation at University High School
Learn more! Urban Rez: Playwright Larissa FastHorse on the Urban Indian Experience
