Experience in theater at Northern State has led to a profession in the arts for a former student and instructor.
Sara Pillatzki-Warzeha is now an adjunct theater instructor at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minn., just south of the Twin Cities. She’s also a member of the Guthrie Theater’s Native Advisory Council. She has spent most of the last several years teaching and directing in Minnesota.
Pillatzki-Warzeha was involved in the 2023 run of “For the People” at the Guthrie, a play about the indigenous community in the Twin Cities.
‘For the People’ has South Dakota ties
It was written by South Dakota native Larissa FastHorse, a member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, and Ty Defoe, who grew up in the Ojibwe and Oneida communities in Wisconsin. Pillatzki-Warzeha, a member of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate, was an assistant director.
FastHorse and Defoe, who often work together, were approached by the Guthrie in 2019 and asked to write a show focused on the local Native population.
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“For the People” is a comedy about the indigenous people who live along and near Franklin Avenue in Minneapolis, the heart of the Native American community in the Twin Cities. Those involved with the show visited people who live in the neighborhood as they wrote and prepared the play.
Most of the creative team and all of the cast was comprised of Native Americans, including some notable actors, Pillatzki-Warzeha said.
Northern State graduate Adrienne Zimiga-January was in the cast of “For the People.”
The play was the first effort of its type in the 60-plus years of the Guthrie, she said.
“It was just an incredible experience,” Pillatzki-Warzeha said.
It was wonderful to contribute some of her knowledge and skills to the show, which she said was both funny and hugely successful.
An indigenous comedy is uncommon, she said. So often, shows focus on the trauma Native people endure, but there’s so much more to the culture, she said.
“For the People” is about a 20-something woman named April Dakota who returns to Minneapolis and dreams of opening the For the People Wellness Center. To make that happen, she needs a grant from the Urban All Nations Hybrid-Intertribal Franklin Avenue Task Force. Getting it, however, proves challenging, leaving Dakota exploring different options.
Among other things, Pillatzki-Warzeha took notes, made suggestions, addressed sightline issues, led vocal warmups and offered input about Native American ceremonial traditions like smudging. She also helped as a Dakota language consultant.
She said she worked from six to eight hours a day, six days a week while helping with “For the People.”
The Guthrie and those involved with the show encouraged the Native population to attend. Every local tribal elder got free tickets, and members of the indigenous community could buy half-price tickets. Native American organizations in the Twin Cities also sponsored tickets they would hand out to indigenous residents.
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People with the Guthrie knew about some of Pillatzki-Warzeha’s work and that she was an indigenous scholar. That’s likely why they reached out to her to be involved with the advisory council, she said. That was a few months before the “For the People” project came around.
It’s far from the first Twin Cities show Pillatzki-Warzeha has worked on. Going back to 2016, she’s directed “Be More Chill,” “Hands on a Hardbody,” “Leap of Faith,” “High Fidelity” and “Room Enough.”
“Men on Boats,” “Snow Bears,” “A New World” and “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee” are other shows she’s been involved with.
In 2018, she directed “Fly By Night” at the Northern Fort Playhouse at Fort Sisseton Historic State Park.
As a member of the Guthrie’s Native Advisory Council, Pillatzki-Warzeha said she has led talks, given presentations and visited with donors. She called it the start of a new path for the theater.
Pillatzki-Warzeha’s love of theater grew at Northern State
Outside of small town South Dakota, Pillatzki-Warzeha’s first theater experience was a student at Northern State. That was about the time the theater major was created, though she didn’t graduate with a major. She’s disappointed to hear the major is being discontinued.
“I think that program gave voice to a lot of people who wouldn’t have had those opportunities right out the gate,” Pillatzki-Warzeha said.
She said she was in Daniel Yurgaitis’s Theater 100 class at Northern and wanted to be in a show, so she asked him if she should audition. He was extremely encouraging, Pillatzki-Warzeha said.
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“I couldn’t believe that it was that welcoming and that open,” she said.
Yurgaitis made her feel like theater is for everybody, Pillatzki-Warzeha said.
She taught at Northern for a semester while Yurgaitis was on sabbatical.
The theater experiences she had at Northern might not have been available at a larger university with more students, she said.
Now, Pillatzki-Warzeha tells her students that it doesn’t matter how small the school is at which they study, they can still have a successful career in the industry. There are many former Northern students that now have great careers in theater, she said.
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They include Rory Behrens, Adam and Angela Sahli and Greg Parmeter and Mandy Parmeter Eilers, among others.
“Everything I needed I got there to go out and make a career,” she said.
Next up, she plans to finish her dissertation on indigenous/settler theatrical collaborations at the University of Minnesota. She’ll also continue to teach and direct for Full Circle Theater.
There are a few “secret-but-exciting” projects in the works, Pillatzki-Warzeha said.