Native American Women Playwrights Archive facts for kids

The Native American Women Playwrights Archive (NAWPA) is a special collection of writings and other materials. It focuses on Native American women who write plays for the theater. This important archive started in 1997 at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. You can find it inside the university's King Library. NAWPA also keeps many documents from Spiderwoman Theater, including things like ads and personal papers about the group and its members.

How NAWPA Started

The idea for NAWPA began in 1996. Dr. William Wortman, a librarian who helps with humanities subjects, and John Allen Johnson, a graduate student, started it. John Allen Johnson, who is Cherokee and African American, was studying Native American women playwrights at Miami University. He found it very hard to find materials for his research. So, he and Dr. Wortman decided to build an archive themselves. They reached out to writers and performers, asking them to add their work to the collection.

What You Can Find in the Archive

The Native American Women Playwrights Archive is located in the Walter Havighurst Special Collections at Miami University's King Library. It holds many different kinds of materials.

Play Scripts and Recordings

You can find original play scripts written by Native American women. The archive also has audio and video recordings of performances. These include old VHS tapes, audio cassettes, CDs, and DVDs. There are also photographs, newspaper articles, and reviews of plays. You can see flyers and posters from different shows too.

Behind-the-Scenes Documents

NAWPA also keeps documents about how the archive itself is managed. These include administrative and financial papers. You might find notes, forms, mailing lists, and letters. These papers often relate to conferences and events that the archive has sponsored.

Spiderwoman Theater Collection

A big part of the archive focuses on Spiderwoman Theater. This includes many photographs of their performances. You can also find play programs and interviews with the theater group members. There are even personal stories from the people in the troupe. The archive also holds documents about a legal disagreement with Marvel Comics. This dispute was about the name "Spiderwoman."

Accessing the Materials

All the materials in NAWPA are open for everyone to use. Anyone can come to the library and read or view them. NAWPA is always adding new playwrights and their works to its collection. The archive encourages "playwrights at any level of development" to send in their materials. This means even new writers are welcome to submit their work.

See also

• Spiderwoman Theater
• Native American dramatists and playwrights
• Indigenous theatre