July 2019: Word for Word performs a staged reading of Greg Sarris' short story 'Citizen' as part of its Off the Page staged reading series.2018 - present: Word for Word’s arts education program, Youth Arts, begins its residency as the arts provider for FIGR’s youth summer camp programs.2017: The writing of 'How Tom Smith Caused the 1906 Earthquake' for WfW's School & Library Tour inspires Sarris to retell more Miwok/Pomo tales and results in his book How a Mountain Was Made, published in 2017 by HeyDay Books.Performed at Z Space, and several other venues around Northern CA. 2012: Stories from Sonoma Mountain, directed by Nancy Shelby - a show for children and families from Sarris’ stories “How Tom Smith Caused the 1906 Earthquake” and “Waterbug Walks Away with Copeland Creek” from Sarris’ book How a Mountain was Made.These shows toured to over 70 schools, libraries and community centers in Northern CA. 2008: WfW commissions Sarris to write stories for its School & Library Tour: “How Tom Smith Caused the 1906 Earthquake” for elementary school students, “Ancestor” for high school students.1998: Joy Ride - a co-production with Campo Santo, at Intersection for the Arts, directed by Margo Hall.1994: Slaughterhouse, at the Bayfront Theater, directed by Octavio Solis.This summer will be our sixth providing arts programming for the Native youth of Sonoma County!Ī chronology of Word for Word’s collaboration with Greg Sarris and FIGR: That led to many more wonderful collaborations, most recently between our arts education program, Youth Arts, and FIGR’s youth summer camp programs.

And we’ve been mutual admirers ever since. We invited Greg to the opening night of his story “Slaughterhouse,” and as he often tells it, he came to the theater not knowing what to expect – “They’re performing my story – word for word? What the heck is that?” – but left the theater a fan. We were struck by the theatrical potential of the stories and their characters who were seldom seen in fiction at that time, and rarely seen on stage. In 1994 we produced a show, one of our first mainstage shows, from Greg’s book Grand Avenue, a novel of interlinked short stories about contemporary, urban American Indians and other marginalized people who live in Santa Rosa and Sonoma County. The Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria (FIGR) and their Tribal Chairman, Greg Sarris, have been a part of Word for Word (WfW), almost from its inception.

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