Artist Talk with Drew Woodson

The Arts Research Center and Department of Theater, Dance and Performance Studies with Alternative Theater Ensemble welcomed Playwright and Berkeley Alum Drew Woodson for a residency at UC Berkeley, April 14 - 18, 2025.

Woodson gave an Artist Talk in conversation with TDPS Lecturer Patrick Russell at 2pm on Thursday, April 17th, 2025.

During his residency, Woodson spent the week developing his new play "From Above" in workshops with local Indigenous actors. Script development workshops work be open to UC Berkeley student observation on Tuesday April 15th & Wednesday April 16th. In addition to his Artist Talk, Drew will presented a public reading of From Above at 6pm on April 17th.

About Drew Woodson:
Drew Woodson is a Western Shoshone playwright based in New York City. He has had his work read in multiple theaters across New York, including Rattlestick Theater where he was asked to open the first annual Northeastern Native Arts Festival with his play “Your Friend, Jay Silverheels.” For this same work, Drew was named Yale's Young Indigenous Playwright of 2021. More recently, Drew completed a two month artists residency on Governors Island for AICH, and completed a workshop of a new work “From Above” under the direction of Madeline Sayet. As a writer, Drew seeks to tell stories where Native people are allowed to take up space, be complicated, and ultimately be more than a storytelling device. Drew is an MFA Graduate from the Dramatic Writing department at NYU, and an alumni of UC Berkeley's Department of Theater, Dance & Performance Studies.

About "From Above":
In the middle of an unnamed desert sits a lone church just at the edge of town. Sister Karina, Sister Maggie, and the Father all lead the small Native congregation that comes through its doors. In the five years since Sister Karina has found God and joined the church, calamity has struck the small town, leading to a string of deaths that some in the community believe to be God punishing them. Inside his darkened room, the Father believes he's hearing the voice of God, and what God has told him to do reverberates through the Native community, causing an uproar inside and out – leading to a decision that the community must make that tears each other apart.

These programs are featured in collaboration with Alternative Theater Ensemble’s Indigenous Performing Arts Residency, a collaborative initiative piloted by Berkeley’s Arts Research Center and the Department of Theater, Dance and Performance Studies. AlterTheater’s residency offers the opportunity to produce new work by an Indigenous performance-based artist each spring of the residency’s duration.

More info at arts.berkeley.edu