Published:2/3/2010 7:19:58 AM
Video: DeLanna Studi discusses role and life as a Native actress
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| Beverly Weston (Jon DeVries), left,
introduces his wife Violet (Estelle Parsons) to Johnna Monevata (DeLanna Studi),
right, during the Pulitzer-Prize winning play “August: Osage County” on Jan. 26
at the Performing Arts Center in Tulsa, Okla. (Photo by Will Chavez) |
By Will Chavez
Staff Writer
TULSA, Okla. – In the opening scene of the play, “August: Osage County,” it seems the newly-hired caretaker, Johnna Monevata, may have gotten more than she bargained for when agreeing to work for the Weston clan of Pawhuska. Johnna, played by Cherokee actress DeLanna Studi, is a Cheyenne woman hired by the drunken family patriarch, Beverly Weston, to care for the family’s three-story home and his pill-addicted wife, Violet, played by Academy Award-winner Estelle Parsons.“My wife takes pills and I drink. That’s the bargain we’ve struck,” Beverly, who is played by Jon DeVries, explains to Johnna. Shortly after Johnna moves in with the family, Beverly disappears, leaving her with his dysfunctional family as they come home to support Violet. The impromptu family reunion reveals family secrets and reopens old wounds, with Johnna caught in the middle.“She takes care of this family. She’s the moral center,” Studi said. “Johnna is the spirit of the household; she’s the soul. Everyone else is so involved in their own world so they don’t listen to each other. Johnna is the only one that listens to everyone, and she’s non-judgmental.” Johnna is also a touchstone for the audience, Studi said. Because of strong subject matter in the play, audiences may not know how to react. So they look at the calmness of Johnna, and it puts them at ease, Studi said. “Everyone in the audience is like ‘oh, how is the one normal person taking that?’ Johnna has often been described as the only sane one in the house,” she said. “August: Osage County” was performed from Jan. 26-31 at Tulsa’s Performing Arts Center. The Broadway play has won a Tony Award and a Pulitzer Prize. Studi said she auditioned for the role of Johnna three years ago, but her good friend Kimberly Guerrero got the part. In April, she was doing a play in Indiana and got a call from Guerrero, who said the play was going on a national tour and that she didn’t want to go. Guerrero then recommended Studi, who won the role and has been with the production since June 30. Studi said growing up in rural Sequoyah County has helped her play the role. She grew up in Liberty, but attended high school in Muldrow, where she took speech and drama classes. Specifically, she said she patterns Johnna’s mannerisms after her mother Carolyn. “My mother, in the summer, would take these odd jobs and sometimes she would have to take care of different people. I remember going with her to watch this elderly woman who was similar to Violet in her actions,” she said. Watching her mother handle difficult people with grace and dignity made an impression on her. “No matter how mean these people were to her, she was able to leave that job with her head held high, and so I wanted to kind of bring that sense to it. Whenever I do the role I think of my mother. She is one of my heroes,” she said.But it’s her father Thomas whom she credits for steering her toward acting.“When I was a freshman in high school he thought I was being shy. So, he went to the school, and he chose all of my electives for me. I was doing speech and debate twice a day, and he put me in a drama class,” she said. Studi said the classes terrified her, but that her drama teacher saw something in her and encouraged and challenged her to work on her acting.“After that I was bitten by the bug as they say,” she said. After high school, she attended Northeastern State University in Tahlequah before moving to Los Angeles 10 years ago. Since then she has had roles in eight movies, including “Pow Wow Dreams,” “Edge of America,” “Dreamkeeper” and “Skins.” She has also performed in two one-woman shows – “What’s An Indian Woman To Do?” and “Kicks” – in Los Angeles. Her movie roles have brought her more recognition in Indian Country, which she said is sometimes “surreal” for her. “It is an honor to get recognized, but at the same time I don’t feel like I’m deserving of that recognition. So it’s always interesting. My father taught me to be somewhat humble. A little bit of humility goes out the window when that happens,” she said. Studi said one role she especially enjoyed was a strong-willed woman in “Dreamkeeper.”“They allowed a Native woman to not be the victim. Since we’re Cherokee and were matrilineal, that really spoke to me,” she said. “I was just so happy to play a strong Native woman because I know so many of them, and yet when Hollywood makes a movie we’re never strong women. We’re always the victim.” Of all her movie roles she said she has not played a Native “stereotype” and hopes she never has to, but she realizes she’s not at that point in her career where she gets to pick and choose roles. She loves playing Native roles and likes that more of those roles are going to Native people.“I believe we have a history that only we can share. You can cast another ethnicity in that role, but they’re not going to quite get the complexity of that role,” she said.But it’s a double-edged sword, she said. She added that at some point she would like to play a non-Native role. Native people are modern-day people but rarely portray themselves in the modern world. It would be exciting, she said, to see a Native woman play a “Desperate Housewife” or Native people play detectives or doctors in shows. And with that hope comes a position to help change things in Hollywood as she was recently elected chairwoman of the President’s National Task Force for American Indians of the Screen Actor’s Guild. One of the seven goals of the task force is to “increase employment opportunities by expanding the range of character portrayals and eliminating negative stereotypes.”“We’re working on educating the industry about who we are as a people so that our people can get those roles…and you’re not limited to playing one type of person,” Studi said. “We’re slowly getting there.”
Reach Staff Writer Will Chavez at (918) 207-3961 or will-chavez@cherokee.org
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