http://www.bangornews.com/news/t/lifestyle.aspx?articleid=154651&zoneid=14

Balance, not conflict, drives American Indian playwright

By Judy Harrison
Wednesday, September 26, 2007 - Bangor Daily News

Conflict — the thing that drives American drama — isn’t something William
S. Yellow Robe Jr. strives to include in his writing.

Conflict in English literature is always defined as struggle, Yellow Robe
recently told his students in his American Indian drama class at the
University of Maine. For the playwright, who has written nearly 50 plays,
bringing the lives of his characters into balance and finding clarity is
the point.

"Balance is when you have a sense of clarity of all the components [in the
play]," he said. "When you find it, that’s really and truly an
achievement."

Two of Yellow Robe’s plays will be performed as Reader’s Theater today at
Minsky Recital Hall in the Class of 1944 building on campus.

The 47-year-old native of Wolf Point, Mont., wants his plays about tribal
life on and off the reservation to speak to a broad audience but the
playwright is very clear that he can speak only for his tribe, the
Assiniboine, not the entire native population.

"I do plays to show the Assiniboine are still alive, and that we are a part
of the great Lakota Nation," Yellow Robe told American Theatre magazine in
a 2005 interview, "and that I honor and celebrate the fact that my people
are still alive today. The other reason is I try to create opportunities
for younger people. The ultimate thing is to make it easier for the younger
ones who are up and coming. The main responsibility I have is to make it
easier for the next generation so they can step up and do it."

As an adjunct faculty member, Yellow Robe also is making his body of work
available to a predominantly Caucasian student body. It’s not the first
time; the playwright has spent quite a bit of time in the past decade
working in New England.

Yellow Robe first came to Orono at the behest of Margaret Lukens, a member
of the English department, as a guest lecturer four years ago.

Lukens met Yellow Robe several years ago when he was
playwright-in-residence at the Trinity Repertory Company in Providence,
R.I. She attended a reading of his work in progress "Grandchildren of the
Buffalo Soldiers" and invited him to visit the University of Maine during
spring semester 2003.

"We had a wonderful time," she said earlier this week. "He and some
students did readings of some of his plays on the campus radio station. We
had such a good time that I invited him come back in the fall."

Yellow Robe returned in fall 2003 as the Libra Diversity Professor, and a
production of his play "Better-n-Indins" was presented at the Cyrus
Pavilion Theater.

This summer, Yellow Robe called Lukens, who is chairwoman of the English
department but helped develop the Native American Studies program, to say
he wanted to settle in Maine. This semester he is teaching American Indian
drama and the nature of story and living in Old Town.

Carol Merrill, 61, of Sullivan has raked blueberries alongside members of
Maine’s American Indian tribes. She signed up for Yellow Robe’s class
because she wants to be a writer and is interested in a minor in Native
American Studies.

Yellow Robe is always aware that he is accountable to his people.

"There’s a thin line between cultural exploitation and cultural
expression," he said. "That’s where the responsibility to educate comes in,
and that’s hard."

The playwright will continue to reach for that balance in his work.

"Falling Distance"
and "A Great Thing" will be presented at 7:30 tonight at Minsky Recital
Hall at the University of Maine.