‘The Red Road’ beckons Arigon Starr
Native American singer/actress stages one-woman musical comedy at the Autry
By Bliss 03/30/2006
“Should he pinch her ass or just tap it?”
“Which plays better?”
Singer-songwriter/actress/comedienne Arigon Starr is consulting with executive producer Jean Bruce Scott, executive director of the Autry National Center’s Native Voices program. They’re at a February rehearsal of “The Red Road,” a musical comedy that showcases Starr’s rib-poking humor and charismatic presence. At issue is a nifty bit of blocking between self-promoting blowhard Richard Doolittle and no-nonsense leading lady Verna Yahola, a Creek Indian woman who owns the All Nations Café in which all the play’s action transpires. It’s logistically complicated because both characters are portrayed by Starr.
Eleven characters ranging in age from 9 to 57 perform a dozen songs in “The Red Road,” which begs the question: Why not cast 11 actors with accompanying musicians? Why a one-woman show?
“Because I’m nutty enough to try it and to think I can get away with it,” Starr wisecracks.
Starr’s recorded an 18-track album of songs for “The Red Road” with a coterie of top LA and Nashville session players. At rehearsal, she sang several numbers with those studio tracks as backup; for others she simply accompanied herself on acoustic guitar. She adapted her voice and physique to each song: assuming a light, eyelash-fluttering demeanor for Grand Ole Opry star Patty Jones’ terminally sincere “A Trucker’s Bride,” then walking more squarely in the shoes of Navajo fry cook Emmitt Tsinajinnie and deepening her powerful alto for his showy “Menu Song.”
Starr has fun tweaking Native American stereotypes in “The Red Road” via characters like Ojibway Bingo lover Etta Walters, a Beatles-besotted Kiowa boy and especially self-styled militants Richard and Bonnie Doolittle; she underscores Bonnie’s hypocrisy with a knowingly fake smile and Up With People-style delivery of “Until Freedom Comes.” But “The Red Road” remains a conscious celebration of Native American community. Starr touts herself as “a card-carrying member of the Kickapoo Tribe,” and pride in that heritage is a central theme in “The Red Road.”
“She’s fearless,” Scott says. “She’s had some of these characters in her head for years.” For instance, Starr made an entire album of songs by the character of punk-rocker Danny Dacron while still in school. His punk rant “Indian Eyes” marks a humorous twist in “The Red Road,” but the music’s mostly honky-tonk-style country, as befits a story taking place in a Sapulpa, Okla., diner in 1977.
Scott’s been helping Starr workshop the play since last year, when she was selected as one of five playwrights for the Native Voices Young Playwrights Project. They’ve already mounted brief presentations in Tulsa and San Diego. “The Red Road” receives its proper premiere Thursday and runs on consecutive Thursdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. through April 30.
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