In collaboration with playwright and performer Suli Holum, I worked as dramaturg and oral historian on THE BAKKEN, an investigation of the Bakken Shale, a rock formation roughly 350 million years old sitting deep below the surface of North Dakota.

A reading of the play-in-progress was performed at CULTUREMART at HERE March 1-2, 2018.

In a theatrical fugue of intertwined narratives focused on women in the region – indigenous and immigrant, teachers, bartenders, strippers, frackers, farmers – THE BAKKEN unearths hard truths about how the extraction economy functions on a human and a geological scale.

Key voices in the work-in-progress spoke to the flooding and erasure of native communities when the Missouri River was dammed to form Lake Sakakawea. I urge you to learn this history, and here are some vital sources: Dr. Michael Yellow Bird and Lissa Yellowbird Chase, whose testimonies and lessons are at the beating heart of the play; Paul Van Develder’s excellent book, Coyote Warrior: One Man, Three Tribes and the Trial that Forged a Nation.

Written and Performed by Suli Holum
Oral History/Dramaturgy by Nicki Pombier
Stage Managed by Nicole Labadie-Bartz
Directed by Raelle Myrick Hedges