Madeline Sayet

Madeline Sayet is an American director, writer, and performer. She grew up in Norwich and Uncasville, Connecticut.

Early life and education

Sayet was brought up on stories and traditions of the Mohegan tribe from her great-aunt Gladys Tantaquidgeon, former Medicine Woman, and her mother Melissa Tantaquidgeon Zobel, current Medicine Woman. Sayet also holds ancestral ties to Fidelia Fielding who was the last fluent speaker of the Mohegan language, and died in 1908. These ties serve as an influence for much of her work. From a young age, oral traditions and storytelling all played a major role in her work. In high school, Sayet took part at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre Center's National Puppetry Conference. Post graduation, she went on to study under the Atlantic Theater Company at New York University as part of the Tisch School of the Arts. After receiving her BFA in Theater, she continued her studies as part of the graduate program, where she received her MA in Arts Politics and Post-Colonial Theory, at NYU's Gallatin School of Individualized Study. During this time she co-founded and directed the Mad & Merry Theatre Company. Sayet adapted classical pieces to incorporate her own culture.

Career

Early in Sayet's directing and writing career, she remade the Shakespeare classic "The Tempest" by incorporating Mohegan language and culture. This production served as her graduate thesis at New York University and was brought onstage at the Brooklyn Lyceum. Sayet is currently directing for the Glimmerglass Opera, where she is working on a production of the "Magic Flute,". Sayet also directed "Sliver of a Full Moon" which is a play about the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) that pays tribute to the re-authorization that occurred in 2013. It aims to get the audience to see Native women that were affected by violence to be seen as human beings rather than symbols. Sayet furthered her career when she wrote "Daughters of Leda," a play that chronicles the stories of well-known mythological characters such as: Leda and The Swan, Adam and Eve, Helen, Clytemnestra, Iphigenia, and Electra from the female perspective. The production was part of the Women Center Stage Festival, the Dream Up Festival, and Dixon Place's Works-In-Progress. She is the recipient of the White House Champion of Change Award for Native America for her work as a director, writer, performer and educator.

Because culture is such a big part of her work, she learned that in Mohegan, her job is called "Kutayun Uyasunaquock" which means "Our Heart She Leads Us There." She is currently the Resident Artistic Director at Amerinda, Inc, the Artistic Director of the Mad & Merry Theatre Company, a Van Lier Directing Fellow at Second Stage Theatre, and a Creative Community Fellow at National Arts Strategies'.

Awards

• Leo Bronstein Homage Award— New York University
• White House Champion of Change Award for Native America

Works

Directing

• The Magic Flute," by Mozart/Shikaneder, new english language translation by Kelley Rourke
• "Daughters of Leda, written by Madeline Sayet
• Powwow Highway, written by William S. Yellow Robe, Jr.
• Miss Lead, written by Mary Kathryn Nagle
• Uncommon Women and Others, written by Wendy Wasserstein
• The Tempest,written by William Shakespeare

Writing

• Daughters of Leda
• Who Flies Apart
• The Pants
• "When The Whipporwill Calls" in Dawnland Voices: Writing from Indigenous New England

Appearances as performer

• All's Well That Ends Well
• The Tempest
• Twelfth Night
• Cedars
• Measure for Measure
• The Comedy of Errors
• A Dream Play
• The House of Pelops
• The Taming of the Shrew
• Panther and Crane
• As You Like It
• The Winter's Tale
• Romeo and Juliet