Our Mission
Eagle Project is a New York-based Native American artistic laboratory utilizing theatre, music, dance, spoken word, and film to investigate and understand US American identity. We unpack the Native American experience, both past and present, as the primary means to conduct our exploration.
Our mission is carried out through the development and staging of the works of Native American playwrights, educational outreach on Native American culture, and the production of other systemically silenced voices.
About Eagle Project
On Wednesday, March 7th of 2012, Eagle Project was officially launched at Playwrights Horizons with the staged reading of Wood Bones by William S. YellowRobe, Jr. Eagle Project is an inter-tribal and multicultural performing arts company, fiscally sponsored by New York Live Arts, that behaves as an artistic laboratory by utilizing theater, music, dance, spoken word, and film to dissect the American identity, while using the Native American experience, both past and present, as the primary means for which to conduct its exploration. This mission is carried out through the development and staging of the works of Native American playwrights, educational outreach on Native American culture, and the production of the works of other American voices that are not frequently heard, which Eagle Project uses to examine what the American Experience consists of and stands for. It is the goal of Eagle Project to produce theatrical work that gives us as Americans a true recollection of our past, a better understanding of our present, for a just and more inclusive vision for our future.
Supporting our 21st Century writers is critical to the work that we do. Hatch is Eagle Project’s program of readings, staged readings, and workshops to support the playwright in their work, and thus the time table and format of the presentation is based on where the writer is in their process. Sometimes the work goes all the way to full production, as did our first production, Wood Bones by William S. Yellow Robe, Jr., our second production, Broken Heart Land by Vicki Lynn Mooney, and our third production (in partnership with Rebel Theater Company), Trail of Tears by Thomas J. Soto.
Over the past four years, Eagle Project has had the privilege of collaborating and/or being hosted by the Public Theater, The Lark Play Development Center, Primary Stages, Nuyorican Poets Café, as well as the United Nations. In addition, our programming consists of our America Unveiled Series, an annual event that brings talented poets and comedians together to riff on one of the hottest topics of the time. scduled to start in early 2017.
Our Founder
Opalanietet is Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape, originally from Southern New Jersey and Delaware. While he grew up around various US cities (Cincinnati, Ohio, Boston, Massachusetts, and the Baltimore/Washington, D.C. area), he had the privilege and the honor of receiving his Lenape name, "Little Eagle," on original Lenape land at the age of 12 by his great uncle, the late Rodney "Strong Oak" Edwards.
Upon graduation from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, Opalanietet has performed in various readings, staged readings, and full productions at such renown theatrical institutions as the Public Theater, New York Theater Workshop, New Dramatists, LaMaMa E.T.C., Playwrights Horizons, and New York City Opera at Lincoln Center.
Throughout his career, Opalanietet has also devoted much of his time performing in and helping to develop theatrical works of indigenous people from the US and around the world. Many of those works have been developed and performed at the American Indian Community House of New York City, AMERINDA, The Culture Project, Times Square Playwrights, the Australian Aboriginal Theater Initiative, as well as the United Nations. Having a passion to incorporate American voices that aren't frequently heard, especially those of Native Americans, into the performing arts arena, Opalanietet founded the Eagle Project in 2012.
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