The Frybread Queen: Interview with Playwright Carolyn Dunn, Ph.D.

“The Frybread Queen” is a new play about three generations of Navajo women. The action takes place in an Arizonia reservation as the women prepare food — such as traditional frybread — in preparation for the funeral of a beloved son, father, brother, and husband. Their close proximity and grief results in the unveiling of long-simmering tensions including buried family secrets.

Playwright Carolyn Dunn is a Ph.D.-holding Indigenous artist of Cherokee, Muskogee Creek, Seminole Freedmen and French Creole descent. Her stories often center around themes of family, the grieving process, and resilience. Carlyn recently discussed this play via an exclusive interview.

Meagan Meehan (MM): What gave you the idea for “The Frybread Queen”?

Carolyn Dunn (CD): “The Frybread Queen” is based upon a collection of short stories I wrote
back in the 1990’s, about a Dine family. I was inspired while on a trip within the Navajo Nation, watching a father interact with his sons on a fishing trip. I wanted to tell that story and how this family struggles but how they heal from those struggles as well. The two characters who are Creek and Cherokee gave me the opportunity to set up a culture clash within one family that was completely plausible: to show the diversity within American Indian and Indigenous families.

MM: Are any of the characters based on yourself or people you know?

CD: Yes… all four of them are based upon people I know.

MM: Why do family-related themes inspire you so much?

CD: Family is rife for great storytelling. They are our strongest bonds and can be the most breakable if we aren’t careful. This family has a lot of tension, but they do love one another deeply, but have been hurt by their actions toward one another and by other family members- so they take out their hurt against one another. Yet there is still great love and respect for the roles they play within the family dynamic.

MM: How do your experiences as an Indigenous woman influence your creative inspirations?

CD: All of my experiences have informed my storytelling. I grew up in a family of strong and powerful women, so those women’s stories have greatly influenced me as a storyteller. So many indigenous families come from very different experiences- different cultures and languages and ways of knowing and doing. This story is about the differences between a somewhat traditional Dine family and their somewhat non-traditional Creek and Cherokee in-laws. My own upbringing was cross-cultural: I grew up in a Creole family that was very aware of our Indigenous identities- my grandparents on my father’s side were clear about who their Ancestors were, but still had a difficult time speaking about their past. My grandmother went to boarding school in Mississippi but did not talk about her past; my grandfather (who died before I was born) told my cousins stories about both his and my grandmother’s families and my cousins told me. On my mother’s side, they had been disconnected from their Tunica/Choctaw-Biloxi and Ishak Creole communities for many years, wishing to start new lives in California away from the poverty they experienced in Avoyelles and St. Landry Parishes. But what remained was the strength of our Matriarchal peoples, and these are the stories I like to tell, of strong women who are raising families with partners, without partners, but always within their communities where extended networks of family and kin assist them.

MM: How long did it take you to complete this play?

CD: This play was in development with Native Voices at the Autry for several years, five years, I believe? We had two-three staged readings, a developmental production at Montana Repertory
Theater/University of Montana, then it opened in Los Angeles in 2011. This was my third full-length play; I wrote plays when I was young that had been produced, but this was my first Equity production as an adult playwright.

MM: What is your favorite part of the show and why?

CD: “The Frybread Monologues” — each of the women get to talk to the audience and tell “their side of the story” through their Frybread recipes. Also, Carlisle’s story about her relationship with Lily’s father Paul is also heartbreaking for me because I feel so much for Carlisle.

MM: What are your other plays about and — be honest — do you have a favorite?

CD: My other plays are about families, and to be honest about how families are haunted by their unresolved trauma and their unresolved issues between one another. I also tend to write the landscape as a character, and in my plays there is always an element of the landscape within each play. I think my favorite of my plays, so far, is Soledad. It’s the closest to how I grew up. It’s about the father/daughter relationship told through the mother/daughter relationship that may or may not exist. Is Dora a figment of Sunny’s imagination, or is Dora really there, talking to her daughter? How does Dora’s memory heal the split between Sunny and Thomas that neither of them created? Just allowing them to talk about her starts their healing.

MM: What has been the highlight of your career in the theater so far?

CD: The Frybread Queen finally premiering in New York. I’m thrilled that Amerinda and Theater for the New City chose this collaboration, and that Vickie Ramirez, another incredible playwright and a woman playwright, is directing. I love the sensibility that Vickie brings to this play and she just gets it. On so many levels. Another highlight would be performing my play Three Sisters in my home community of Tunica Biloxi homelands in present-day Marksville, Louisiana, where my mother’s ancestors come from. That play actually takes place in Marksville on Tunica Biloxi lands…To actually walk and be present in the lands where my Ancestors come from, to have always imagined what that landscape looked like, then there, in person, was incredibly powerful, and that one of my tribes welcomed me as family and community after us having been gone seventy years was an experience I will never forget.

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“The Frybread Queen” runs April 26 — May 12 at Theater for the New City (155 First Avenue at 10th Street in Manhattan). Tickets and info at www.theaterforthenewcity.net