Artists Discuss Carlisle Indian Industrial School Storytelling Project at Dickinson
The Carlisle Project: Artists in Conversation
by Noah Salsich '25
Ronee Penoi and Annalisa Dias will discuss The Carlisle Project, their song cycle which recounts the painful history of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School and the lasting legacy and trauma caused by forced assimilation of Indigenous peoples. The event, The Carlisle Project: Artists in Conversation, will take place on Saturday, Feb. 18, at 6 p.m. in Mathers Theatre in the Holland Union Building (HUB). The event is free and open to the public. Tickets are required. Tickets are available online through this link. Masks are optional but welcome.
Ronee Penoi and Annalisa Dias. Photo by Jati Lindsay.
Penoi and Dias will describe their process of combining ceremony, satire and song to create The Carlisle Project. They will explore how the song cycle grapples with generational trauma, fights colonization and helps re-story the pasts of Indigenous people, while also offering one perspective of an Indigenous future. They will also share their research conducted at the Dickinson College Archives & Special Collections and with the Cumberland County Historical Society as part of their campus residency.
Penoi is a Laguna Pueblo and Cherokee composer, arts presenter, facilitator and activist. She is a two-time ISPA (International Society for Performing Arts) global fellow, a two-time recipient of the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities Fellowship for her composing work and has been an APAP (Association of Performing Arts Professionals) Leadership Fellow and TCG (Theatre Communications Group) Rising Leader of Color. She is currently working as the director of artistic programming at ArtsEmerson in Boston, the city’s leading presenter of contemporary world theater.
Dias, a Goan American artist, is the director of artistic partnerships and innovation at the Baltimore Center Stage (BCS) and co-founder of Groundwater Arts. With broad artistic credits, Dias has produced work supported by the DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities and the Saul Zaentz Fund for Innovation in Film & Media at Johns Hopkins University, among others. Before working at BCS, she was a co-founder of the DC Coalition for Theatre & Social Justice and worked as a playwright and creative producer with The Welders, a playwrights’ collective.
This event is sponsored by The Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by Hubbard Hall Center for the Arts and Education of Cambridge, N.Y.; Dickinson’s Center for the Futures of Native Peoples; the Department of Theatre & Dance; and the Center for Civic Learning & Action.
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Published February 14, 2023