Ty Defoe is an Ojibwe and Oneida performance artist, activist, and writer living in New York.
Defoe grew up in Wisconsin in the Ojibwe and Oneida communities of his parents. Defoe is two-spirit, [1] a term used in many Native American nations to indicate gender fluidity, non-traditional gender roles, or queerness. [2] He began his performative life as a toddler when he learned to hoop dance. Defoe continues to hoop dance in his performances, along with eagle dancing, puppetry, and other various art forms. [3] With Lakota playwright and choreographer Larissa Fasthorse, Defoe founded Indigenous Direction, a "a consulting firm that helps organizations and individuals who want to create accurate work by, for and with Indigenous peoples". [4] Indigenous Direction's clients include The Guthrie Theater. [5]
Defoe holds degrees from the California Institute of the Arts, Goddard College, and New York University's Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program at Tisch School of the Arts. [6] He works with indigenous populations such as the Alaska Native Heritage Center and the Hawaiian Playwrights Initiative, among others. He is also a member of the youth council at the East Coast Two-Spirit Society. He received a Grammy award for Best Native American Music Album for his work on Come to Me Great Mystery: Native American Healing Songs. [7] Defoe is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America.
DeFoe has written, produced, and performed in many theatre productions, including Clouds are Pillows for the Moon, In the Cards, Heather Henson's Flight: A Crane’s Story, Tick, Tick, and Honor +Family. Additionally, he collaborated on the Grammy Award-winning album, Come to Me Great Mystery, featuring the work of several Native American musicians. Beginning in June 2018, he, with Kate Bornstein, portrayed stage versions of themselves as "interlocutors of indeterminate gender" in the Broadway premiere of Young Jean Lee's play Straight White Men. [8] [9] [10] Defoe is featured in the book 50 Key Figures in Queer US Theatre, with a profile written by theatre scholar Courtney Elkin Mohler. [11]
 | This section of a biography of a living person does not include any references or sources .(March 2021) |
| Name | Collaborators | Production History | Year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Honor + Family |
| West Village Musical Theatre Lab | 2012 |
| Clouds Are Pillows For the Moon |
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| In the Cards |
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| Heather Henson's Flight: A Crane's Story |
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| Tick, Tick |
| Prospect Theatre Company Lab-West End Theatre | 2014 |
Queer is an umbrella term for people who are not heterosexual or cisgender. Originally meaning 'strange' or 'peculiar', queer came to be used pejoratively against those with same-sex desires or relationships in the late 19th century. Beginning in the late 1980s, queer activists, such as the members of Queer Nation, began to reclaim the word as a deliberately provocative and politically radical alternative to the more assimilationist branches of the LGBT community.
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Larissa FastHorse is a Native American playwright and choreographer based in Santa Monica, California. FastHorse grew up in South Dakota, where she began her career as a ballet dancer and choreographer but was forced into an early retirement after ten years of dancing due to an injury. Returning to an early interest in writing, she became involved in Native American drama, especially the Native American film community. Later she began writing and directing her own plays, several of which are published through Samuel French and Dramatic Publishing. With playwright and performer Ty Defoe, FastHorse co-founded Indigenous Direction, a "consulting firm that helps organizations and individuals who want to create accurate work by, for and with Indigenous peoples." Indigenous Direction's clients include the Guthrie Theater. FastHorse is a past vice chair of the Theatre Communications Group, a service organization for professional non-profit American theatre.
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