Since 1988 Thomas Riccio, a western trained theatre artist has been working with Alaska Native people. His experience with the Eskimo and Indian people of Alaska brought to his awareness a richness of performance expression going unrecognized and threatened with extinction. Riccio's work with Alaska natives has evolved into work with indigenous groups worldwide (see career narrative.)
Using indigenous performance -- ritual, ceremony, and celebrations a prototype Riccio evolved a method and style that realizes performance as a practical tool for people living with their part of the earth. Performance for people indigenous to place is a means to balance, heal, reaffirm, and maintain their community. A community that includes humans, animals, the elements, and the spirits. Performance is, for indigenous cultures, a primary and integrated holder of collective memory. Performance is a practical technology to reaffirm, celebrate, and 'balance' a group's existence with its place. Performance is, for indigenous people, a way to transcend the ordinary and material in order to assert the universal that lives within all things.
| Riccio
searches for different ways and means to transplant a peoples traditional
performance culture into a modern expression to address existing social,
political, and human concerns. He tries to find his way to the roots
of a cultures myths in search of the power and origins of a cultures
expression...Very often Riccio has noticed that he has become a bridge
between tradition and contemporary times; often times he finds himself
a teacher of tradition as well as its revitalizer. Helsinki, Finland |
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"To
work with indigenous people is to work with people who are traumatized
by colonialism and who's identity--socially, politically, economically--is
confused" says Riccio. "The western culture has crushed most of
them, extinguishing their ways of expressing themselves and their
traditions, forcing them to lose their heritage and unsure about
their value in the modern world. They have actually lost their roots,
like we have" he says. The reasons for this are not the same but
the results are. |
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![[PHOTO]](gallery/shadows6_sm.jpg)
Thomas Riccio created Litooma in order to focus his efforts in articulating an alternative to the Western theatre methodology, dramaturgy, and function. He believes indigenous performance has much to offer and that its potential and practical applications are unrealized and under utilized. Western theatre has for too long denigrated indigenous performance as primitive or dismissed it as exotic, limited in modern application and significance. In doing so Western theatre has relegated indigenous performance to the anthropological margins of consideration. Unable to see beyond its own ingrained traditions, Western theatre perpetuates an expression that is human centered, primarily concerned with migration, social, political, and cultural adjustment and integration. Western theatre has little or no interaction with place (animals, spirits, elements, ancestors.)
The human centered theatre of the West is reflective of a culture that promotes individuality and cultural 'advancement' and 'development.' The history of the West that of conquest and expansion, which meant adjusting individually, socially, and culturally while ignoring out of necessity, the 'place' they in habit. Place in the West is an interchangeable commodity with variations.
It is not a living thing, an integrated system that humans are only a part of. Indigenous people understand they are a part of a place and an integrated system -- and because of the ability of humans are responsible to maintain and protect their place.
For indigenous people the primary means of maintaining and protecting their place was through performance. Western culture, and in turn Western theatre, are not responsible to their place and are in fact removed from it.
| "What
I'm hoping to do," Riccio said "is establish an alternative method,
a way for indigenous people to create for themselves in their own
terms. They've denigrated themselves for so long, and everything around
them affirms another culture. "I think we need to hear their voice before it's gone, before they become absorbed. It's and important point of view, a whole other way of looking at the world. They're an endangered species." |
![[PHOTO]](gallery/twelvemoons_sm.jpg) |
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"Is it some sort of self-inflicted neo-colonialism for a people to deal with their issues by adopting a Western theatre language and form? The Korean Theatre is rich and Koreans must have the confidence to use their own form and sensibility to express and reflect their own contemporary predicament."
from Che
Min Ilbo, Korea
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Thomas Riccio and his Litooma are attempting in their way to foster and facilitate the development of place specific and community evolved, performance. Initially this work was concerned entirely with indigenous people. Although indigenous performance is still a vital part of its objectives, Litooma is now brining what it knows to Western culture.
Litooma is dedicated to the creation of and alternative performance paradigm that enables each group or culture to speak on its terms and of its own place.
Having a connection with a place in the world is the necessary beginning point of a dialog between people, cultures, and the earth. Each person and each group speaking on their own terms, telling their story, maintaining their part of the earth, each in their way. When people speak, with and of their own unique place, there will be broad and fundamental implications for the evolving intercultural planet. Interaction and responsibility to ones place through performance is both ancient and new. Performance is an ancient technology, a practical, integrated and participatory medium that links humans to the earth and to its spirit.
Lead by the vision of Thomas Riccio, Litooma and its many international collaborators (see list under Litooma Artist), are dedicated to the development of indigenous performance. Over the last nine years Litooma has established itself as an innovative resource for indigenous performance. Litooma believes that a clear flame can spark a large fire.
Litooma works in a wide variety of indigenous, intercultural, and Western community settings.
Litooma offers:
| For
further information about Litooma and its programs contact:
Thomas Riccio
Telephone: 907/474.8721 or 474.5253 |