Rachel Bowditch

For the past three years, School of Film, Dance and Theatre associate professor Rachel Bowditch has been a lead artist (director) with the Fifth World Collective (Adam Cooper-Teran (Yaqui, Chicano), T. Loving (African American, Cherokee), Ryan Pinto (Hopi, Omaha, Northern Ute) and Denise Uyehara (Okinawan and Japanese American). Borderlands Theatre in Tucson received a Challenge America Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to produce their project, “Shooting Columbus." 

“Shooting Columbus” is an immersive, site-specific performance weaving multimedia, dance, interviews and poetry examining the current resistance of Native people in the face of continual oppression by the United States government. Created and devised by Fifth World Collective, a group of Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists from the state of Arizona including Bowditch, the show presents poetic imaginings of a radically different past to foster dialogue about a radically different future.

This research performance project has also received a nationally competitive Map Fund grant ($38,500), a Network of Ensemble Theatres grant ($9,900), an Arizona Commission on the Arts grant ($5,000) and a HIDA Faculty Seed grant ($7,500). The show takes place March 29–April 8.