New play examines Parsippany's "Redskins" era

A new play that incorporates the historic controversy surrounding the renaming of Parsippany High School athletic teams from "Redskins" to "Redhawks" will be given its first public reading Friday at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark.

Award-winning playwright Nikkole Salter's drama, "Indian Head," is one of three new plays by New Jersey playwrights about New Jersey issues commissioned this year through the NJPAC Stage Exchange program in partnership with the New Jersey Theatre Alliance. As part of her selection, "Indian Head" will go on to full stage production in 2017 at the professional Luna Stage in West Orange.

Salter, a California native and Bloomfield resident, altered several details of the circumstances in Parsippany for her fictional work, which changed "Redskins" to "Warriors" and focused her plot on an "Indian head" mascot rather than the team name.

The four-character play follows a fictional Parsippany High School student, Rachel, whose activism turns dangerous when she and others sabotage the mascot during a football game. That student, like her mother, is of Native American descent. Their traditions and beliefs clash with the other two characters, a revered former football coach and one of his former star players who has been hired as coach to revive the team's winning tradition, which had since fallen on hard times.

"The play takes place in Parsippany and I'm kind of playing on (the Redskins-Redhawks story), but it's not about what happened there," Salter said. "It's a drama about the clash of tradition, about what happens when you have different people who have great pride in something, and those traditions are contradictory in a lot of ways. You disparage mine, and we're both going to feel disparaged, but whose tradition is going to stay?"

The coach characters were based on Parsippany coaches she read about in her initial research. She has changed those names in her play, but will keep using Parsippany-Troy Hills as the setting.

"Using (the name Parsippany) is a means of provoking what did happen there and what did happen around the country," she said of the time, when some schools and institutions began to choose new team names to avoid offense to Native Americans and other ethnic groups. St. John's University, for example, changed from the Redmen to the Red Storm in 1994. Parsippany renamed its teams the Redhawks in 2001.

"I wanted it to be a real thing," she said. "I want people to look at what happened in Parsippany, and let that train of thought take them to other places."

Salter actually began her story construction last year after reading about New Jersey's Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape Tribal Nation, which filed a civil rights lawsuit after New Jersey ceased its recognition of the tribe in 2012. But rather than set her drama in the courts and legislatures, she chose to set it in Parsippany.

"I didn't want to write about the state Assembly and proceedings," she said. "I wanted something that was a little more theatrical, and down to earth. It’s time that we as a nation, as a community, as a state, start to embrace and consider the Native presence in our communities. All around us we have cities like Weehawken and Hoboken. You see little kids walking around with Mohawks, and they don’t know where it’s
from. It’s time we paid attention.”

From there, Salter turned to Parsippany, but her research yielded scant documentation of the name-change controversy, including two Daily Record articles and writings from a Native American anti-mascot advocacy group which cast a critical eye on Parsippany High School.

She also discovered a Parsippany-centric Facebook page where she read comments from people who were still upset about the name change and were selling "Parsippany High School Redskins" throwback T-shirts.

"There was accusations of PC gone wild, and what some of them seemed to be saying was 'I never had to consider you before,' " said Salter, whose background includes Native American heritage. "I was just trying to get underneath their sense of pride, and the whole issue surrounding PC-ness in general, and the pushback. It's a story about clashes between cultures and family."

Salter said Parsippany residents who still cling to their "Redskin" tradition may find her play controversial, but she doesn't see any of her characters as "villains." And as a work in progress, she's hoping Parsippany residents attend the reading, which will feature professional actors. The reading will be followed by a panel discussion and audience Q&A.

"Readings are a part of the development project," said Salter, who co-wrote and co-starred in the Obie Award-winning drama, "In the Continuum," which also won the New York Outer Critics Circle's John Gassner Award for Best New American Play in 2006.

"You want to know about that the audience takes from the play, and get their feedback. I think the more biased and personalized, the better. I want those conflicts to make it into the play. We have until next year, so there is plenty of time for changes."

Panelists include Salter; Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape Tribal Councilman and Principal Justice of the Tribal Supreme Court John Norwood; Ryan Victor “Little Eagle” Pierce, artistic director of The Eagle Project and member of the Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape tribe; Tony Dearing, local
content director at NJ.com and the The Star Ledger; and Tricia Bloom, curator of the Art of the Americas collection at Newark Museum.

The reading begins at 7 p.m. in NJPAC's Chase Room. Admission is $5, and proceeds will benefit the Newark Museum’s Art of the
Americas Collection. Tickets can be purchased at njpac.org/events/detail/njpac-stage-exchange-the-commissions, or by
calling 888-466-5722. More information is available at: njtheatrealliance.org/NJStageX-2016.

Staff Writer William Westhoven: 973-917-9242; wwesthoven@GannettNJ.com.