Measure for Measure: An Indian Boarding School Comedy

Shakespeare meets the Wild West in Native American playwright Reinholz’s “Measure for Measure: An Indian Boarding School Comedy,” in which a teenage boy is unjustly sentenced to death. The language switches between the original Shakespeare for the highbrow characters to modern vernacular for Native Americans and immigrants (which isn’t really that different from ol’ Billy Shaes writing style—he used blank prose for the nobility and regular verse for the rest of the characters in the original play). Although it deals with some heavy issues of forced Native American assimilation via boarding schools, the play is a comedy. Check out this free public reading and hang around afterwards for a “talk back” between the audience and the director.