Menominee Tribe seeks performers for revived pageant in Keshena

Menominee singers, dancers and storytellers will get a chance to help bring back the Menominee Pageant, the revived tribal production that opens Menominee Powwow week and now carries added weight as part of the nation’s 250th anniversary celebration. Auditions are set for Monday, June 8, from 5 to 7 p.m. on the College of Menominee Nation campus in Keshena, with interested performers directed to the campus atrium and to director Ryan Winn for more information.

The pageant is being revived as more than a one-night performance. The College of Menominee Nation helped reimagine the show in 2016 as a way to connect performers and storytellers across generations through pantomime, live music and Native dance. College materials say the revival drew on scenes from the show’s first 17 years and combined new recordings with restored archival audio, keeping older voices in the production as it returned to the stage. Elders, students, artists and families have all been part of that work, turning the pageant into a cultural teaching space as well as a performance.

This year’s return is tied to the Smithsonian Institution’s Of the People: The Smithsonian Festival of Festivals, which runs from March 20 through Dec. 31 and is working with more than 30 organizations in 27 states and two territories. The Menominee Tribe says the July 29 pageant will be the only Festival of Festivals event in Wisconsin, putting Keshena in a national program built around the country’s 250th anniversary while keeping the focus on Menominee tradition.

The production also has practical support behind it. The Wisconsin Arts Board, the Menominee Powwow Committee and Taproot Artists and Community Trust are among the existing sponsors, and the Smithsonian collaboration is expected to help fund new lighting and technical equipment. That includes a dedicated sound system requested by Menominee elders for placement at the top of the amphitheater, a change meant to improve the audience experience without losing the pageant’s traditional feel.

A related College of Menominee Nation theater project also received a $5,000 Green Bay Packers Foundation arts-and-culture grant, underscoring how much outside backing has gone into the revival. For the Menominee Nation, the pageant reaches deep into tribal history: the tribe says its creation story begins at the mouth of the Menominee River, about 60 miles east of the present Menominee Indian Reservation, and a Wisconsin dissertation documents pageant theater staged for tourists from the late 1930s through the 1970s. The June 8 auditions now give the community a direct hand in carrying that history into another summer in Keshena.