LACMA Live Presents a Reading with Native Voices

Get to know Native Voices, the nation’s premier Native American theater company, at a reading of a newly commissioned work in celebration of LACMA’s new David Geffen Galleries. Rooted in memory and place, the performance will weave vivid storytelling with Indigenous cosmologies and the layered histories of the land we inhabit.

This is a rare chance to get a look at the creative process and ideas behind a project still taking shape, before it hits the stage in spring 2026. Whether you’re a theater or art lover, this special performance will allow you to explore the connections between culture, history, and place.

This performance takes place outdoors on the LACMA campus. Please note that exhibition-level access to the David Geffen Galleries is not included as part of this event. We recommend dressing warmly, as temperatures may be cooler during the evening.

Cast and Crew

GiGi Buddie is a Tongva and Mescalero Apache artivist originally from the Bay Area on Coast Miwok land. She is an Elliot Norton Award nominated actress, most recently seen in the New England Premiere of Where We Belong at The Umbrella Stage Company. Buddie is a multi-hyphenate artivist who creates and contributes to stories of creation, resilience, and beauty from frontline communities. Outside of acting, she helped to bring frontline climate stories to the United Nations Climate Summit (COP26), and wrote and produced her debut single “Ursa Major,” a love letter to the Iroquois story of the Celestial Bear. In 2023, Buddie received her B.A. from Pomona College in Theatre Performance and Environmental Analysis. Previous credits include Auntie 2 (Antíkoni, World Premiere with Native Voices), Anna (if Nobody Does Remarkable Things), Feste (Twelfth Night), Ruby (Daphne’s Dive), and Marty (Circle Mirror Transformation).

Jennifer Bobiwash is the Artistic Associate for Native Voices and continues to create and perform work that amplifies Native Americans on stage and screen. She is an Ojibway actor, playwright, and director and is enrolled with the Mississauga First Nation. Select regional theater credits include Between Two Knees at McCarter Theatre and Seattle Rep, Fake It Until You Make It at Arena Stage, and Manahatta at Yale Rep. She has appeared in world premieres of They Don’t Talk Back, Fairly Traceable, and Bingo Hall at Native Voices, as well as Devilfish and Whalesong at Perseverance Theatre. On screen, she has appeared in Magnum P.I. and Rutherford Falls. Jennifer was part of the inaugural class at the National Institute for Direction and Ensemble Creation at Pangea World Theatre, a National Playwrights Conference Semi-Finalist, a Season 21 Volt Lab writer with Company One Theatre, and an Artist in Residence at UC San Diego’s Thurgood Marshall College. She continues to explore stories of First Nations people and identity, inspire youth to realize their full potential through the performing arts, and believes performance  is a way to promote conversation and elicit action.

Nikcoma Lee Mahkewa is Hopi-Tewa, Mohave, Chemehuevi, and originally from the Colorado River Indian Tribal reservation in Parker, Arizona. He is an L.A.-based actor, having most recently performed on stage in the company of Rhiana Yazzie’s The Other Children of the Sun at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. He was previously seen as Tairasias in Beth Piatote’s Antíkoni for Native Voices and toured in the understudy company of The 1491’s satirical play Between Two Knees at McCarter Theatre and Seattle Rep.

Maddox Pennington is a Cherokee playwright, director, and actor. His play Central Standard Time (the second play in The Muldrow Cycle) was developed in the Native Voices 2023 Playwrights Retreat. His work has also been read in the 2023 T/GNC Reading Festival, Theatre Viscera Podcast, Off-Off Broadway NYC’s FRIGID Queerly Festival, Moving Arts MADLab, Native American Media Alliance TV Writing Fellowship, and Creative Nations First Storytellers Festival in Boulder, Colorado. He most recently directed a reading of his new musical LOVE CHICKEN at the inaugural Joy Who Lived Festival, which he co-produced. Maddox teaches college writing at the University of Southern California, where he is currently an assistant professor.

DeLanna Studi is the artistic director for Native Voices and a proud citizen of the Cherokee Nation. Her theater credits include the First National Broadway Tour of Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize–winning play August: Osage County, off-Broadway’s Gloria: A Life, Informed Consent, and regional theaters (Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Portland Center Stage, Cornerstone, and Indiana Repertory Theatre). Her first play, And So We Walked: Along the Trail of Tears, retells her journey when she retraced her family’s footsteps along the Trail of Tears with her father. Recently, it made its off-Broadway debut at Minetta Lane, where it was recorded for Audible. Her film and television credits include the Peabody Award–winning Edge of America, Hallmark’s Dreamkeeper, Goliath, Shameless, General Hospital, Reservation Dogs, and Disney’s The Roof. She is a 2022 United States Artists Fellow, an Advance Gender Equality in the Arts Legacy Playwright Grant Recipient, and the recipient of the Butcher Scholar Award, MAP Fund Grant, Cherokee Preservation Grant, and the Doris Duke Performing Artist Fund. DeLanna has served as the chair of the SAG-AFTRA National Native Americans Committee since 2007 and is also the 2024/25 Playwright in Residence at Geva Theatre in Rochester, New York.

Elisa Blandford is the managing director for Native Voices and has been producing for the company since 2014, from world premieres and touring productions to Short Play Festivals, Playwrights Retreats, and Festivals of New Plays. She co-founded Vanguard Repertory Company and the Windmill Arts Center, a black box theater and dance studio dedicated to fostering performance and visual arts. She has a BA in theater from Florida State University and MBA from the University of Redlands.

Sati Thyme is the production manager for Native Voices and has been involved in theater her entire life in many different aspects, from performing to tech to management and more. She received her bachelor’s degree in stage management from CSU Fullerton and has worked as a stage manager all over the Los Angeles area for the last eight years. She has been fortunate enough to have the opportunity to go on tour around the U.S. a few times over the past couple years, but always finds time to come back to Los Angeles during the Halloween season to manage the interactive horror production, Delusion. Most recently she was on the stage management team at the CineVita working on their inaugural production, Tarantino: Pulp Rock.