Ojibwe and Oneida performance artist, activist and writer
Ty Defoe
is an Ojibwe and Oneida performance artist, activist, and writer living in New York.
Defoe grew up in Wisconsin in the Ojibwe and Oneida communities of his parents. Defoe is two-spirit,[1] a term used in many Native American nations to indicate gender fluidity, non-traditional gender roles, or queerness.[2] He began his performative life as a toddler when he learned to hoop dance. Defoe continues to hoop dance in his performances, along with eagle dancing, puppetry, and other various art forms.[3] With Lakota playwright and choreographer Larissa Fasthorse, Defoe founded Indigenous Direction, a "a consulting firm that helps organizations and individuals who want to create accurate work by, for and with Indigenous peoples".[4] Indigenous Direction's clients include The Guthrie Theater.[5]
DeFoe has written, produced, and performed in many theatre productions, including Clouds are Pillows for the Moon, In the Cards, Heather Henson's Flight: A Crane’s Story, Tick, Tick, and Honor +Family. Additionally, he collaborated on the Grammy Award-winning album, Come to Me Great Mystery, featuring the work of several Native American musicians. Beginning in June 2018, he, with Kate Bornstein, portrayed stage versions of themselves as "interlocutors of indeterminate gender" in the Broadway premiere of Young Jean Lee's play Straight White Men.[8][9][10] Defoe is featured in the book 50 Key Figures in Queer US Theatre, with a profile written by theatre scholar Courtney Elkin Mohler.[11]
^Mohler, Courtney Elkin (2022). "Ty Defoe". In Noriega and Schildcrout (ed.). 50 Key Figures in Queer US Theatre. Routledge. pp. 53–57. ISBN978-1032067964.
