Nina McConigley was never one to play cowboys and Indians while growing up, despite living and breathing the Western culture.
“I was the wrong kind of Indian in Wyoming,” she joked.
Born in Singapore to an Irish father and an Indian mother, McConigley and her family were thrust into the sparse, wind-whipped locale of Casper, Wyo., in the 1980s when her father, who worked for an oil company, was transferred.
There, McConigley struggled daily to assimilate into her new surroundings. She never saw anyone who looked like her — certainly not someone whose house was filled with saris (a traditional style of clothing for women in India) and aromatic spice blends like garam masala, instead of leather boots, varsity jackets, or ground beef tacos.
Matthew Spengler and Nina McConigley, co-writers of "Cowboys and East Indians," watch rehearsals for a staged reading of the play in 2024. (Photo by Jamie Kraus, provided by Denver Center)That’s why McConigley, a novelist who teaches at Colorado State University, jumped at the chance to adapt her short story collections and autobiographical writings for the theater. Her book, “Cowboys and East Indians,” had already won her the PEN Open Book Award and a High Plains Book Award, so there was clearly something there for diverse audiences to grab onto.
“This isn’t just an ‘immigrant play,'” said Matthew Spangler, a playwright from Cody, who met McConigley in high school, and who co-authored the stage version of “Cowboys and East Indians.” “The play looks at another Wyoming family whose lives intersect with theirs, so it’s not simply the (outsiders’) perspective.”
The contrasts in the play, which opens at Denver Center for the Performing Arts on Friday, Jan. 16, are deliberately stark and attention-getting, both heartfelt and unusual in their representation of Indian culture, the playwrights said.
“It’s so wild to me, and got us a little teary, to see saris on the stage during rehearsal, because I never thought I’d see that,” said McConigley. Like Spangler, she attended her first theater production at the Denver Center as a child.
“I grew up thinking theater was Shakespeare and ‘The Importance of Being Earnest,'” she said. “I love those plays, but they didn’t have women in saris.”
Nina McConigley, pictured, and Matthew Spengler adapted McConigley's writings about McConigley Indian/Irish-American family for the new play "Cowboys and East Indians." (Provided by Denver Center)The “East Indians” of the title refers to the family of protagonist Lakshmi “Lucky” Sen. Her dad calls her “a prairie dog — hesitant and scared on the side of the road,” according to the Denver Center’s description of the story. But when we meet her, she’s determined to fulfill her mom’s final wishes — namely, how to properly wear a sari, and how to stop burning spices when she cooks.
Meanwhile, Lucky’s also trying to fit in with her new neighbors, which sets up a fundamental tension between her native culture and her status as an outsider in a rural setting. And right before her sister gets married, a family secret pops out into the open that makes Lucky question her mom’s edict to be “a good Indian daughter.”
“Cowboys and East Indians” continues through March 1, giving it a longer run than most original plays in a major theatrical space. Late last year — weeks before the play was set to debut — the Denver Center had upgraded the venue to the 200-person Singleton Theatre from a smaller space at downtown’s Performing Arts Complex, in order to handle what it sees as unusually high demand.
Producers are already cautioning ticket-buyers to wait until after Feb. 10 when previews wind down for better ticket availability (though there are certainly seats available before then).
The attention surprised McConigley, but she said family dramadies are something everyone can relate to, even if they depict scenes most Americans never see on stage. Wearing bindis (traditional, colored forehead dots) instead of feathers, for example, provides a visual contrast that general audiences can relate to when thinking about what “Indian” really means in the U.S.
There’s also something universal in trying to please one’s parents, stay true to a culture, or find yourself amid sharply conflicting messages and backdrops.
“Usually people want me to exoticize Asian-ness in my stories,” McConigley said. “But (for the play) they wanted Wyoming to be exoticized. … They wanted us to put a lot of wind references in there.”
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Spangler, a professor of performance studies at San José State University, brings his own experience as a creative person growing up in an area with no creative community. A world-traveling playwright whose work has appeared on Broadway, he and McConigley appreciate that the Denver Center supports their authentic details in the form of the traditional dress — McConigley reports being blown away by the costume shop’s rack of bespoke saris — but also dialogue and other colorful details. That includes having Pavithra Prasad as a dialect coach and Indian actors Sadithi De Zilva (in the role of Lucky) and Minita Gandhi (as her mother Chitra) in lead parts.
It’s a busy time for McConigley as her new novel, “How to Commit A Postcolonial Murder,” will also be published by Pantheon Books on Jan. 20. Whatever her play’s future, she looks back on her time in Wyoming and appreciates the inspiration it provided, as weird as it may have seemed at the time.
“Actually, Denver Center has a history of producing weird original plays about the American West,” she said, noting “Rattlesnake Kate,” “The Whale,” and “The Laramie Project.” “But what we wanted to do was not to depict an American West that we all know. And that’s something I really admire about them — especially as an Asian-American.”
If you go
“Cowboys and East Indians.” World premiere dramedy written by Nina McConigley and Matthew Spangler, directed by Chris Coleman. Previews begin Jan. 16, with the play running through March 1 at Dean Singleton Theatre at Denver Performing Arts Complex, 1400 Curtis St. in Denver. Runtime 1 hour and 45 minutes. Recommended ages 14 and up. Tickets: $58. Call 303-893-4100 or visit denvercenter.org for more details.
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