Sierra Rosetta

Rosetta’s work explores themes of cultural memory, land, and intergenerational resilience, centering Native voices and women’s experiences in contemporary theatre. Her debut full-length play, From the Old Wood Forest, received the 2024 Yale Indigenous Performing Arts Program’s “Young Native Playwright” award and was presented in sold-out staged readings at both Yale University and the Newberry Library in Chicago. Her second play, A Century of Sparrows, was developed through multiple national platforms, receiving a workshop and staged reading with Native Voices at the Autry and La Jolla Playhouse in 2025, and was a recipient of the Chicago New Play Residency in 2026, culminating in two staged readings.

Sierra is motivated to bring a culturally grounded, research-driven approach to both new play development and production dramaturgy, with a focus on supporting Indigenous and BIPOC storytelling in theatrical spaces. Her work emphasizes community-centered process, reciprocal collaboration, and deep listening to the histories embedded in text and performance. Sierra has served as a dramaturg with the New Harmony Project (‘I’ is for Invisible), the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center (The Matriarchs), La Jolla Playhouse (Indian Princesses), Goodman Theatre (Inherit the Wind), and Northwestern University (Disposable, As It Is In Heaven, The Wong Kids, Clean House, Frida Libre).

A current PhD Candidate in the Interdisciplinary PhD in Theatre and Drama program at Northwestern University. Sierra’s dissertation is entitled “Scenes of Survivance: Performing Arts Education as Indigenous Resistance.” This project follows 3 “acts” of Native people using the performing arts as resistance. Act 1 features the American Indian boarding-school-era “Song of Hiawatha” pageants; Act 2 includes the Minneapolis/St. Paul survivor school plays during the American Indian Movement, and Act 3 involves contemporary performing arts education programs for Native youth. Sierra’s dissertation is also nestled in the Native American Studies cluster at Northwestern.

Sierra is the literary associate at Native Voices Theatre, the only equity theatre in the US that solely produces Native work. Her main focus is to foster an environment that values Indigenous voices and helps their stories reach broader audiences. Engaging collaboratively with playwrights, Sierra offers feedback, support, and resources for script development. Through careful curatorial work, she aims to dismantle barriers for Native stories in theatre. Sierra was trained in her literary work at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center summer fellowship.