Merging Indigenous Tradition With Club Culture in ‘GhostRave’

“They told the people they could dance a new world into being…”
— ‘Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions,’ by John Fire Lame Deer and Richard Erdoes

In 1889, the Ghost Dance movement spread among a number of Native American nations across the Western United States. Originating as far back as 1869 with the Northern Paiute, the Ghost (or Spirit) Dance was a ritual and belief system promising a future of land properly restored to its original inhabitants.

The Ghost Dance was adopted by the Lakota in early 1890, and became central to their resistance movement. It was also used as a supposed justification, on the part of the United States Army, for the massacre at Wounded Knee. Despite the horror of that event, the Ghost Dance lived on, notably resurfacing during the 1970s AIM movement.

More than 100 years from the rise of the Ghost Dance, an entirely new and electronic music-based dance movement emerged. House music has now made its way around the world, uniting ravers, club kids and musical innovators — a high-energy scene that playwright and producer Jerome Joseph Gentes cites as inspiration for his time-traveling, musical theatre workshop production GhostRave, playing Oct. 17–27 at Magic Theatre.

A descendant of the Fort Belknap A’aninin and the Standing Rock Lakota, Gentes currently resides in Palm Springs. But it’s his time in the Bay Area in the 1990s that he draws upon for GhostRave.

“I grew up in the Bay Area, in the heyday of South of Market club life, Gentes says, “and I thought, wow…If we could just go back for one night. Wouldn’t it be great?”

After meeting Brandon M.P. Roberts during a Palm Springs production of the Nathan Hall-penned kink opera Unbound (which Gentes produced), the two quickly recognized kindred artistic inclinations, and began brainstorming ways to create their own theatrical experience in a warehouse club setting. With Gentes as playwright, lyricist and director, and Roberts as composer, sound designer and DJ, each brings their skills and passion to the project.

Featuring earnest but self-destructive indigenous club kid Chayson (played by W. Fran Astorga), GhostRave kicks off in a nightclub, set to resemble the historic San Francisco queer establishment The Stud. As an immersive show, GhostRave’s audience members can walk around the space, dance with each other and perhaps even take part in the scene as Roberts spins tracks.

But what begins as a messy night out for Chayson becomes an unexpected jaunt to 1890 and then to 2090, thanks to some interference from Coyote (Dany Benitez). While traveling through time — a witness to both a Ghost Dance ritual and to a post-Earth migration — Chayson learns to value themselves better, and value the earth, not only physically but psychically. What starts out as mere desire to return to a familiar place becomes a deeper yearning to actively embrace it.

“The thing about the Ghost Dance is it happened historically at the moment where the frontier had so completely closed, that the fate of Natives was sealed from that point forward,” Gentes says. “So I guess I was sort of saying ‘How do we deal with accepting that we may lose this planet and then go forward?’ Can the energies of hope and action be brought to life again through a theater piece? In a way, we’re modernizing the idea that was lurking at the bottom of the Ghost Dance as well.”

While the actual Ghost Dance will not be portrayed onstage out of respect for its cultural significance, almost every character in the piece does eventually express themselves through dance and song (it is a musical, after all), the creation process of which has been a journey unto itself.

As the composer, Roberts has been creating the essential “sound palette” of the show. The task has involved raiding a collection of his father’s 1990s CDs, exploring ways of creating “the rhythms of the nightclub” with 19th century instruments and a sojourn in the desert for sonic and spiritual inspiration.

“I’m really trying to identify what these characters sound like. For some of the characters, what do they listen to, you know, when we’re up in a space station, what music do they choose to put on?”

Meanwhile, Gentes has been realizing the not-so-subtle influence of the current political climate — and of climate change — on his characters, and on his own motivations for exploring their perspectives.

“One of the things I wanted to play with was this moment where the land back movement is strong and vocal…when we’re about to lose the entire planet, anyway,” he says. “I thought, what would it be like when we have to talk about land back, and we’re not on this planet anymore, as natives? And I realized that’s a really great question I would love to pursue for a long time to come.”

GhostRave plays Oct. 17–27, 2024, at Magic Theatre in San Francisco. Details here.