A Summer Festival Series of eight pieces presented by the Santa Fe Playhouse, dedicated to celebrating innovative, daring performances across dance, music, and theater.

UNBOUND Synopsis: UNBOUND is a performance ritual and community powered project that honors our Genízaro ancestors and uplifts their legacies. From the 1600s through the early 1900s, Native people of many tribes, often women and children, were captured and forced into New Mexico’s slave labor economy and assimilated into Catholicism and Spanish culture.

These ancestors were captured from many different tribes & communities, including Apache, Diné, Kiowa, Ute, Comanche, Pawnee, Hopi and Pueblo. They were given various identifiers: criada, cautivo, coyote, Genízaro. Descendants contextualize themselves and their communities within this legacy in distinct, place based ways. Some grew up learning the stories of who they come from and many of us did not. Yet, the fact remains that Genízaros and Genízaro communities continue to exist with vibrancy, tradition, diversity, nuance and querencia.

The director Sarah Hogland-Gurulé and collaborating artists Lupita Salazar and Gabriel Carrion-Gonzales are descendants of Genízaros and have created UNBOUND as a loving offering to their ancestors. They worked intimately with historical research, family stories, platicas with other descendants, generational memory and embodied research to create a visceral and informative experience about a history that is often left out of a contemporary understanding of New Mexico.