Profile

Ph.D. candidate

MFA: Dramaturgy – Stony Brook University

BA: Theatre Arts and German Studies with a Performance Emphasis – Lewis & Clark College

Awards and Professional Memberships: Native Artist Development Grant from The Evergreen State University Longhouse, Oregon State University Vice-Provost of Student Affairs grant for First Nations Readings, Puffin Grant, Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival grant for Stories of Our People. Member of the Indigenous Performing Arts Alliance and the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas.

Recent Dramaturgy Credits: Henry IV Pts. 1& 2 (translation by Yvette Nolan for the Play On! Shakespeare translation project), Off the Rails (Oregon Shakespeare Festival production to open in 2017), Richard II & The Winter’s Tale (Shakespeare Dramaturgy Resident at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival).

Waylon Lenk is Karuk from the villages of Ka’tim’îin and Taxasúfkara. He is currently working on his Ph.D. in Theatre Arts at the University of Oregon, and the dramaturg on Yvette Nolan’s translations of Henry IV Parts 1and 2 for Play on!. He has worked at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s as a dramaturg on Off the Rails, The Winter’s Tale and Richard II. He has presented work as a dramaturg and director at Oregon State University’s Native American Longhouse Eena Haws, and as a storyteller at Portland Public Schools, the Piggyback Fringe Festival in Wakefield, Quebec, and at the Sycuan Band of the Kumeyaay Nation’s U.S. Grant Hotel. His work approaches Native theatre from his positions as a dramaturg and a pikváhaan, or Karuk storyteller. As a dramaturg he actively promotes the work of Native playwrights and is involved research to extend the boundaries of what is considered “Native theater.” As a pikváhaan he uses tools from the field of theatre to (re)activate his people’s body of literature. His work has been funded by Oregon State University, Advocates for Indigenous California Languages, and the Yurok Tribe. He holds an M.F.A. in Dramaturgy from Stony Brook University, and a B.A. from Lewis & Clark College.