Magazine

Sara Pillatzki-Warzeha caught the performance bug early on. While her small-town South Dakota upbringing didn’t grant her access to a robust arts scene, she was involved in just about every activity within a 45-mile radius: singing with her mom and in the choir, playing the trumpet, participating in dance, nailing the lead role in the play, earning all-state honors in speech, and the like. In fact, a teacher even dubbed her “Little Miss Fine Arts.” It’s still a fitting nickname today.

“I grew up in a really small town — a village, really — about an hour south of the reservation where we’re enrolled,” says the regionally renowned Sisseton-Wahpeton Dakota/German-American actor, director, scholar, and all-around storyteller. “Being on the fringe like that is often challenging, especially in a place like South Dakota, where lots of people have lots of opinions about Native folks. Performing felt like the place where I actually had some agency in my small community.”

Indeed, those formative experiences helped her find her voice — an identity-affirming gift she’s now giving to the next generation. These days, Pillatzki-Warzeha shares her passion for performing arts through her thoughtful teaching at St. Olaf. She joined the faculty as a visiting instructor in 2021 and has since become beloved among theater students. This fall she will become the Theater Department’s newest full-time, tenure track faculty member. Of particular interest is her Native Dramatic Literature class, which Pillatzki-Warzeha loves teaching because it allows her to, in her own words, “totally nerd out.”

In addition to being a self-proclaimed theater nerd, she is also a lifelong learner. After earning her bachelor’s degree in sociology from Northern State University in Aberdeen, South Dakota — which, compared to her hometown of fewer than 100 people, felt huge to her — Pillatzki-Warzeha went on to earn an MFA in theater arts from Minnesota State University, Mankato. She’s now wrapping up a Ph.D. in theater historiography from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.

Pillatzki-Warzeha’s Indigenous worldview guides all her work, whether that’s bringing thought-provoking performances to St. Olaf, serving on the Guthrie Theater’s Native Advisory Council, or directing plays at Twin Cities cultural institutions such as the The Jungle Theatre and Full Circle Theatre. No matter the stage or the setting, Pillatzki-Warzeha strives to create an inclusive environment where all perspectives are not only welcomed but amplified.

That said, in her early teaching days, she felt the need to conform to the unwritten rules of academia. “I admit that in my first years out of my MFA [program], I taught in a very white Western way; I wasn’t the best version of myself as a teacher back then,” she recalls. “I was hung up on all these teaching standards and structures that don’t actually serve us. I started to ask myself why I was holding everyone to these standards that didn’t feel good to me as a student myself.”

All that changed during the first year of her Ph.D. program, when Pillatzki-Warzeha was sitting in on numerous American Indian seminars taught by Indigenous instructors. She felt safer and more comfortable in those settings, so she decided to emulate that feeling in her own classroom.

“I realized I needed to lead with my values, like my mentors do,” she says, nodding to Algonquin playwright Yvette Nolan, who visited St. Olaf last fall for a reading of her play, Reasonable Doubt. “We need to recognize each other in terms of our shared human values rather than starting from a place of focusing on the nitty gritty of learning. That changed everything for me in terms of how I teach. Now, my classroom is a healthier, more ethical place that gives grace and gives space. It allows me to be a much better teacher, because I’m more confident and more relaxed, and I’ve found my students really appreciate that approach, too.”

“I believe theater writ large is ultimately about our ability to explore the full range of humanity. It allows us to explore all the different ways we exist in the world; we can actually use this art form to continue to see one another. Our stories sustain us in the hardest times. They rise up at the moment when we need them the most to ground us, bolster our courage, challenge our humility, and remind us what we’ve been through. I think that’s what theater does best.”

— Sara Pillatzki-Warzeha

Evolution of thought has been a constant throughout Pillatzki-Warzeha’s career. For instance, back in 2010, she had a life-changing experience witnessing Menominee/Stockbridge-Munsee actress Sheila Tousey in the Guthrie production of The Master Butchers Singing Club, adapted from acclaimed Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa author Louise Erdrich’s novel. She had long been enamored with Tousey, who starred in the 1992 film Thunderheart alongside Sam Shepard, Val Kilmer, and Graham Greene (Oneida Nation). Although the movie’s Indigenous depictions are a far cry from the authentic representation we’re witnessing nowadays, it was still groundbreaking for her to see Native talent in film.

Sitting front row with her mom at the play, Pillatzki-Warzeha realized the significance of that moment. “I thought, ‘Oh my god, we’re seeing Native people at the Guthrie,'” she recalls. “That was a big deal. I loved Sheila’s performance so much. It felt so genuine and honest, just like how my aunties tell stories, without a lot of performativity.”

She was so inspired by the performance that she wrote a paper about it. But her professor essentially refuted her viewpoint, arguing that the best actors in the play were two non-Native women and that Tousey essentially didn’t belong there. That was another eye-opening moment for Pillatzki-Warzeha.

“I had this realization that Native art when presented to a white Western world is always going to be held to white Western standards,” she says. “I also realized that the way [Native performers] tell our stories on stage is never going to be enough for white culture, because we don’t do things the same way. I was so mad at the time that I actually wrote a rebuttal to him. That single moment catapulted me into my Ph.D. all these years later, because I just kept thinking that our art forms need to be recognized as their own and shouldn’t be measured against standards that aren’t ours.”

This kind of revolutionary thinking is common among Pillatzki-Warzeha’s students, who are encouraged to bring their unique intersectionality to the classroom. “I came into college relatively ignorant of Native experiences; I had been fed the First Thanksgiving story and the Christopher Columbus story in elementary school but didn’t know much beyond that,” says Auggie Lehn ’26. “Sara has taught me so much about being an openly Native person in the theater world, which wasn’t built for Native people. It’s important for all communities to see works that actually reflect the world we live in, which is huge, beautiful, and diverse. If we’re only exposed to dead white men like Ibsen, Albee, Aristotle, and Shakespeare, we’re not going to be prepared for this world.”

“It’s important for all communities to see works that actually reflect the world we live in, which is huge, beautiful, and diverse.”

— Auggie Lehn ’26

Soren Chirhart ’25 has had similar revelations. “Sara has completely reshaped the way I work as a director, designer, and artist as a whole,” he says. “The care she puts into everything she does is so inspiring. Her directing class taught me how to truly examine a text from every angle, not just the Eurocentric lens that I have been trained to fall into for so long. Learning from Sara is unlike any other class I have taken; her passion for her work is so contagious and incredibly refreshing.”

Pillatzki-Warzeha’s impact on campus can be felt far outside the classroom. For example, last fall she organized a reading of the docudrama play Reasonable Doubt, which delves into race relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people through the portrayal of a significant moment in Canadian history. That performance served as the centerpiece of an event series, including a thought-provoking panel discussion with the performers, a Native-focused feast, and more. 

During Pillatzki-Warzeha’s own undergrad years, a college professor set her on her path thanks to his open-minded approach — a rarity given the time and place. “In our small community of Aberdeen, theater professor Dan Yurgaitis wasn’t afraid to tell stories that might go against the community’s very conservative values. It made me understand that theater is a place where you can be brave, show your values to the world, and fight for what you think is right.”

Her teachings go beyond the St. Olaf campus. She is also an instructor for the Stages Theatre Company’s C.A.S.T. Program, which aims to create a welcoming, comfortable environment for kids and teens living with autism spectrum disorder and other sensory sensitivities. Among her students is 14-year-old Moses Prindle, who has been involved in the initiative for seven years. For him and his family, the program has been an absolute game changer, in large part thanks to Pillatzki-Warzeha’s emphasis on amplifying underrepresented voices.

“As a parent of a child with a disability, it can be really hard watching your child navigate a neurotypical world that wasn’t really built for them,” says writer and media producer Angie Borchardt-Prindle ’98. “Sara has helped create a space where these kids can be unapologetically themselves and feel completely accepted. Her work with autistic youth is a natural extension of her work in the Native American community; it’s about making theater and storytelling accessible, relatable, and transformative for people who have traditionally been excluded from those environments.”

As much as Pillatzki-Warzeha is doing the teaching, she’s also learning from the younger generations. “I find my students to be so generous, gracious, curious, and kind — which is pretty radical right now,” she says. “They want the world to be a better place, and I think they are the exact right people to get us there. We’re living in unprecedented times where we’re inundated with all of these inputs, yet they’re still willing to come to the table, hear one another out, and see other people’s humanity. Every day that I get to walk into the classroom with this generation is a wonderful day.”

“I find my students to be so generous, gracious, curious, and kind — which is pretty radical right now. They want the world to be a better place, and I think they are the exact right people to get us there.”

— Sara Pillatzki-Warzeha

Pillatzki-Warzeha is in the process of creating even more space for Native artistry. Along with Minnesota–based Indigenous actors Sequoia Hauck (Anishinaabe/Hupa) and Adrienne Zimiga-January (Oglala Lakota), she is launching the Mni Giizhik Theatre Ensemble to “lift up the theater dreams of [the Native] community.” That brings her incredible joy, as does spending time with her husband and their 5-year-old son. She still loves live music — which is largely responsible for getting her hooked on performance arts in the first place — as well as spending time out in nature, especially hiking and canoeing along the North Shore of Lake Superior.

This spring Pillatzki-Warzeha will direct the St. Olaf Theater Department’s production of The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane. Based on the beloved children’s book by Minnesota writer Kate DiCamillo, the story follows the adventures of china rabbit Edward Tulane. Through trials and tribulations, the less-than humble rabbit discovers the true gift that is to give and receive love.

If there’s one life lesson Pillatzki-Warzeha hopes to impress upon her students at St. Olaf and beyond, it’s this: Storytelling connects us and carries us through even the toughest of times.

“I believe theater writ large is ultimately about our ability to explore the full range of humanity,” she says. “It allows us to explore all the different ways we exist in the world; we can actually use this art form to continue to see one another. Our stories sustain us in the hardest times. They rise up at the moment when we need them the most to ground us, bolster our courage, challenge our humility, and remind us what we’ve been through. I think that’s what theater does best.”