A gripping journey from the fur trade of the 1600s to the stock trade of today, Mary Kathryn Nagle's MANAHATTA tells the story of Jane Snake, a brilliant young Native woman with a Stanford MBA. Jane reconnects with her ancestral Lenape homeland, known as Manahatta, when she moves from Oklahoma to New York for a banking job just before the 2008 financial meltdown. Jane’s struggle to reconcile her new life with the expectations and traditions of her family and Nation are powerfully interwoven with the heartbreaking history of the Delaware Nation's expulsion from their land. Both old and new Manahatta converge in a lesson about the dangers of living in a society where there’s no such thing as enough.

A stunning play about self-discovery, MANAHATTA was written as part of The Public’s prestigious Emerging Writers Group. Obie Award winner and The Public’s Director of Public Works, Laurie Woolery, directs.

World premiere produced by Oregon Shakespeare Festival
Artistic Director Bill Rauch
Executive Director Cynthia Rider

Dive Deeper

• Access the MANAHATTA Playbill.

• If you need support to process the violence or historical trauma depicted in MANAHATTA, we encourage you to seek care using the sources listed in the Resource Guide. This guide also features resources to learn more about topics and themes covered in the show.

• Read about the current exhibition KISHUX at The Public, curated by The Lenape Center. Taken by award-winning documentarian Devin Pickering, these nine images feature the striking Lenape corn mask pole from dusk to dawn.