How We Go Missing: Play Reading and Creative Writing Workshop

Please join us for a staged reading and workshop with San Pedro-raised poet, playwright, and professor Carolyn Dunn. A staged reading of Dunn’s one-act play, How We Go Missing, will be followed by a healing-centered writing workshop for the Indigenous community. The staged reading will be open to the general public and held in Building H at 2pm, followed by a limited-capacity creative writing workshop centered on Native healing and hope, to conclude by 5pm. RSVP is required.

How We Go Missing is Carolyn Dunn’s award winning one-act play, read at AGCC by professional actors to bring to life the stories of five women from different tribes as they experience grief, loss, and the impact of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women/Girls/2S/Relatives (MMIW) crisis. Expanding upon the topics and themes explored in our current exhibition Sustainers of Life, this event aims to call attention to the ongoing MMIW crisis while providing an avenue for community healing and connection.

Carolyn M. Dunn's life as a storyteller encompasses both poetry and playwriting with works about family, grief, resilience, and the landscape in all genres and in between. She has written numerous books, including the award-winning Outfoxing Coyote (That Painted Horse Press, 2002), Coyote Speaks (with Ari Berk, HN Abrams, 2008), and Decentered Playwriting, coedited with Leslie Hunter and Eric Micha Holmes, Routledge, 2023). Her plays The Frybread Queen, Ghost Dance, and Soledad have been developed and staged at Native Voices at the Autry. A Louisiana Acadian Creole, Dr. Dunn is a non-enrolled Cherokee, Seminole and Mvskoke Freedman tribal descendant and is a Tunica/Choctaw-Biloxi and Atakapas-Ishak descendant and community member. Additionally, she has various acting credits and is a member of the Dramatists Guild and Actor’s Equity. Dr. Dunn lives part-time in Los Angeles, where she is full-time faculty in the department of Theatre and Dance at California State University, Los Angeles, and part-time in Oklahoma with her family.

About Sustainers of Life

Co-curated by Cecelia Caro and Laurie Steelink, Sustainers of Life features seven contemporary Native and Indigenous women artists: Weshoyot Alvitre, Emily Clarke, Katie Dorame, Eve-Lauryn Little Shell LaFountain, Cara Romero, Corey Stein, and Linda Vallejo. The exhibition addresses colonialism's impact, motherhood, and the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women crisis while also celebrating individual stories of strength and survival. Through diverse media, the exhibition creates space for both mourning losses and celebrating the ongoing resilience of those who nurture and protect life.

Sustainers of Life will be on view in the gallery through January 24th, 2026, with free public visiting hours Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, from 10am to 5pm. More information is available at angelsgateart.org.

Sustainers of Life is funded in part by the Arts in California Parks local parks grant program, administered by Parks California. Additional support for the exhibitions program is provided by the Perenchio Foundation, the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture, the City of Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks, and the Department of Cultural Affairs, City of Los Angeles.

About Angels Gate Cultural Center

Angels Gate Cultural Center (AGCC) emerged from a group of San Pedro artists in the 1970s that created art studios and exhibition space within the WWII era army barracks of Angels Gate Park near the Port of Los Angeles. Today, AGCC hosts over 50 artist studios in addition to a variety of programs to engage the diverse communities of the Los Angeles Harbor region, including arts education in local schools, community classes, cultural events, and exhibitions of contemporary art. More information about AGCC is available at angelsgateart.org.