Where We Belong Tickets

Madeline Sayet's critically acclaimed Where We Belong is a story of travel, history, assimilation, and more. Get on Where We Belong tickets on New York Theatre Guide.

Where We Belong is a play, written and solely performed by Sayet, that kicks off with her 2015 move from the U.S. to England. Sayet is Indigenous, of Mohegan descent, and she moved to pursue a doctorate degree in Shakespeare after staging a production of The Tempest with an Indigenous lens. In that production, the character Caliban, who's native to the island the play is set on, speaks his native language once again as the other non-native characters leave. In her show, Sayet speaks English and Mohegan and explores similar themes of colonialism.

She shares anecdotes from her time in Britain that highlight its and other nations' ongoing refusal to acknowledge or make amends for its history of colonialism — for example, finding Indigenous remains at the British museum, and getting questioned by a Swedish officer. As she fights to find home in a place that seems to be fighting against her, she's comforted to know that her Indigenous ancestors once made and survived a similar journey in the 1700s, after a treatise was betrayed. As she looks back and retells her story to us, she also puts forth a call for empathy, reminding us that in a globalized world where everyone's connected, we all must respect and protect each other's histories.

Where We Belong had its world premiere at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in London in 2019. In 2021, the show came stateside for a production at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company; amid the pandemic, it was a virtual production, performed on stage but streamed to audiences. Before the premiere of Where We Belong off Broadway, the show played a short in-person engagement at Baltimore Center Stage.

Sayet's other plays include Up and Down the River, Antigone Or And Still She Must Rise Up, and Daughters of Leda. She's also a prolific director, having helmed numerous Shakespeare productions (Macbeth, A Midsummer Night's Dream, As You Like It, Henry IV, The Winter's Tale) and more across the U.S. For all her work promoting Indigenous perspectives through theatre, she was named to the Forbes list of 30 Under 30 in Hollywood & Entertainment and received The White House Champion of Change Award from former President Barack Obama.

A year before the Public's production of Where We Belong in New York, the Off-Broadway Minetta Lane Theatre presented another Indigenous story, And So We Walked. That solo show, by Cherokee writer/performer DeLanna Studi, was about a journey of her own that her ancestors once walked: on the Trail of Tears in America.

Tickets to Where We Belong are on sale now.

By: Madeline Sayet
Director: Mei Ann Teo
Cast list: Madeline Sayet