Starbard’s spectacular Ice Age vision of Alaska comes to life

By Colin Roshak

Storytelling is one of humanity’s oldest and most cherished traditions. This coming weekend, Perseverance Theater celebrates the intersection of traditional Native Alaskan storytelling and modern theater in their world premiere production on Vera Starbard’s Devilfish.

The titular Devilfish, a monstrous octopus-like creature, destroys an entire village and only a young girl named Aanteinatu survives. This is where the original story ends, and for many years, Starbard was preoccupied with curiosity about what happened to Aanteinatu after the attack. “For years, all growing up, in high school, [I] was wondering what happened to this girl,” Starbard said, “For me, it was ‘what happened to her?’…’how did she survive?’”

Writing Devilfish gave Starbard an opportunity to investigate some of these questions and to add to the lore of a story that had stuck with her since a young age. “It’s sort of a story that’s been growing and growing since childhood. For years, all growing up, in high school, [I] was wondering what happened to this girl,” she said.

The play is set at the end of the last Ice Age, nearly 10,000 years ago in Southeast Alaska. On the surface, Devilfish is about Aanteinatu’s incredible survival as witnessed by the residents of a nearby village that she travels to following the attack. Beneath this, however, is the story of a young girl failing to address her trauma.

“Ultimately, it’s a coming of age story of this girl who’s sort of learning to deal with trauma, but the whole background of it is actually the origin of the Tlingit people,” Starbard said.

What began as Starbard’s imagining alternative endings to familiar stories later became a book, and is now brought to the stage.

“I have this story that I want to be shared with people,” she said. “I didn’t think it could be done on stage…a giant monstrous octopus, people who transform into animals, battles. It has been amazing…it was a dream team for the design team to come together.”

Perseverance Theater presents Devilfish this weekend and next in the Sydney Lawrence Theater at the Alaska Center for the Performing Arts. Tickets are available at CenterTix.com.