Staging Anna: Public Memory and Pageantry in Russian Alaska

Abstract

This article examines Cry of the Wild Ram, an outdoor historical pageant drama written by playwright Frank Brink and staged at Kodiak Archipelago’s Monashka Bay for decades beginning in 1966. Brink set out to perform Kodiak’s colonial history through community participation, recreating the community’s identity right after the disastrous 1964 earthquake and at the time of the centennial of the Alaska Purchase. The pageant excludes Russian colonial violence, frames the Kodiak Alutiit as people who only belonged in the past, and supported Cold War ideologies that opposed Russian aristocracy and validated American democracy. It does not reveal the true history of Kodiak or of individuals like Anna, Alexander Baranov’s Indigenous wife. Sophie Frets, an Alutiiq/Sugpiaq woman who played Anna in 1992, returns Anna’s agency and reveals what her truth might have been.