Broadway style musical about Native American culture comes to Lancaster this week

• Aniya Faulcon
  BioRecent Stories

  

  Aniya Faulcon is The Spark Host/Producer for WITF. She has a passion for shining a light on unique people, experiences, and perspectives within the community.
  
  Previously she worked as the People and Social Trends Reporter/Video Anchor for LancasterOnline | LNPNews. During her time there, she created video packages, provided Facebook Live coverage at community events, and wrote data-driven stories with census data and feature stories on local leaders, non-profit organizations, events, and people with unique talents and experiences within Lancaster County.
  
  Aniya also worked at WMAR ABC 2 News as a Sales Assistant and at the AFRO American Newspapers as an Executive Assistant and Media correspondent. Aniya interned at WEAA Gospel Grace 88.9 and worked at her alma mater’s radio station, WWPJ at Point Park University, where she gained skills and a passion for radio.
  
  Aniya grew up in Baltimore, Maryland and attended the Baltimore School for the arts for high school with a concentration in acting. She continued to hone her skills and passion for storytelling and later graduated from Point Park University in 2018 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Acting and Broadcast Reporting. Aniya is eager to continue her journey with storytelling in her role with WITF, as she aims to shed a light on real people and real stories within Pennsylvania in a variety of mediums.

 Miki Galloway

Distant Thunder at the First Americans Museum produced by Lyric Theatre in March 2022.

Airdate: Tuesday, November 8, 2022

Distant Thunder is a Broadway style musical that is coming to The Ware Center in Lancaster on Thursday at 7:30 p.m. The musical blends traditional Native American philosophy with modern concepts and displays Native American culture and concerns.

The show was co-written by Lynne Taylor-Corbett, who choregraphed Footloose and her son, Shaun Taylor-Corbett, who appeared in “In the Heights” on Broadway.

Distant Thunder is supported by five major Native American tribes and has cast members that have traveled from diverse tribal lands to perform in the musical.

Jordan Traut, former liaison and graduate student at Millersville University, did her thesis on the Distant Thunder production and helped bring the musical to Lancaster.

Traut said, it was important to bring the show to The Ware Center, as it is next door to the Fulton theatre, which was previously the old county jail house where the last indigenous people native to Pennsylvania were massacred in 1763.

“I think its going to be sort of a reclamation of the space and a rectifying of some of the darker history of Pennsylvania, our European-American communities and our indigenous communities,” Traut said. “…I think bringing Distant Thunder to Lancaster is a good first step forward, I’m hoping, in including indigenous voices back into the history of Pennsylvania as well as into higher education in general.”

Miki Galloway

Distant Thunder at the First Americans Museum produced by Lyric Theatre in March 2022.

Shaun said, he hopes the show informs people about the Native American community with a performance that is of Broadway quality.

“We want people to come and and see this show and be blown away by the message, by the importance of what they’re seeing, by the execution, by the music, and have a high bar so that it can stand up there with any other Broadway musical and be a proud indigenous Broadway style musical.”