Five Lawrence residents are preparing to bare their souls in public for the good of the community.

They’ll be sharing their innermost thoughts, telling their life stories. And they’ll be doing it in their own words, with their own voices — voices that often go unheard.

We all suffer from the silence, says New York theater artist Ping Chong, director of “Native Voices — Secret History,” a scripted narrative based on extensive interviews with people who call Lawrence home but sometimes feel like strangers here.

Chong created the script, part of an ongoing series of community-specific oral history projects, in collaboration with the Lied Center and Haskell Indian Nations University as part of the Bert Nash Community Mental Health Center’s third annual Building a Better Community Summit, “Bridging Cultures: The Native American Experience.” The summit will be Saturday at the Lied Center, before and after the third and final performance of the show.

Civic leaders will join author and University of Arizona professor Luci Tapahonso and University of Montana professor Iris Heavyrunner in pre- and post-performance discussions about the impact of culture on community. The summit is open to the public.

Cast member Lori Tapahonso anticipates the experience being one of the most difficult she’s ever encountered — but worth it.

“It’s almost like being just absolutely emotionally naked in front of an auditorium of people in hopes of opening doors for dialogue on a lot of issues,” says Tapahonso, who is of Dine and Acoma Pueblo descent. “And we’re not just talking about racial issues. We’re talking about issues that affect us all … mental health, family relations, education.

“I think the way Bert Nash has set this up is going to really give the community the chance to hear people be as raw as they can with their life stories. We’re going to be the ones up there taking that leap first in hopes of being able to encourage other people to follow us and continue that dialogue with the panel that follows.”

Power in witnessing

Chong came to Lawrence in November at the invitation of Lied Center associate director Karen Christilles, who had seen “Children of War,” another of Chong’s “Undesirable Elements” project. He and apprentice Sara Zatz interviewed more than 15 American Indians and narrowed the cast to seven (two members dropped out). Chong and Zatz returned in late March to conduct follow-up interviews and then co-wrote the script, which the cast has been busy rehearsing as Thursday’s opening-night performance approaches.

They won’t be expected to memorize the show; they’re not professional actors, after all. Instead, they’ll read scripts placed on music stands in front of a semi-circle of chairs. The results are always powerful, Chong says.

“The power is in the fact that you’re witnessing people who lived this history,” he says. “When you in the audience look at them, you can deny what they’re saying, but you can’t deny that that’s who’s there, that happened to that person, it’s not fiction. The power is in the witnessing.”

But with that power — and the healing Chong hopes it induces — comes some pain.

Lori Tapahonso’s professor told her she shouldn’t try to be a broadcast journalist because she didn’t have the right look.

The parents of a student in Russell Blackbird’s class sent him a note that said they were praying for him because they knew he was Indian and they didn’t understand how a heathen was able to teach their Christian children.

Audio: Ping Chong on race issues in “Native Voices – Secret History” Audio: Ping Chong on dismantling stereotypes Audio: Ping Chong on his experience of being other Chat with Ping Chong, author-director of ‘Native Voices – Secret History,’ on Thursday(Submit questions early)

These things happened in Lawrence — the same place Kansas University students are welcomed back each spring with “Rock Chalk Jayhawk” signs while Haskell students shuffle, unnoticed, into town.

“The Haskell community is very much a part of the Lawrence community, and we embrace that. A lot of us stay here not just for Haskell, but for Lawrence,” says Tapahonso, executive assistant to Haskell President Karen Swisher. “But sometimes it’s a little painful when you don’t see that reciprocated.”

Safe forum

The show progresses chronologically, interweaving historical details — colonization, broken treaties, relocation and decimation of tribes — with the personal stories of Tapahonso, Blackbird, Dianne Yeahquo Reyner, Dennison Dugi and Carly Jo Blemmel. The format is insightful, Tapahonso says.

“We learn about the Trail of Tears. We learn about these national events in our history books,” she says. “But at what point do you have somebody tell you about how that personally impacted them?”

Chong, who’s been staging similar productions since 1992, says audience reactions have varied through the years.

“People will say, ‘Why are you pointing out all the negative things about America?'” he says. “The fact is, nobody lets these people speak for themselves.”

Christilles sees the results of such stifled communication when she reads the letters to the editor in the newspaper.

“You can see people reaching out to help inform and understand, and other people who still feel a great deal of pain because they’re not being understood,” she says. “It’s our hope that this project will represent a forum where people feel they are safe to express any view — as long as they are coming into it with the old motto, ‘Seek first to understand, then to be understood.'”

Summit organizers hope the conversation grows beyond relations between natives and nonnatives to touch on other community issues.

“We’re very interested to see what questions and discussions come out of the Ping Chong production,” says Scott McMichael, community development director at Bert Nash. “I think it will be powerful for people to see what these folks have gone through. That will build an understanding, and hopefully that will open up some discussion and give people a better understanding of how everybody works together in Lawrence.”