UM Alum Tackles MMIP Crisis In New Play

The idea for “Can’t Drink Salt Water” came to Kendra Mylnechuk Potter as she lay in savasana after leading a yoga class. The University of Montana alumna wasn’t necessarily thrilled with her sudden burst of creative genius. 

“I just thought, ‘Oh, no’. But I knew it had to happen,” Mylnechuk Potter said.

The actress and playwright was reluctant to dive into the writing process, especially with something she knew would be emotionally and creatively challenging. But her ideas wouldn’t be denied, and this weekend the Montana Rep will host a staged reading of the play in Missoula.

Growing up in Lake Oswego, Oregon, Mylnechuk Potter felt drawn to the arts.

“I was always interested in performing and in stories,” she said. “Stories are the best way I’ve ever found to learn and process.”

When it came time for college, she contemplated taking a year off until her boyfriend at the time was admitted to UM. She decided to do some research on the school’s theater program.

“The classes that were being offered that year were really impressive and comparable to some of the conservatories I was looking at,” she said.

She decided to give Missoula a shot, and it didn’t take long for her to know she’d made the right choice. The education and theater scene were exactly what she had been looking for, especially with the presence of the Montana Repertory.

“There were all these artists who were very established in their craft coming in from New York and Chicago and Los Angeles,” she explains.

She performed in plays, met professional actors and made lifelong friends. In her Acting III class, she even met her future husband, Tyler Potter.

After graduating, the couple moved to Portland, where she self-produced a play and spent time traveling with the Rep. They then spent a few years in Los Angeles, but Mylnechuk Potter was mostly booking theater roles, so they decided to head to the busy New York City theater scene. 

“Funnily, a lot of the work I booked there was film and television,” she joked.

In addition to her acting roles, she teamed up with Brooke Pepion Swaney, a Blackfeet and Salish filmmaker, to produce a documentary about Mylnechuk Potter’s experience finding her birth mother and learning to engage with her Lummi heritage after growing up in a primarily white community. “Daughter of a Lost Bird” screened at film festivals and recently at the Roxy Theater in Missoula.

Throughout her career, she has played several Native characters but hadn’t yet formed her own connection to her heritage.

“The documentary was an opportunity to bridge that gap of information,” she said.

Looking to foster opportunities for the performing arts in the Treasure State, Mylnechuk Potter co-founded the MT + NYC Collaborative. The group invited writers from across the country to participate in writing retreats in Montana.

At one of the retreats, Mylnechuk Potter was tasked with writing a play about a real-life incident in which a tourist had put a baby bison into their car. “The Buffalo Play” marked her debut as a playwright. At the time, she hoped the play marked the start and end of that career.

“The whole time I was like ‘this is the only play I’m ever going to write,’” she laughed.

Fast forward a few years to that yoga class when the idea for her newest work came to her. Her initial hesitation was thwarted by a perfectly timed email from the Montana Rep. It was advertising a new commission for an indigenous playwright. She was awarded the commission and got to work writing “Can’t Drink Salt Water.”

Now the play is ready for an audience, and the public is invited to a staged reading on campus this Sunday. Actors will present the play in a sort of read-through format, where the audience can witness part of the play’s evolution before it moves to a full performance in the future. The story centers around themes of the missing and murdered indigenous people crisis, human trafficking and white saviorism. Mylnechuk Potter knows these themes can be heavy, but she wants the audience to walk away with more.

“I’m hoping to explore these issues in a way that is uplifting,” she explained. “I want a call to action. I want an invitation to engage.”

With her latest work set to take the stage, Mylnechuk Potter is glad to have the writing process behind her. But she hasn’t ruled out the possibility of penning another play someday.

 “I have learned to never say never,” she said.