New Native American Drama - Softcover

Geiogamah

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0806116978 ISBN 13: 9780806116976

Publisher: OUP, 1980

Synopsis

This first collection of plays by an Indian playwright presents a spectrum of Indian life that ranges in time from the past to the present and on into the future.

Body Indian, the earliest, most widely performed, and most highly acclaimed of Geiogamah's plays, deals with a problem of the present -Indian alcoholism. But the play is not so much about alcoholism as it is about the social and moral obligations that Indian people owe to one another.

Foghorn, through the use of humor rather than bitterness, tries to exorcise the harmful stereotyping that often stands in the way of non-Indians' understanding of Indians, and even on occasion of Indians' own appreciation of themselves.

In the play 49 the author links the past with the present and points a road to the future. Here the approach is synchronic rather than diachronic. The value of Indian traditions is emphasized -but only where those traditions are used imaginatively and not treated as ossified relics to be blindly venerated. 49 celebrates the continuity of Indian life in the vigor of new forms and with an abiding optimism.

This collection of plays-all widely performed and seriously and extensively reviewed-adds a new and important voice to the small body of Indian authors who write about their own people.

About this title

About the Author:

Jeffrey Huntsman is Assistant Professor of English in Indiana University. He earned his Ph.D. degree at the University of Texas, Austin, and has taught Native American literature courses since 1970.

Hanay Geiogamah is an active playwright and director in Native American theater. He has traveled to almost every part of Indian America, and as Artistic Director of the Native American Theater Ensemble from 1972 to 1975 he conducted tours for the company across America and in Europe. He was born in Lawton, Oklahoma, and studied journalism at the University of Oklahoma. Geiogamah has taught Native American Theater at the University of Washington and has lectured on creative writing and the role of the arts in contemporary Indian life at many other colleges and universities.

Review:

"I write everything for an Indian audience. I feel that if an Indian audience regardless of what tribe, or where it's at, or what region, if they respond to something, and they understand it and appreciated it, then I feel that what I've done is at least a long way down the road to succeeding."

About this edition

• Publisher: OUP
• Publication date: 1980
• ISBN 10: 0806116978
• ISBN 13: 9780806116976
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 158