The politics of Native American theatrical adaptations
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Educated at top colleges and universities, Native American theater artists now hold mastery and authority over classic western theater texts. These individuals do not necessarily embrace western theater practice as the gold standard but, instead, combine remnants of their indigenous cultures with their sophisticated learned knowledge of European performance traditions. For generations, American Indians were targeted for genocide and cultural eradication, isolated by geographical and ideological boundaries specifically constructed to make European colonists feel comfortable with, distinct from, and superior to "The New World's" indigenous peoples. This dissertation is not intended to re-litigate the traumatic histories of Native America nor is it to chronicle the rise of the numerous stereotypical depictions that now dominate our current pop-culture imaginings. This project considers these to be self-evident phenomena. Instead, this dissertation offers a close investigation of the virtuosic mastery many American Indian theater artists hold over Euro-America theater making: an expertise that gives them the ability to transform narrow yet rigid ideas of Native American existence. Theatrical adaptations by New York City's Spiderwoman Theater, Los Angeles' James Lujan, and Honolulu's Taurie Kinoshita do not align with predictable non-Native cultural imaginings of American Indian existence. In fact, each of these artists has adapted a classic western theater work not as a simple homage and recapitulation of the famous source material but as a new theater work suited to a unique worldview and set of artistic inquiries. These new theater works challenge many long held beliefs of American Indian culture, experience, and identity.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2015 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Running Wolf, Myrton |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Theater and Performance Studies. |
| Primary advisor | Brody, Jennifer DeVere |
| Thesis advisor | Brody, Jennifer DeVere |
| Thesis advisor | Biestman, Karen |
| Thesis advisor | Elam, Harry Justin |
| Thesis advisor | Jakovljević, Branislav |
| Advisor | Biestman, Karen |
| Advisor | Elam, Harry Justin |
| Advisor | Jakovljević, Branislav |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Myrton Running Wolf. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Theater and Performance Studies. |
| Thesis | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2015. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2015 by Myrton Wesley Running Wolf
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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