| re: The theme of the production | |
| Last Edit: WaymanWong 06:10 pm EDT 08/27/19 | |
| Posted by: WaymanWong 06:09 pm EDT 08/27/19 | |
| In reply to: The theme of the production - aleck 04:31 pm EDT 08/27/19 | |
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| The absence of any Native Americans in ''Oklahoma!'' is compounded by the fact that the musical is based on ''Green Grow the Lilacs'' by Lynn Riggs, who was part Native American. His mother was one-eighth Cherokee. Wikipedia says that when Riggs was 2, she secured him his Cherokee allotment, and he was able to draw upon it to support his writing. Riggs would pen 21 full-length plays, including ''The Cherokee Night'' (1932), considered the first American Indian drama. In his New York magazine essay, ''Oklahoma Was Never Really O.K.,'' Frank Rich notes: ''Some 4,000 of the 16,000 Cherokees who were forced to migrate to Oklahoma from Georgia along the notorious 1,200-mile-long Trail of Tears in 1838–39 died along the way. You’d never guess from 'Oklahoma!' that its setting, outside the town of Claremore, is just 60 miles from Tahlequah, the capital of the transplanted and decimated Cherokee Nation. Nor would you know that white settlers like Curly were able to grab Indian territory because Congress abolished tribal land ownership in 1887, less than 20 years before we find him singing “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’.” There is an itinerant immigrant peddler, Ali Hakim, in 'Oklahoma!,' but not a single Indian.'' |
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| Link | New York magazine: Oklahoma Was Never Really O.K. by Frank Rich |
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