| Within the context of this particular current production | |
| Posted by: aleck 10:00 am EDT 08/28/19 | |
| In reply to: Thanks, Wayman. - AlanScott 08:26 pm EDT 08/27/19 | |
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| There have been many reconsiderations in this production of the text as it has been performed since its original production. However, I don't think that in most cases of these reconsiderations that they are invalid. I think, for example, that the way the final "trial" scene is staged and spoken that ALL of the characters know that what they are doing is wrong. But, other considerations push them to make a decision -- mostly instigated with prodding and illogical justifications by Aunt Eller -- to bring things into an order that benefits the dominant culture -- namely the goals of white people and specifically those of Curly who is beloved by the crowd. Yet not all in the group respond as jubilantly at the end as Curly does when he proclaims "everything's going my way." Just look at the horror on Laurie's blood-splattered face. There have been many provocative things raised in this production. The interracial aspect, with African-Americans represented in the cast, is valid since, as we know, when the Cherokees left Georgia, where they held African-American slaves, they brought their slaves with them to the Indian Territory, which later became Oklahoma. That issue, by the way, still boils today because new restitutions with the Cherokees are complicated by whether or not African-American descendants of the Cherokee slaves should or should not benefit from those restitutions. (Many Cherokees don't want to share with these descendants of their former slaves.) Unlike a cast of color-blind"diversity," I see this a production as one of specific racial diversity. It isn't like it is color blind in the way, for example, the Lincoln Center production of Carousel was in contrast to the most recent Broadway production which had race-specific diversity. If this recent Carousel production had been color-blind, the daughter of Julie and Billy would not have been specifically and pointedly bi-racial. You can be color-blind all you want, but the audience can't help but noticing it and making their personal assessments of it. Thinking about the absence of any type of inclusion of Native Americans in this current reconsidered production of Oklahoma seems to me to be a lost opportunity to inject some type of commentary about the Native American dynamic in the origin story of the state of Oklahoma. Looking for a way of dramatizing this without changing the text of the book, I can see how Jud could be the stand-in for this dynamic. (I don't mean to detract from the fantastic job the actor playing Jud is doing. I had never seen Lonely Room performed with such intensity. He made a buffoonish character into a truly living, breathing person.) With a Native American in that role, the audience could apply their own individual assessments of the role of Native Americans in the history of Oklahoma -- as well as the entire United States. Most, I think, would see the final action as a tragic expression of the complete annihilation of Native American presence to satisfy the colonial interests of white people and a symbolic suicidal surrender by a Native Ameircan Jud. I fear, however, there might be audience members who still think that "The only good Indian is a dead Indian."_ |
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