Saying It Like Indians: The Wooster Group’s Cry Trojans!, Sa(l)vage Ethnography, and the Politics of “Playing Injun”
In The Wooster Group's Cry Trojans!, the Trojan characters are depicted as Red Indians. The theatre company's play with white, American appropriations of Native American culture is the latest in a long line of controversial engagements with race in the company's history, dating back t...
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ftunivictoriaojs:oai:journals.uvic.ca:article/13551 2023-07-16T03:58:28+02:00 Saying It Like Indians: The Wooster Group’s Cry Trojans!, Sa(l)vage Ethnography, and the Politics of “Playing Injun” Hollis, Gavin 2017-06-01 application/pdf https://journals.uvic.ca/index.php/scene/article/view/13551 https://doi.org/10.18357/sremd01201713551 eng eng University of Victoria https://journals.uvic.ca/index.php/scene/article/view/13551/4354 https://journals.uvic.ca/index.php/scene/article/view/13551 doi:10.18357/sremd01201713551 Copyright (c) 2019 Gavin Hollis https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 Scene: Reviews of Early Modern Drama; No. 1 (2017) 2562-1025 The Wooster Group Cry Trojans! Troilus and Cressida Atarnajuat The Fast Runner Smoke Signals Playing Indian Salvage Ethnography Native American First Nations info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion Review-Article 2017 ftunivictoriaojs https://doi.org/10.18357/sremd01201713551 2023-06-27T18:35:28Z In The Wooster Group's Cry Trojans!, the Trojan characters are depicted as Red Indians. The theatre company's play with white, American appropriations of Native American culture is the latest in a long line of controversial engagements with race in the company's history, dating back to Route 1 & 9 and The Emperor Jones. It also forms part of their more recent engagement with classical theatre, in particular Shakespeare, as Cry Trojans! has it origins in a much-reviled collaboration between the Wooster Group and The Royal Shakespeare Company in 2012. By their own admission, the Group chose to "Play Indian" to be "as American as possible," and also because (to quote Kate Valk, who played Cressida), they felt they "'. should say it like Indians,’ because I was thinking of English as a second language." The choice then comments on the Group's own play with authenticity, another constant enagement throughout its thrity-plus years history. By mimicking and appropriating Native American and First Nations cultural production (Smoke Signals and Atanarjuat in particular), the Group performs its own uneasy engagement with authenticity. However, in contrast to their staging of The Emperor Jones, which employed blackface to unpack Eugene O'Neill's "idea of a Negro," Cry Trojans! reduces native culture and history to a white, elite history of appropriation and genocide without positing alternative histories of resistance and/or re-appropriation. It does so most expicitly in the final scene, where a blanket, a property associated with Euro-American germ warfare and Native American genocide, is applied first to Troilus and then to Pandarus, the bequeather of poxy diseases, to suggest the imminent demise of the Trojan-Injuns. The Wooster Group seems to be aware of part of their appropriative formulations, and put on display both the work (their adoption of an Indian manner) and the work of art (the acts of appropriation that lead to their adoption of Indian manner): but for a Company so invested in the ironies of ... Article in Journal/Newspaper First Nations University of Victoria (Canada): Journal Publishing Service Indian Scene: Reviews of Early Modern Drama 1 |
institution |
Open Polar |
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University of Victoria (Canada): Journal Publishing Service |
op_collection_id |
ftunivictoriaojs |
language |
English |
topic |
The Wooster Group Cry Trojans! Troilus and Cressida Atarnajuat The Fast Runner Smoke Signals Playing Indian Salvage Ethnography Native American First Nations |
spellingShingle |
The Wooster Group Cry Trojans! Troilus and Cressida Atarnajuat The Fast Runner Smoke Signals Playing Indian Salvage Ethnography Native American First Nations Hollis, Gavin Saying It Like Indians: The Wooster Group’s Cry Trojans!, Sa(l)vage Ethnography, and the Politics of “Playing Injun” |
topic_facet |
The Wooster Group Cry Trojans! Troilus and Cressida Atarnajuat The Fast Runner Smoke Signals Playing Indian Salvage Ethnography Native American First Nations |
description |
In The Wooster Group's Cry Trojans!, the Trojan characters are depicted as Red Indians. The theatre company's play with white, American appropriations of Native American culture is the latest in a long line of controversial engagements with race in the company's history, dating back to Route 1 & 9 and The Emperor Jones. It also forms part of their more recent engagement with classical theatre, in particular Shakespeare, as Cry Trojans! has it origins in a much-reviled collaboration between the Wooster Group and The Royal Shakespeare Company in 2012. By their own admission, the Group chose to "Play Indian" to be "as American as possible," and also because (to quote Kate Valk, who played Cressida), they felt they "'. should say it like Indians,’ because I was thinking of English as a second language." The choice then comments on the Group's own play with authenticity, another constant enagement throughout its thrity-plus years history. By mimicking and appropriating Native American and First Nations cultural production (Smoke Signals and Atanarjuat in particular), the Group performs its own uneasy engagement with authenticity. However, in contrast to their staging of The Emperor Jones, which employed blackface to unpack Eugene O'Neill's "idea of a Negro," Cry Trojans! reduces native culture and history to a white, elite history of appropriation and genocide without positing alternative histories of resistance and/or re-appropriation. It does so most expicitly in the final scene, where a blanket, a property associated with Euro-American germ warfare and Native American genocide, is applied first to Troilus and then to Pandarus, the bequeather of poxy diseases, to suggest the imminent demise of the Trojan-Injuns. The Wooster Group seems to be aware of part of their appropriative formulations, and put on display both the work (their adoption of an Indian manner) and the work of art (the acts of appropriation that lead to their adoption of Indian manner): but for a Company so invested in the ironies of ... |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Hollis, Gavin |
author_facet |
Hollis, Gavin |
author_sort |
Hollis, Gavin |
title |
Saying It Like Indians: The Wooster Group’s Cry Trojans!, Sa(l)vage Ethnography, and the Politics of “Playing Injun” |
title_short |
Saying It Like Indians: The Wooster Group’s Cry Trojans!, Sa(l)vage Ethnography, and the Politics of “Playing Injun” |
title_full |
Saying It Like Indians: The Wooster Group’s Cry Trojans!, Sa(l)vage Ethnography, and the Politics of “Playing Injun” |
title_fullStr |
Saying It Like Indians: The Wooster Group’s Cry Trojans!, Sa(l)vage Ethnography, and the Politics of “Playing Injun” |
title_full_unstemmed |
Saying It Like Indians: The Wooster Group’s Cry Trojans!, Sa(l)vage Ethnography, and the Politics of “Playing Injun” |
title_sort |
saying it like indians: the wooster group’s cry trojans!, sa(l)vage ethnography, and the politics of “playing injun” |
publisher |
University of Victoria |
publishDate |
2017 |
url |
https://journals.uvic.ca/index.php/scene/article/view/13551 https://doi.org/10.18357/sremd01201713551 |
geographic |
Indian |
geographic_facet |
Indian |
genre |
First Nations |
genre_facet |
First Nations |
op_source |
Scene: Reviews of Early Modern Drama; No. 1 (2017) 2562-1025 |
op_relation |
https://journals.uvic.ca/index.php/scene/article/view/13551/4354 https://journals.uvic.ca/index.php/scene/article/view/13551 doi:10.18357/sremd01201713551 |
op_rights |
Copyright (c) 2019 Gavin Hollis https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.18357/sremd01201713551 |
container_title |
Scene: Reviews of Early Modern Drama |
container_issue |
1 |
_version_ |
1771545580056608768 |