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The Cherokee Night and Other Plays
The author of numerous plays and film scripts, including Green Grow the Lilacs, later made into the hit musical Oklahoma!, Lynn Riggs (18991954) is recognized as one of America’s most engaging dramatists and was the only active American Indian dramatist during the first half of the twentieth century. Also available in an elegant leatherbound collector’s edition, The Cherokee Night and Other Plays features his never-before-published play Out of Dust as well as The Cherokee Night and Green Grow the Lilacs.
A mixed-blood Cherokee, Riggs wrote about the people, places, and events of the Oklahoma he knew so well. A cattle rancher’s son, Riggs was born in the Verdigris Valley south of Claremore in Indian Territory. He first gained recognition as a poet in the early 1920s while attending the University of Oklahoma and later moved to New York, where he worked on and around Broadway. In 1927 Riggs was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship, and while in France on that fellowship, he began writing Green Grow the Lilacs, which Rodgers and Hammerstein made into the Broadway musical Oklahoma! in 1943. By the end of his life, Riggs had written some thirty plays and scripts for fourteen films produced between 1930 and 1955.
In their 1939 Handbook of Oklahoma Writers, Mary Hays Marable and Elaine Boylan observe: “Lynn Riggs hitched his wagon to Pegasus and rode into the theatre with an output of poetic and regional plays that has brought him outstanding success.”
A mixed-blood Cherokee, Riggs wrote about the people, places, and events of the Oklahoma he knew so well. A cattle rancher’s son, Riggs was born in the Verdigris Valley south of Claremore in Indian Territory. He first gained recognition as a poet in the early 1920s while attending the University of Oklahoma and later moved to New York, where he worked on and around Broadway. In 1927 Riggs was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship, and while in France on that fellowship, he began writing Green Grow the Lilacs, which Rodgers and Hammerstein made into the Broadway musical Oklahoma! in 1943. By the end of his life, Riggs had written some thirty plays and scripts for fourteen films produced between 1930 and 1955.
In their 1939 Handbook of Oklahoma Writers, Mary Hays Marable and Elaine Boylan observe: “Lynn Riggs hitched his wagon to Pegasus and rode into the theatre with an output of poetic and regional plays that has brought him outstanding success.”
343 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 2003
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About the author
Lynn Riggs
35 books3 followersRollie Lynn Riggs (August 31, 1899 – June 30, 1954) wrote 21 full-length plays, several short stories, poems, and a television script.
The Theatre Guild produced his most well-known play, Green Grow The Lilacs, on Broadway in 1931, where it ran for 64 performances. The musical Oklahoma!, based on Riggs' play, opened on Broadway on March 31, 1943, and ran until May 29, 1948 for 2,212 performances.
The Theatre Guild produced his most well-known play, Green Grow The Lilacs, on Broadway in 1931, where it ran for 64 performances. The musical Oklahoma!, based on Riggs' play, opened on Broadway on March 31, 1943, and ran until May 29, 1948 for 2,212 performances.
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March 3, 2024(I only looked at it to see if the plays were adaptable to be performed in the public schools. They're not. They're important, and interesting, and authentic... but too mature for under college age.)
March 2024
March 2024
May 27, 2011
It feels wrong putting it on my "owned" shelf when it's just the pages of the play copied in our reader...
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews