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Indians
The text of the play first performed by Royal Shakespeare Company in July 1968 at the Aldwych Theatre, London
94 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1965
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97 people want to read
About the author
Arthur Kopit
60 books14 followersArthur Lee Kopit (born May 10, 1937, New York City) is an American playwright. He is a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist (Indians and Wings) and a three-time Tony Award nominee: Best Play, Indians, 1970; Best Play, Wings, 1979; and Best Book of a Musical, for Nine, 1982. He won the Vernon Rice Award (now known as the Drama Desk Award) in 1962 for his play Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mama's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feelin' So Sad and was nominated for another Drama Desk Award in 1979 for his play Wings.[1]
Nine returned to Broadway in 2003 with Antonio Banderas as Guido and won two Tony Awards, including best revival; in 2009 Rob Marshall directed the film Nine based on Kopit's script, the principle cast consisting of Daniel Day-Lewis, Judi Dench, Nicole Kidman, Marion Cotillard, Penélope Cruz, Sophia Loren, Kate Hudson, and Fergie (singer).
Kopit attended Lawrence High School in Lawrence, Nassau County, New York.
Kopit attended Harvard University. His first plays were staged while still an undergraduate at Harvard University. Later, Kopit taught at Wesleyan University, Yale University, and the City College of New York. In 2005, Kopit donated his papers to the Fales Library at NYU.
Nine returned to Broadway in 2003 with Antonio Banderas as Guido and won two Tony Awards, including best revival; in 2009 Rob Marshall directed the film Nine based on Kopit's script, the principle cast consisting of Daniel Day-Lewis, Judi Dench, Nicole Kidman, Marion Cotillard, Penélope Cruz, Sophia Loren, Kate Hudson, and Fergie (singer).
Kopit attended Lawrence High School in Lawrence, Nassau County, New York.
Kopit attended Harvard University. His first plays were staged while still an undergraduate at Harvard University. Later, Kopit taught at Wesleyan University, Yale University, and the City College of New York. In 2005, Kopit donated his papers to the Fales Library at NYU.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
September 10, 2017
So powerful. Information is devastating what our forefathers did. Love how it is structured. Reading the play -- I would guess-- has a much different impact than seeing it. I imagine it was a spectacle on stage!
March 19, 2012
review of
Arthur Kopit's Indians
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - March 19, 2012
A wk or so ago, my g-friend Amy & I were sitting around at nite, bored, & she proposed that we go into our personal library, that I hold her & prevent her from knocking into things, while she walked thru the library w/ her eyes closed & picked out a bk to become "our bk" in the way that people have an "our song" etc.. We did this & she picked Kopit's Indians & Mary Manning's Passages from Finnegans Wake. Then things changed so that we had two "our bks". The idea was that each of us wd read one of the bks & then we'd trade. THEN things changed so that we were back to only one bk: Passages from Finnegans Wake. Welp, I've read them both now (you can see my review of Passages.. here: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13...) & reading Passages.. has spawned a new Finnegans Wake-related sampling project of mine.
Both of these bks were in my "Plays" section of my library. I'd never read either of them. In a sense, I came to 'maturity' in an era of 'performance art' (see my own history here: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/MereOut...). An aspect of this was that theater no longer seemed very exciting in contrast. 'Performance Art' (a term I still reject to this day) was the way of performing that took risks & manifested contemporary praxis. Theater was entirely too 'safe'.
Nonetheless, I was ever on the look-out for what struck me as the most innovative, the most daring, the most political in theater - & I wasn't entirely disinterested in the theater of the past. Fortunately, I turned 18 in the same yr that the Baltimore Theater Project was founded, 1971, & found much of interest there - at least at 1st. There were groups like Studio Scarabee & Plan K. Scarabee presented what was probably the most technically sophisticated stage show w/ projections that I'd seen as of the late 1970s.
Some of the same people who had pioneered 1970s performance art in Baltimore then went on to create Impossible Theater in 1982. It was probably thru them &/or their successor project that I learned about John Schneider (of Theater X), w/ whom they collaborated on a performance called "Social Amnesia", & playwright Caryl Churchill. All very interesting stuff.
Of the other 20th c playwrights to catch my attn, some of them were: Edward Albee, Samuel Beckett, Albert Camus, Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Jean Genet, Peter Handke, Rolf Hochhuth, Eugène Ionesco, Alfred Jarry, Arthur Kopit, Jean Paul Sartre, & Peter Weiss. Since Jarry is of substantial importance to both Amy & myself it was quite possibly his work that Amy was groping for w/ eyes shut - either consciously or unconsciously.
My adding Passages from Finnegans Wake & Indians to my library wd've been part of this research. Nonetheless, I'd never read either play until now - basically b/c I don't enjoy reading plays very much. In my review of Passages I barely mention much about the actual play b/c, aside from Joyce's fantastic language, there's really very little to it. The stage production notes are minimal & it seems that Mary Manning's role was mainly to pick the text (no mean feat in itself) & to pick characters to speak/sing this text (also somewhat difficult given how Finnegans Wake is written). Indians, I'm happy to say, is quite different in that respect - considerably more attn is pd to the theatrics by the playwright.
It's a strange thing, tho, that in bk form the presentation of plays often focuses on the 'superstar', the playwright, & neglects altogether the people who flesh out the playwright's vision - wch is often a huge job. A playwright might call for Buffalo Bill to appear on a horse in a Wild West Show setting but, then, someone has to build the horse prop & make it so that it moves in the desired way. That ain't nothing to sneeze at. It's also a very political thing when the people who make shit happen are treated as so minor that they're barely worth mentioning.
Indians is a political play that uses the imperialistic wiping out of Native American culture as a mythical stand-in for political struggles contemporaneous w/ the writing of the play such as the Vietnam War & the suppression of black radicals in the US - w/o alluding to either of those things directly so that the play can stand apart as a critique of how such crimes against humanity are justified in general. I'm sure that the play, when witnessed live, wd've been very 'effective' - at least 'educationally'.
Smack dab in the ± middle of the bk is a long discussion of issues of the play between its author, Arthur Kopit, & John Lahr (theater critic for the Village Voice). This discussion is very well-informed & is accompanied by photographs of US atrocities in Vietnam, the shootings of students by imbecilic National Guard robopaths at Kent State, the murder of the brilliant Black Panther spokesperson Fred Hampton by racist cops in Chicago, & images relevant to Indians & to the history it draws on. The combination of the play & this discussion was enuf to convince me that Kopit was/is a very important playwright indeed. From the discussion:
"Kopit: We imposed our will on them and then justified our will morally, in terms of some godly sensation that we felt was for a general and moral good. It seemed to me that possibly what was evil was the concept of good itself.
"Lahr: Our powers of rationalization are still very active. Richard Nixon's 1960 Election Eve speech could have been spoken a century before: "My friends, it is because we are on the side of right, it is because we are on God's side, that America will meet this challenge and that we will build a better America at home and that that better America will lead the forces of freedom in building a new world....""
& from the play in a scene where Buffalo Bill tries to explain the attitudes of the Indians to a committee of Senators sent from the government to investigate their reservation & treaty conditions:
"Another difficult problem is land itself. The majority of 'em, ya see, don't understand how land can be owned, since they believe the land was made by the Great Spirits for the benefit of everyone. So, when we do buy land from 'em, they think it's just some kind o' temporary loan, an' figure we're kind o' foolish fer payin' good money for it, much as someone 'ud seem downright foolish t'us who paid money fer the sky, say, or the ocean. Which . . . causes problems."
Now, I think this is a great play & Kopit's political perspicuity doesn't disappoint me. BUT, the astute reader will've noticed that I wrote earlier: "I'm sure that the play, when witnessed live, wd've been very 'effective' - at least 'educationally'." wch brings me back full-spiral to the beginning of this review where I wrote "'Performance Art' (a term I still reject to this day) was the way of performing that took risks & manifested contemporary praxis. Theater was entirely too 'safe'." In other words, I'm very glad that plays like this exist b/c they help to educate & stimulate the general public into a political awareness. But, in the end, what we need to do is change society in more direct ways that aren't so isolatedly intellectual - & plays just aren't enuf.
Arthur Kopit's Indians
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - March 19, 2012
A wk or so ago, my g-friend Amy & I were sitting around at nite, bored, & she proposed that we go into our personal library, that I hold her & prevent her from knocking into things, while she walked thru the library w/ her eyes closed & picked out a bk to become "our bk" in the way that people have an "our song" etc.. We did this & she picked Kopit's Indians & Mary Manning's Passages from Finnegans Wake. Then things changed so that we had two "our bks". The idea was that each of us wd read one of the bks & then we'd trade. THEN things changed so that we were back to only one bk: Passages from Finnegans Wake. Welp, I've read them both now (you can see my review of Passages.. here: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13...) & reading Passages.. has spawned a new Finnegans Wake-related sampling project of mine.
Both of these bks were in my "Plays" section of my library. I'd never read either of them. In a sense, I came to 'maturity' in an era of 'performance art' (see my own history here: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/MereOut...). An aspect of this was that theater no longer seemed very exciting in contrast. 'Performance Art' (a term I still reject to this day) was the way of performing that took risks & manifested contemporary praxis. Theater was entirely too 'safe'.
Nonetheless, I was ever on the look-out for what struck me as the most innovative, the most daring, the most political in theater - & I wasn't entirely disinterested in the theater of the past. Fortunately, I turned 18 in the same yr that the Baltimore Theater Project was founded, 1971, & found much of interest there - at least at 1st. There were groups like Studio Scarabee & Plan K. Scarabee presented what was probably the most technically sophisticated stage show w/ projections that I'd seen as of the late 1970s.
Some of the same people who had pioneered 1970s performance art in Baltimore then went on to create Impossible Theater in 1982. It was probably thru them &/or their successor project that I learned about John Schneider (of Theater X), w/ whom they collaborated on a performance called "Social Amnesia", & playwright Caryl Churchill. All very interesting stuff.
Of the other 20th c playwrights to catch my attn, some of them were: Edward Albee, Samuel Beckett, Albert Camus, Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Jean Genet, Peter Handke, Rolf Hochhuth, Eugène Ionesco, Alfred Jarry, Arthur Kopit, Jean Paul Sartre, & Peter Weiss. Since Jarry is of substantial importance to both Amy & myself it was quite possibly his work that Amy was groping for w/ eyes shut - either consciously or unconsciously.
My adding Passages from Finnegans Wake & Indians to my library wd've been part of this research. Nonetheless, I'd never read either play until now - basically b/c I don't enjoy reading plays very much. In my review of Passages I barely mention much about the actual play b/c, aside from Joyce's fantastic language, there's really very little to it. The stage production notes are minimal & it seems that Mary Manning's role was mainly to pick the text (no mean feat in itself) & to pick characters to speak/sing this text (also somewhat difficult given how Finnegans Wake is written). Indians, I'm happy to say, is quite different in that respect - considerably more attn is pd to the theatrics by the playwright.
It's a strange thing, tho, that in bk form the presentation of plays often focuses on the 'superstar', the playwright, & neglects altogether the people who flesh out the playwright's vision - wch is often a huge job. A playwright might call for Buffalo Bill to appear on a horse in a Wild West Show setting but, then, someone has to build the horse prop & make it so that it moves in the desired way. That ain't nothing to sneeze at. It's also a very political thing when the people who make shit happen are treated as so minor that they're barely worth mentioning.
Indians is a political play that uses the imperialistic wiping out of Native American culture as a mythical stand-in for political struggles contemporaneous w/ the writing of the play such as the Vietnam War & the suppression of black radicals in the US - w/o alluding to either of those things directly so that the play can stand apart as a critique of how such crimes against humanity are justified in general. I'm sure that the play, when witnessed live, wd've been very 'effective' - at least 'educationally'.
Smack dab in the ± middle of the bk is a long discussion of issues of the play between its author, Arthur Kopit, & John Lahr (theater critic for the Village Voice). This discussion is very well-informed & is accompanied by photographs of US atrocities in Vietnam, the shootings of students by imbecilic National Guard robopaths at Kent State, the murder of the brilliant Black Panther spokesperson Fred Hampton by racist cops in Chicago, & images relevant to Indians & to the history it draws on. The combination of the play & this discussion was enuf to convince me that Kopit was/is a very important playwright indeed. From the discussion:
"Kopit: We imposed our will on them and then justified our will morally, in terms of some godly sensation that we felt was for a general and moral good. It seemed to me that possibly what was evil was the concept of good itself.
"Lahr: Our powers of rationalization are still very active. Richard Nixon's 1960 Election Eve speech could have been spoken a century before: "My friends, it is because we are on the side of right, it is because we are on God's side, that America will meet this challenge and that we will build a better America at home and that that better America will lead the forces of freedom in building a new world....""
& from the play in a scene where Buffalo Bill tries to explain the attitudes of the Indians to a committee of Senators sent from the government to investigate their reservation & treaty conditions:
"Another difficult problem is land itself. The majority of 'em, ya see, don't understand how land can be owned, since they believe the land was made by the Great Spirits for the benefit of everyone. So, when we do buy land from 'em, they think it's just some kind o' temporary loan, an' figure we're kind o' foolish fer payin' good money for it, much as someone 'ud seem downright foolish t'us who paid money fer the sky, say, or the ocean. Which . . . causes problems."
Now, I think this is a great play & Kopit's political perspicuity doesn't disappoint me. BUT, the astute reader will've noticed that I wrote earlier: "I'm sure that the play, when witnessed live, wd've been very 'effective' - at least 'educationally'." wch brings me back full-spiral to the beginning of this review where I wrote "'Performance Art' (a term I still reject to this day) was the way of performing that took risks & manifested contemporary praxis. Theater was entirely too 'safe'." In other words, I'm very glad that plays like this exist b/c they help to educate & stimulate the general public into a political awareness. But, in the end, what we need to do is change society in more direct ways that aren't so isolatedly intellectual - & plays just aren't enuf.
February 21, 2008
A fast, entertaining, and thought-provoking read. Decent reading level for 9th/10th grade (only one potentially censorable scene involving a suggestion of sexual violence). Very good potential for literature/history connection exploring the fate of the native americans. Major themes include the ineluctability of westward expansion, the psychology of domination (the white man's burden, dehumanization of "the other") and defeat/submission (Sitting Bull reduced to playing himself in Buffalo Bill's Wild West shows), and the slippery & subjective nature of historical "truth".
The following interesting snippet compares religious systems and offers a starkly funny realist/pessimist assessment of the state of the world today...
Buffalo Bill: Well, what about your mistakes? ... You were very unrealistic... about things. Did you really believe the buffalo would return? Magically return?
Sitting Bull: It seemed no less likely than Christ's returning, and a great deal more useful. Though when I think of their reception here, I can't see why either would really want to come back."
The following interesting snippet compares religious systems and offers a starkly funny realist/pessimist assessment of the state of the world today...
Buffalo Bill: Well, what about your mistakes? ... You were very unrealistic... about things. Did you really believe the buffalo would return? Magically return?
Sitting Bull: It seemed no less likely than Christ's returning, and a great deal more useful. Though when I think of their reception here, I can't see why either would really want to come back."
April 21, 2016
Indians is an intriguing play from the pen of a writer I’d never heard of before, but who I’ll certainly be looking into in the future. Kopit’s play is about the American Wild West, and it follows the fascinating story of Buffalo Bill and Chief Sitting Bull and chops and changes through time to tell it. It might sound confusing, but it’s done to perfection, and I really enjoyed reading it. I totally recommend it!
May 31, 2012
Love this.
May 15, 2013
I WANT TO READ IT FREE NO MONEY TO Pay SUCKERS xD !!
September 28, 2021
If Arthur Kopit had stopped writing plays after his debut with "Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma's Hung You In The Closet And I'm Feelin' So Sad: A Pseudoclassical Tragifarce in a Bastard French Tradition", I would still consider him one of the most important American dramatists of his time, and, perhaps, of any time. That play proved to be prophetic about the sixties and the very notion of revolution, a theme shared in the brilliant one act play "Madam Popov" by Gladden Schrock. Fortunately for all of us, Kopit continued to write plays, including the brilliant Indians which I have finally read today.
Again, I am glad that I saved it in a way, because the play seems even more relevant and tragic today as it did at the time it was written. Michael Patterson wrote in "The Oxford Guide to Plays" that Kopit "turned to a more serious political investigation of the white settlers' treatment of Native Americans," and that "Kopit's play was one of the first major pieces to confront the issue and to relate it to continuing genocide in South-East Asia."
Indeed, I kept thinking as I read the play how it should be required reading in every high school in America, whether in history or English classes, with discussions about a country built on white supremacy and a notion of exceptionalism.
Unlike "Oh Dad, Poor Dad", which Kopit reportedly wrote in five days (!), "Indians" took a number of years to research, write, stage, rewrite, re-stage and rewrite some more (Kopit admitted this could have been a process for his entire lifetime with this particular piece).
"Indians" sets out to obliterate the American myths of the wild west, our culture of "Cowboys vs. Indians," with the great white roughriders saving innocent white folks from the bloodthirsty savages with their trusty six-shooters. The play deftly cuts between Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show (something that caused a great deal of damage with its mythic nonsense of cowboy heroes, as did the dime novels of Ned Buntline, also a character in the play) and a so-called presidential commission meeting with Sitting Bull to hear their grievances about the American government's lies and broken promises to his people. And the play also deals with the massacre at Wounded Knee and makes no bones about the fact that it was a completely politically motivated act of genocide.
While this theater blog and this project is not meant to be political, I cannot help but say for a moment that the history of America needs to be told in honest terms. I even know people who will say it is tragic what happened, but seem to say so with a tone that suggest that it had to be this way. As Indians helps to reinforce, IT DID NOT HAVE TO BE THIS WAY. The American Government chose for it to be this way. When cheating Indigenous People out of their land, moving them to reservations, refusing to help them as promised, when all this didn't work, then there were the smallpox blankets, the massacres, the notion of wiping them out as though they were just a speedbump in progress. It did not have to be this way. Sadly, what people aren't really saying is, "It had to be this way to maintain white dominance, supremacy, and expansion."
But back to the theater...
Kopit's final script is brilliantly structure, powerful and heartbreaking. Like his other pieces, it is also wonderfully theatrical and moves along at an exceptional pace, with brilliant dialogue, visual mastery and moment of dark and ironic humor. He clearly researched this with his heart and kept working to make it the best version of itself it could be, and it shows.
After productions in London and Washington (with rewrites after each), Indians opened in New York on Broadway in October of 1969. Theater heavyweight Stacy Keach played Buffalo Bill, and other greats like Manu Tupou, Raul Julia, Charles Durning, and Sam Waterston appeared in it. And as much as I loved reading it, I am sure it is even more powerful to watch.
The play was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and a Tony Award. In 1976, Robert Altman adapted it into a movie called "Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson", which did not fare well as the country was celebrating its bicentennial.
Aruthur Kopit would also be a Pulitzer finalist for his play "Wings", which also received a Tony nomination for Best Play. He would receive another Tony nomination for Best Book of a Musical for "Nine", an adaptation of the film "81/2". With his "Nine" collaborator, he wrote the book for "Phantom", an adaptation of "The Phantom of the Opera" that was overshadowed by Andrew Lloyd Webber's, though many critics prefer the Kopit version with music by Maury Yeston.
Sadly, Mr. Kopit passed away just this last April at the age of 83. He had been living with progressive dementia prior to his death.
He will always be one of my heroes, and reading "Indians" today only solidifies my feelings on the matter.
Again, I am glad that I saved it in a way, because the play seems even more relevant and tragic today as it did at the time it was written. Michael Patterson wrote in "The Oxford Guide to Plays" that Kopit "turned to a more serious political investigation of the white settlers' treatment of Native Americans," and that "Kopit's play was one of the first major pieces to confront the issue and to relate it to continuing genocide in South-East Asia."
Indeed, I kept thinking as I read the play how it should be required reading in every high school in America, whether in history or English classes, with discussions about a country built on white supremacy and a notion of exceptionalism.
Unlike "Oh Dad, Poor Dad", which Kopit reportedly wrote in five days (!), "Indians" took a number of years to research, write, stage, rewrite, re-stage and rewrite some more (Kopit admitted this could have been a process for his entire lifetime with this particular piece).
"Indians" sets out to obliterate the American myths of the wild west, our culture of "Cowboys vs. Indians," with the great white roughriders saving innocent white folks from the bloodthirsty savages with their trusty six-shooters. The play deftly cuts between Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show (something that caused a great deal of damage with its mythic nonsense of cowboy heroes, as did the dime novels of Ned Buntline, also a character in the play) and a so-called presidential commission meeting with Sitting Bull to hear their grievances about the American government's lies and broken promises to his people. And the play also deals with the massacre at Wounded Knee and makes no bones about the fact that it was a completely politically motivated act of genocide.
While this theater blog and this project is not meant to be political, I cannot help but say for a moment that the history of America needs to be told in honest terms. I even know people who will say it is tragic what happened, but seem to say so with a tone that suggest that it had to be this way. As Indians helps to reinforce, IT DID NOT HAVE TO BE THIS WAY. The American Government chose for it to be this way. When cheating Indigenous People out of their land, moving them to reservations, refusing to help them as promised, when all this didn't work, then there were the smallpox blankets, the massacres, the notion of wiping them out as though they were just a speedbump in progress. It did not have to be this way. Sadly, what people aren't really saying is, "It had to be this way to maintain white dominance, supremacy, and expansion."
But back to the theater...
Kopit's final script is brilliantly structure, powerful and heartbreaking. Like his other pieces, it is also wonderfully theatrical and moves along at an exceptional pace, with brilliant dialogue, visual mastery and moment of dark and ironic humor. He clearly researched this with his heart and kept working to make it the best version of itself it could be, and it shows.
After productions in London and Washington (with rewrites after each), Indians opened in New York on Broadway in October of 1969. Theater heavyweight Stacy Keach played Buffalo Bill, and other greats like Manu Tupou, Raul Julia, Charles Durning, and Sam Waterston appeared in it. And as much as I loved reading it, I am sure it is even more powerful to watch.
The play was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and a Tony Award. In 1976, Robert Altman adapted it into a movie called "Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson", which did not fare well as the country was celebrating its bicentennial.
Aruthur Kopit would also be a Pulitzer finalist for his play "Wings", which also received a Tony nomination for Best Play. He would receive another Tony nomination for Best Book of a Musical for "Nine", an adaptation of the film "81/2". With his "Nine" collaborator, he wrote the book for "Phantom", an adaptation of "The Phantom of the Opera" that was overshadowed by Andrew Lloyd Webber's, though many critics prefer the Kopit version with music by Maury Yeston.
Sadly, Mr. Kopit passed away just this last April at the age of 83. He had been living with progressive dementia prior to his death.
He will always be one of my heroes, and reading "Indians" today only solidifies my feelings on the matter.
March 25, 2019
Further confirmation that high school American history class whitewashed a lot that we as a nation choose to ignore. European "settlers" we're absolutely barbaric to the native people they encountered in North America. Indefensible.
March 26, 2019
بوفالو بیل: شما واقعا معتقدید که بوفالوها برمیگردن؟ یک برگشت سحرآمیز؟
سیتینگ بول: بی شباهت به بازگشت مسیح نیست.، شاید مفیدتر از اون.
سیتینگ بول: بی شباهت به بازگشت مسیح نیست.، شاید مفیدتر از اون.
March 2, 2020
This play is a powerful, cleverly told, brutally honest examination of how the tellers of American history tend to cover up absolute atrocities with spectacle and myth.
Read
February 20, 2024Read this for a class, counting it towards my reading goal.
March 20, 2025
A play of its time, rightfully pointing out the deadly harm the wild west mythmaking created in the U.S. but still picturing Native Americans as always already gone. They're still here.
November 10, 2025
Interesting artifact
February 6, 2023
Great play. I was in it my sophomore year in high school 50 years ago. It instilled a life-long interest in me about what happened to all the peoples who were here before the white Europeans showed up and took it all away from them.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews