Word: buffalo
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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WILLIAM CODY killed 4280 buffalo in 1868, thus managing at the same time to feed the white men who were running a railroad through the plains and deprived the Plains Indians of their food supply. The buffalo slaughter wasn't the first atrocity committed by Europeans against the native American. When you consider the French wars against the Indians in New York and Canada, and Lord Jeffrey Amherst's gift of smallpox-infested blankets to his Indian friends, it was not the greatest. In fact, in Arthur Kopit's Indians Buffalo Bill even shows remorse for the slaughter. "I didn...
...Kopit's Buffalo Bill is a Kiplingesque figure, ready to bear the white man's burden manfully to feed and clothe and look after the savages and try to civilize them. He shows genuine anger when the government leaves the Indians to starve, and even goes to Washington and tries to get the President to act. He is a civilized...
...well-crafted piece of theatre scaled down in script and staging from the unwieldly Broadway version. The staging, and Franco Colavecchia's compact Wild West show focus the action of the play neatly. The play opens with dance, performed in silence by eight Indians, who disperse when Buffalo Bill rides onstage. The Indians are dimly lit; Buffalo Bill gets two bright follow spots and an accompaniment of carnival music. Douglas Nielson's Bill is flexible, almost always on top of his part, whether it calls for theatrics or remorse. Bernard Holmberg's Sitting Bull, Bill's friend-enemy throughout...
...Buffalo Bill's description of Sitting Bull's assassination is likewise filled with a bitter irony...
...KOPIT is not content to let his play end on a moment of high drama, when the ghost of Sitting Bull confronts Cody after the Wounded Knee Massacre. Rather, he makes a stab at the grotesque, forcing Buffalo Bill to read a catalogue of atrocities and try to justify them. His attempt fails, for this is a distortion of the character Cody has established, and the play lapses into incoherence. The dramatic affect of the play is irreparably marred by its ending...