Feathers and Facepaint: The Making of Redface in American Theatre
Across the 19th century, American theatre artists and audiences turned to the “Indian” to tell stories of drama, tragedy, comedy, and history. From these diverse but popular plays a recognizable and racialized figure developed, the Stage Indian. This talk tracks the material elements used to create “Indian” characters to explore how theatrical techniques and dramatic repertoires worked with and through settler colonial logics resulting in a recognizable and racialized figure. The Stage Indian is more than feathers and face paint, however. It is an embodied figure whose legibility as an “Indian” is co-constructed with its audience. Tracing instantiations of the "Stage Indian" across the 19th century reveals the saturation, flexibility, and persistence of redface as a tool of U.S. control over Indigenous nations and peoples.
About the Speaker: Bethany Hughes is the Assistant Professor of American Culture, Native American Studies Program at the University of Michigan
All colloquia events are free and open to the public