ABSTRACT

This statement, proclaimed by the narrator in Hanay Geiogamah’s Foghorn, contains very powerful words when read from the script. However, this cannot compare to the impact these words have on an audience that hears these words spoken during a live performance. Because a play is written to be performed, a play’s true literary value can be measured only during a performance. Thus, a play’s success begins with the playwright’s abilities to envision all theatrical aspects of a play, to bring the printed word to life, so the meaning is seen, heard, and felt. As the most prominent Native American contemporary playwright, Hanay Geiogamah successfully conveys his theatrical visions through the printed word. In his New Native American Drama, a collection of three plays, Geiogamah displays his talents as a dramatist through the theatricality of his plays. Born in Lawton, Oklahoma, in 1945, Hanay Geiogamah, a KiowaDelaware Indian, studied journalism at the University of Oklahoma. He has taught creative writing, Native American theater, and the role of the arts in contemporary Native American life at several colleges and universities. Geiogamah conceived the idea for an all-Indian acting troupe in 1970. The motivation for assembling his troupe stemmed from Geiogamah’s belief that “for decades American Indians have been portrayed in films and on television in a manner entirely derogatory to the

cultural and mental well-being…” of Native American people (quoted in Phillips 1972). With the organization of the Native American Theatre Ensemble (NATE) in New York in 1972, Hanay Geiogamah set out to create a more realistic picture of the Native American.