Author Description

<p>This first collection of plays by an Indian playwright presents a spectrum of Indian life that ranges in time from the past to the present and on into the future.</p> <p><i>Body Indian,</i> the earliest, most widely performed, and most highly acclaimed of Geiogamah's plays, deals with a problem of the present -Indian alcoholism. But the play is not so much about alcoholism as it is about the social and moral obligations that Indian people owe to one another.</p> <p><i>Foghorn,</i> through the use of humor rather than bitterness, tries to exorcise the harmful stereotyping that often stands in the way of non-Indians' understanding of Indians, and even on occasion of Indians' own appreciation of themselves.</p> <p>In the play <i>49</i> the author links the past with the present and points a road to the future. Here the approach is synchronic rather than diachronic. The value of Indian traditions is emphasized -but only where those traditions are used imaginatively and not treated as ossified relics to be blindly venerated. <i>49</i> celebrates the continuity of Indian life in the vigor of new forms and with an abiding optimism.</p> <p>This collection of plays-all widely performed and seriously and extensively reviewed-adds a new and important voice to the small body of Indian authors who write about their own people.</p>