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Screensize: 640 x 480 800 x 600 1024 x 768 1280 x 1024 UserName: Password: Format Mode: Basic  Help  Prompt  Format: Videos: Font Andale Mono Arial Arial Black Book Antiqua Century Gothic Comic Sans MS Courier New Georgia Impact Lucida Console Script MT Bold Stencil Tahoma Times New Roman Trebuchet MS Verdana   Size 1 2 3 4 5 6   Color Black Red Yellow Pink Green Orange Purple Blue Beige Brown Teal Navy Maroon LimeGreen Message Icon:                             Message: Smilies [quote][i]Originally posted by Fitzhugh Williams[/i] [br][red][b]Copied from another board:[/b][/red] Outmoded Cherokee play rewritten Factual inaccuracies removed from show about tribe’s history Sunday, July 23, 2006 Tim Whitmire ASSOCIATED PRESS CHEROKEE, N.C. — When James Bradley returned to the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians’ reservation after an eight year absence, he found Unto These Hills — the outdoor drama about Cherokee history that had been a summertime tradition for more than half a century — in disarray. "When I came back to the show in 2000, . . . we had lost 50 percent of our audience," said Bradley, executive director of the Cherokee Historical Association. "The attention to detail in the show and just the little things that made the show special seemed to be gone." So Bradley, 42, who participated in the show for eight years as a young man, set out to remake a tradition. "I started talking to people: ‘We have to do something; we have to do something now,’ " he said. "Fortunately, there were board members (of the historical association) who thought the same thing." Backed by $1.5 million generated by the tribe’s casino, Bradley led a radical makeover of Unto These Hills. The result is a revamped production, written and directed by leading American-Indian playwright Hanay Geiogamah, that supporters say is truer to Cherokee history and traditions. "It’s a major undertaking for all of us," said Eddie Swimmer, a Cherokee performer who plays several roles in the new drama. "Native-American people have always been storytellers, but history is always told by the conqueror. Now, it’s time for us to tell our story." An estimated 5 million tickets have been sold since the 1950 premiere of the original Unto These Hills, written by Kermit Hunter, a graduate student at the University of North Carolina. But by the summer of 2004, ticket sales had slumped to just 44,000 annually. "Presenting the same play for that long a period of time is really quite unique in America," said Scott Parker, director of the Institute of Outdoor Drama at the university’s Chapel Hill campus. "There are times when sometimes these shows need to be refreshed and retold." Bradley said the show was successful into the 1980s but began to decline after members of the tribe started to compare it to Cherokee history. "Local people stopped going; they stopped referring people to the show," he said. "They sort of got ashamed of it." Last July, the tribe brought in Geiogamah, a professor of American-Indian studies and theater at the University of California, Los Angeles, to lead the makeover. "The old drama had been performed for 55 years and was replete with historical inaccuracies and an almost nonexistent portrayal of Cherokees and their culture, their music, their humor," Geiogamah said. "It had become a very powerful anachronism right in the very heart of the Cherokee community." Hunter’s play was melodramatic, centering on the Cherokees’ betrayal by the government and the forced removal of most of the tribe from their western North Carolina homeland to Oklahoma in the late 1830s — the episode known as the "Trail of Tears." Geiogamah’s rewrite follows a similar outline but is told in a less linear fashion. Two mythical Cherokee figures — Kanati, the Great Hunter; and his wife, Selu, the Corn Mother — survey hundreds of years of history, from the arrival of Spanish gold-hunter Hernando de Soto to the present day. Joining Kanati and Selu are Clan Spirits — similar to the chorus in a Greek tragedy — who help the Cherokees remember their past and make new songs and dances. Gone are historical inaccuracies from the old play, including a depiction of the Cherokee Chief Junaluska saving the life of future President Andrew Jackson — an act now attributed to an unknown Cherokee warrior — and the suspect legend of the Cherokee warrior Tsali, the centerpiece of the old play’s second act. Bradley said he had three goals in remaking the s [/quote]    Upload an Image File From Your PC For Insertion in Your Post    -  HTML is OFF | Forum Code is ON   Check here to include your profile signature.