Redface: Race, Performance, and Indigeneity. Bethany Hughes. New York: New York University Press, 2024; Pp. 272.
“Bethany Hughes’s Redface: Race, Performance, and Indigeneity is the book that the fields of theatre, American, Native, and historical studies have long needed. With clarity and care, Hughes braids together these disciplines to expose the theatrical mechanisms that have produced and sustained the racialized figure of the “Indian” on stage. Hughes names this racialized figure “The Stage Indian,” a term analogous to “Playing Indian,” found in Philip Deloria’s monumental book of the same name, or John Troutman’s “Indianness” from his book, Indian Blues: American Indians and the Politics of Music, 1879-1934. The term “Stage Indian,” along with her subsequent chapters that masterfully examine this topic, redefine the practice of redface as a robust communal process, one that all sides of the theatrical sphere participate in, and identifies the power of theatre as a central site of American culture.”