A consortium of German developers shows up on the fictional Otter Lake
Reserve with a seemingly irresistible offer to improve the local
economy: the creation of "Ojibway World," a Native theme park designed
to attract European tourists, causing hilarious personal and political
divisions within the local community.
The Berlin Blues concludes Drew Hayden Taylor's Blues quartet,
showcasing contemporary stereotypes of First Nations people, including a
fair number that originate from Indigenous communities themselves, to
the often outraged delight of his international audiences.
Yet Europeans and other ethnic groups are not exempt from Taylor's
incisive but good-humoured caricatures. Central to the motivation of
these German developers are the hugely successful and best-selling
adventure novels of the German author Karl May, whose work Adolf Hitler
recommended as "good wholesome reading for all ages." Written in the
early twentieth century, they popularized Rousseau's image of Indigenous
peoples as "Noble Savages" among European, and especially German youth,
and have led to the creation of Karl May theme parks all over central
Europe, where adult tourists can shed their inhibitions and play Cowboys
and Indians with a seriousness as ridiculous as it is abandoned. This is
identity politics stripped of its politically correct hyper-seriousness
and dramatized to its absurd and ultimately hilarious conclusion.
The Berlin Blues premiered in Los Angeles at Native Voices in February
2007, touring to New York (at the Museum of the American Indian), and
then to the museum in Washington D.C. the following May, followed by a
reading tour in Germany. In Canada it was produced at Magnus Theatre in
Thunder Bay in January 2008, and then by Persephone Theatre in
Saskatoon.
