Resurrecting The First Great American Play: Imperial Politics And Colonial Ambitions In Frontier Detroit by Sämi Ludwig (review)

• Published in: Theatre journal (Washington, D.C.) D.C.), 2021-12, Vol.73 (4), p.580-581
• Main Author: Shaffer, Jason
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: American Indians; Anaphora; Auditory system; Cooper, James Fenimore (1789-1851); Drama; Ethnography; French language; Native North Americans; Sami languages; Seven Years War; War
• ISSN: 0192-2882; 1086-332X; 1086-332X
• DOI: 10.1353/tj.2021.0123

(Rogers, deeply in debt but widely lionized for his written accounts of the French and Indian War as well as his military service, seems to have written the play in a failed bid for literary celebrity and financial solvency.) Indeed, the first three chapters of the book—profiles of Ponteach and Rogers and a historical survey of the frontier of the upper Midwest during their lifetimes—are the strongest parts of the book. Ludwig is particularly good at documenting the clear differences between French and English policy toward Native Americans, as well as illustrating that even despite his role as an irregular warfare officer, Rogers was on the whole much fairer to local tribes in areas that he administered than other English officials. In particular, the chapters in which Ludwig anachronistically argues that Ponteach prefigures Brecht’s didactic theatre, encapsulates the major themes of the classical and Christian worlds in five short acts, and displays a keen poetic ear because Rogers is capable of using basic devices such as alliteration and anaphora feel somewhat scattershot and “centrifugal” themselves; a stronger editorial hand might have brought a clearer sense of organization to this segment of the book.