Walker and The Ghost Dance: Plays [Paperback]

Derek Walcott (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 2002

Dazzling dramas on American themes from the Nobel laureate

On a cold winter's day on the Dakota plains, Catherine Weldon receives a caller, Kicking Bear, bringing news of Indian rebellion. In the fort nearby, a tiny community splinters apart over how to react. In Ghost Dance, first performed in 1989, Walcott turns a story with a foregone conclusion -- Sitting Bull and his Sioux followers will die at the hands of the Army and Indian agents -- into a portrait of life at a crossroads of American history.

In Walker, an opera first performed in 1992 and revised for its revival in 2001, Walcott shifts his attention east, taking for his subject David Walker, the nineteenth-century black abolitionist. In Walcott 's hands Walker becomes a classical hero for his people: a leader who is also a poet.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

These two verse dramas show 1992 Nobel prize winner Walcott (Omeros) at the top of his form. They are lean, focused, and powerful. The first, "Walker," is a recent revision of an opera, first performed in 1992, which has become a play with music. Centering on the last day in the life of black abolitionist David Walker, in Boston on Thanksgiving Day in 1830, it has a small cast, one set, a limited time frame, and swift movement. When the characters rise in passion or when a lyric moment occurs, they break into song, suggesting the austerity of a Greek tragedy. The other play is also historical, set against the larger canvas of the Indian uprisings in North Dakota in 1890. First performed in 1989, "Ghost Dance" is a perfectly balanced portrait of the crisis of conscience that white men and women on army posts faced during the sad and hopeless Ghost Dance revivalism, through which the tribes in their last gathering expected to roll back time and restore their world. Walcott's verse here captures the epic nature of this moment in history, giving it character, color, and pathos. The characters are well drawn, the scenes are beautifully built, and the play moves forward with astonishing swiftness. These are history plays at their most energetic. Highly recommended. Thomas E. Luddy, Salem State Coll., Salem, MA
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

These theater pieces by Nobel laureate Walcott illustrate two lesser-known moments in American history. Unfortunately, only one succeeds as dramatic literature. The less successful work, Walker, was originally an opera libretto set by African American composer T. J. Anderson. Rewritten in 2002 as a play with music, it depicts freedman-turned-abolitionist David Walker, a fiery antislavery pamphleteer in the 1820s and '30s. The play's events, not least Walker's possible poisoning for his beliefs, fascinate, but Walcott underplays its dramatic potential, rendering the piece more interesting as a historical study of American-style racism. The haunting and beautiful Ghost Dance, however, uses events surrounding the late-1890s Ghost Dance movement among the Plains Indians as the background of a two-act meditation on relations between whites and Indians. Its complex portrait of life in the Old West belies simple-minded settler-bad-Indian-good thinking. Instead, like John Ford in his ambivalent film masterpiece, The Searchers, Walcott presents fascinating characters and allows us to judge them as they are carried along by history. Jack Helbig
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Paperback: 246 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 1 edition (July 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374528144
• ISBN-13: 978-0374528140
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,162,864 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars First Opinions, June 30, 2008

By 

Randy Keehn (Williston, ND United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Walker and The Ghost Dance: Plays (Paperback)

I took note of the name of Derek Walcott when he won the Nobel Prize for Literature some years back. I'm not one for poetry so I didn't go out looking for any of his books. However, while in his home island of St Lucia in the Carribean, I came across this book comprising two of his plays. The first, "Walker", was the story of a free Black man in Boston circa 1830. He is in the process of printing a pamphlet that advocates an uprising of slaves. Others try to change his mind and we get the gist of the man through these conversations. The message I got from the play is that violent methods leads to violent ends.

I got more out of the second play, "The Ghost Dance", in large part because I had coincidently just finished a book on the subject. That gave me an historical perspective that I didn't have of "Walker" (I had never heard of David Walker before). This play has a variety of characters that interact in a manner that bring insight to cultural conflicts. There are a number of relationships that fail, fall apart, or remain in unresolvable conflict. I appreciated the way the character and situations were woven together. I also appreciated that it all took place in my home state of North Dakota. It was a good, but not great, play. I couldn't help but notice Mr. Walcott's periodic use of metered rhyme in some of his dialogue. I guess it comes naturally for him. I'm glad I read these two plays but I won't be going out of my way to find more of his work. On the other hand, I WOULD like to return to St. Lucia.