Redface: Race, Performance, and Indigeneity. Bethany Hughes. New York: New York University Press, 2024; Pp. 272.

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. 

Hughes begins by stating exactly what this book does and does not do. Redface is not a comprehensive history of Indigenous performers or plays. Instead, it is a critical analysis of how Indigeneity was and is made legible through performance and how visual, affective, and narrative codes have transformed into the Stage Indian persona that continues to shape Indigenous representation today, both on and off the physical stage. After reading this book, people will be able to describe how redface is not simply about paint, feathers, or moccasins worn by non-Indigenous people. Instead, it is “a collaborative, curatorial process through which a body is made legible as an Indian” (11). This reframing is central to the book’s contribution, moving the conversation from surface to structure, which transforms the case studies Hughes provides into long-term patterns of embodied colonialism. 

Redface is not just about appearing Indian; it is about being recognized and named as Indian. The book examines how redface operates through acts of recognition, reinforcing not only theatrical conventions but also legal and political definitions of Indigenous identity. In an incisive argument, Hughes suggests that what audiences often subconsciously seek is not authenticity but the power to determine what is or is not an Indian. 

The methodological rigor of this book involves Hughes weaving together autoethnography, archival research, production analysis, and performance theory. To name a few, Hughes analyzes costume lists for Nick of the Woods (1838), production photos of Annie Get Your Gun, witness accounts of Edwin Forrest’s infamous portrayal of Metamora, and Indian princess plays that illustrate how Stage Indian conventions were absorbed into theatrical spaces. In Chapter Three, Hughes explains how physical gestures and stage movement, not just dialogue or costume, helped codify the portrayal of the Stage Indian in Edwin Forrest’s portrayal of Indian chief, Metamora, in Metamora. She spotlights Forrest’s Metamora “to understand how strategies for authenticating Indianness have shifted over time and to demonstrate that authentication is inherent to redface” (119). Later chapters trace these codes through other performances, like Hughes’ analysis of the Broadway revival of Annie Get Your Gun in Chapter 4. 

The structure of Redface is both innovative and an effective praxis of Hughes’s invitation for alternative modes of knowledge reception for scholars in the field doing decolonizing work. In the introduction, she asks: “How do we respond to knowledge production modes that require atypical labor?” (19). Hughes addresses this through her essay, Hinushi Inla, which means “a different path” in the Choctaw language (18). Whereas Hughes’ first four chapters trace the evolution of redface from the 1830s through the twentieth century, Hinushi Inla is braided through the book in non-linear order, providing a necessary counterpoint to the historical narratives presented in the chapters and also inviting readers to disrupt the habit of linear knowledge reception in the academy. One example is while one side of the book examines racial stereotyping in Will Rogers’ career or the blood-quantum logic embedded in casting practices, the other side explores the artistry of Native artists like DeLanna Studi, Hanay Geiogamah, Lily Gladstone, and Hughes’s own relationship to Indigeneity. It was profoundly moving for me, as both a scholar and an artist in the fields of theatre and Native studies, to see how far we have come from Metamora and Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Shows. As a reader, it was also powerful to encounter both history and futurity on the same page. The Hinushi Inla sections loosen the braid of racism to show the gaps in representation and invite even more strands of knowledge to enter the conversation.  

Even in the twenty-first century, the search for “authentic” Native representation on and off the stage often asks for the same visual codes developed in the 1800s. In Chapter Four, Hughes explores how cutting racist lyrics from Annie Get Your Gun in the 1999 revival may soften the language, but it leaves the representational logic intact: “The revisal reshaped the Stage Indian and connected it to centuries’ long conceptions of blood that continue to delimit Indianness in many ways” (204). Hughes intervenes that fixing redface is more than editing scripts; it demands a new practice of seeing that requires action from all of us. Hughes does not excuse the racist performances of the past, nor does she ignore the ways Indigenous performers themselves have been made to navigate redface for survival. Instead, she humanizes each historical figure the book touches on to illustrate how performers, audiences, and institutions all contribute to the curation and policing of Indianness. The result is an honest account that humanizes historical subjects without excusing harm.  

In the final chapter, Hughes writes, “There has always been an ‘instead’ of redface. It is up to audiences to choose a hinushi inla” (101). This call to action is not symbolic but an invitation to participate in a new kind of embodied, relational, and transformative praxis. As a scholar, theatre practitioner, and a reader, I find myself returning to this book in my thoughts and writing for its arguments, research methods, and a demonstration of decolonizing scholarship. Redface: Race, Performance, and Indigeneity is both an invitation and a critique, one that is honest, vital, and restorative toward a different path.