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.

Ojibway writer Drew Hayden Taylor is from the Curve Lake Reserve in Ontario. Hailed by the Montreal Gazette as one of Canada’s leading Native dramatists, he writes for the screen as well as the stage and contributes regularly to North American Native periodicals and national NEWSpapers. His plays have garnered many prestigious awards, and his beguiling and perceptive storytelling style has enthralled audiences in Canada, the United States and Germany. His 1998 play Only Drunks and Children Tell the Truth has been anthologized in Seventh Generation: An Anthology of Native American Plays, published by the Theatre Communications Group. Although based in Toronto, Taylor has travelled extensively throughout North America, honouring requests to read from his work and to attend arts festivals, workshops and productions of his plays. He was also invited to Robert Redford’s Sundance Institute in California, where he taught a series of seminars on the depiction of Native characters in fiction, drama and film. One of his most established bodies of work includes what he calls the Blues Quartet, an ongoing, outrageous and often farcical examination of Native and non-Native stereotypes.

Drew Hayden Taylor's profile page

“Drew Hayden Taylor has produced an accomplished series of comedies about reserve life that are consummate in their dramatic mechanics … The Berlin Blues may be breezy sitcom, but it has a point to make and is masterfully done.”
– Canadian Literature

“This play displays a healthy sense of humor…If one needs an innocuous night of theatre, this can be taken as a series of funny events. Those hoping for something deeper can find allegories and metaphors pointing through history.”
– LA Splash

The Berlin Blues

In this comic play, the Ojibwe community of the Otter Lake Reserve is faced with making a decision that will affect their future. A consortium of German developers offers to improve the local economy by creating a Native theme park, “OjibwayWorld”, designed to attract tourists from around the world. This could bring prosperity and improve life for many of the residents, however, it could also create a world that is not truly their own and divide the community. In his characteristic humour, the author deals with issues of unemployment, poverty, a changing world, and the misconceptions of Aboriginal people. This play will entertain and delight while also offering topics for students to discuss and debate.

Hayden Taylor is an award-winning Aboriginal playwright and humourist who has published several plays and short stories. The Berlin Blues has been produced in several Canadian and American cities.