Inside the Machine: Indigeneity, Subversion, and the Academy

This performative keynote address was originally performed on October 25, 2013, at Royal Holloway College/University of Notre Dame, London, UK, as part of the conference “In the Balance: Indigeneity, Performance, Globalization” organized by Helen Gilbert.

[The title of the keynote address projects onto a screen behind a standard academic podium. A tall actor, an Indigenous man, walks up to the podium, regarding the audience politely. He speaks into a microphone.]

I once played Bromden.

Chief Bromden.

Created by Ken Kesey in his 1962 novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and subsequently made into a play by Dale Wasserman, and then famously transformed into a film directed by Miloš Forman.

[A production still of Will Sampson, from the 1975 film, appears on the screen behind the actor.]

The image of this man, Will Sampson, is iconic. His portrayal of Chief Bromden in the film is legendary.

Interestingly, the work is known for the epic battle between the protagonist, R. P. McMurphy, and Nurse Ratched, but both the play and the book that inspired it featured Chief Bromden as the narrator. It is Bromden’s point of view that frames the entire journey of the men in the State Hospital and provides us with the portrait of McMurphy.

What is noteworthy here is that Bromden is crazy.

[There is a shift in the actor. Confusion clouds his eyes; he speaks in a huskier voice, clearly terrified.]

Papa? They’re foggin’ it in again. Somethin’ bad is gonna happen, so they’re foggin’ it in.

[The audience hears the sounds of machinery, grinding and metallic.]

There! You hear it, Papa? The Black Machine. They got it goin’ eighteen stories down below the ground. They’re puttin’ people in one end and out comes what they want. The way they do it, Papa, each night they tip the world on its side and everybody loose goes rattlin’ to the bottom. Then they hook ’em by the heels, and they hang ’em up and cut ’em open. Only by that time they got no innards, just some beat up gears and things. And all they bleed is rust. You think I’m ravin’ ‘cause it sounds too awful to be true, but my God, there’s such a lot of things that’s true even if they never really happen!

(Wasserman 8)

[The image of Sampson fades. The actor continues as himself.]

When I saw the film as a young boy, I was drawn to Bromden. The only Indigenous character in the movie, the only brown face visible. Much like the situation I found myself in growing up in a white suburb of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, in western Canada. Of course, my family was connected to our communities to the north and west of the city, in Battleford, Muskeg Lake, Prince Albert, Poundmaker, and Sweetgrass, but I found myself—like Bromden—surrounded by that which was not me.

[Sing-song.]

“One of these things is not like the other?”

Part of my early identity was framed by difference. This is a trope that I would return to again and again.

But in a weird twist, my journey brought me from Saskatchewan through the worlds of classical ballet, through Hollywood, and then for nearly eight years to northwestern Ohio. Middle America. And Kent State University, where I pursued my graduate degree.

The Theatre Department at Kent State ran Porthouse Theatre, a professional theater company that performed each summer at the Blossom Music Center in the Cuyahoga Valley. In 2002 I was cast as Bromden—the six-and-a-half-foot Indian giant—in their remount of the Wasserman play.

I’m six-foot two-inches, 220 pounds. [Aside.] Nearly sixteen stone for you traditionalists.

And I was the only Indigenous person in my program.

[Beat.]

I believe I was a natural fit for the part.

Not simply because I look like the character. But, for a long time now, I’ve been inside the machine, too.

[As Bromden, but somewhat matter-of-factly, almost detached.]

There’s a shipment of frozen parts come in downstairs—hearts and...