This uniquely colorful and entirely authentic play has had highly successful productions at the Denver Center Theatre and the Mark Taper Forum. At every performance, without exception, it received a standing ovation. One critic described it as A shattering evocation of the American Plains Indians. It tells in passionate, mystic poetry how their West was lost! The New York Daily News critic wrote that it is ...a play with a very rich texture that becomes far more than just another cry for justice from the Indian point of view. No one who sees this play will ever forget it. The power of the play is not simply that it's superbly written drama but that it's all true. The play has color, flair, flamboyance. It has at other times an almost insufferable grief and fear. This is the death and destruction of the original Americans, and it hurts to watch. They are a people with a rich past and absolutely no future. This play is harnessed dynamite. Black Elk lived the experience of the Native American people from the moment before white people entered his world through the end of Indian independence at the massacre of Wounded Knee. His unique eloquence and that of his cousin Crazy Horse make this play a very special event. The play moves quickly and with mounting excitement through this history and through a vision of life as it once was for the Indian, and as it could be for all people. Area staging. Optional music available.