Israel Horovitz Blog

I love analyzing art. Whether it is literature, a painting or a piece of music, I enjoy taking something apart and infusing my ideas into its fragments.  So when I was watching “The Indian Wants the Bronx”, those were my innate intentions. The first thing I noticed was that the lights in auditorium were dimmed. This is usually a sign that a performance is about to start. For “The Indian Wants the Bronx” though, the lights stayed dim the entire show. The only other light was a bold spotlight over the main stage prop, the phone booth. It immediately caught my eyes. I think that in any art form, something to initially grab a viewers’ attention is extremely important. Something I thought was interesting about the prop was that it helped convey a message Israel Hurvitz was trying to get across. The idea of the phone booth is communication. The boys and the Indian are really unable to communicate properly. When reading the play I really did not fully grasp this fact because the Indian’s part is written in English. While watching it though, I was able to witness the struggle to communicate.  Watching the Indian speak with out really being heard was quite heartbreaking. Something I took from the play, that I think the actors were able to convey with the urgency of their performances, was that regardless of one’s religion or one’s culture, a unifying form of communication that everyone craves, is to love and to be loved.

A reference that came to mind was the movie Crash.  Which may seem a bit random, but like this play it deals with the idea of different cultures meshing.  In the opening scene of the movie, a character narrates, “… I think we miss that touch so much, that we crash into each other, just so we can feel something.”  The idea of the absence of love or human connection resonates in “The Indian Wants the Bronx” as well.  Murph and Joey are these stupid, delinquent boys just messing around. When you get to their core though, someone from social services is taking care of them. They are really alone, and so they bully the Indian just to feel something in their lonely, young lives. This is expressed quite eloquently in the staging of the play. At the very beginning, the stage is empty. The audience though hears these two boys singing a song in the back round. These lyrics, “I walk the lonely streets at night… but, baby, you don’t care,” echo through out the auditorium. The actors make it seem like a casual song, but then you listen closely and realize what they are saying. This is the echo of their loneliness.

I found the theme of this play to be a strong one. The value of communication is something that can really be stretched in many different directions of thought.  Besides for this idea and the nuances in the props and stage directions, I did not thoroughly enjoy any other part of this play. If you love to analyze things you can always find something interesting but honestly, the play just dragged on.