In 1978 Károly Kazimir directed Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha in the Theatre-in-the-Round in Budapest. Characteristically for Kazimir’s work, the production catered to a mass public but was at the same time challenging and, in certain aspects, slightly provocative. This essay provides some important historical, cultural, and political contexts for the interpretation of Kazimir’s experimental staging of Hiawatha.