During
the 1960s and 1970s, the notion of American identity as performative
was becoming increasingly evident in the works of African-American
playwrights who were often presenting race as a series of roles based on
cultural expectation rather than as an essential and stable core of
being. The performative identity of the both black and white Americans
weren’t just restricted to the discourse of self or the individual, but
the identity which entertained the notion of race enjoyed the freedom of
African-American playwrights; they brought forth the issue of race
beyond the cultural expectations making the voice heard of the
marginalized.
Playwrights
such as Amiri Baraka , Ed Bullins and Ron Milner, Black Arts movement- a
social , political and artistic movement. Baraka wanted a theater that
would be honest about the African-American experience, which would abuse
and accuse that can be abused and accused. Almost all his works belong
to the ‘Theater of Assault’ which itself is a revolutionary theater that
entertained aggressive and both intellectually and socially, violent
proposition for the emerging African-American theater. It is also a
theater of victims. This theater was to be a social theater that would
attack Anglo-patriarchal standards and translate art into social change,
a ‘political theater’, a weapon to create a space for the forsaken.
His two best plays, Dutchman and The Slave,
both force the audience to confront its own prejudices through violent
dramatic presentations that challenge society’s assumptions about race. Dutchman’s
two characters are Lula, a beautiful thirty year-old white woman with
‘long red hair’ who represents the sadistic temptress, and Clay, a
twenty year-old black man who believes he can live as an individual in
American society and avoid the trappings of history and the politics of
race relations. In terms of identity, Clay, as a black man, is not
allowed to be an individual. Lula constantly refers to him as a ‘type’,
claiming she ‘knows’ him. At first, Clay playfully participates in her
games, as when Lula asks him about what his surname is and he responds
with “Take your pick. Jackson, Johnson, or Williams” (15). Clay’s
response, however, not only highlights an awareness of his lack of
individuality as a black man in America; Clay wants to fit in and be
accepted as a part of American culture, but Lula, representing society’s
relentless persecution and the forces of history, doesn’t allow that.
She baits Clay both sexually and intellectually, pointing out that his
identity as an American is wrong, that he has no right ‘to be wearing a
three-button suit and striped tie’ since his grandfather was a slave,
he didn’t go to Harvard’(18). While Clay keeps his cool, not
understanding at first the cruelty of Lula’s intentions, he is
eventually provoked to violence, slapping Lula hard across the mouth
(33). When he is finished, he attempts to leave, but Lula casually stabs
him dead and orders the other passengers to throw his body off the
rain. As another young black man gets on at the next stop, Lula readies
herself for her next performance, giving him ‘a long slow look’ as the
cycle is doomed to repeat itself.
The
play, however, is primarily ritualistic, not realistic, and neither
Lula nor Clay is presented as an individual, but rather as a
representative of historically determined racial categories. Dutchman
is Baraka’s vision of the fate of African-Americans in white America,
and was intended to provoke a collective response and consequent
political action within the black community.
In The Slave,
Walker is a black militant who was married to Grace, a ‘blonde woman’
who has now married a white English professor, Bradford Easley, and
lives with him and her two daughters by Walker. He bursts into their
home with a gun, ‘dressed as an old field slave’ (43) and drags the
couple into a race war that he is fighting. While Grace and Easley are
held hostage, debates and discussions regarding issues of identity,
language, the politics of personal relationships, and the line between
truth and lies take place among the three characters. Finally, The Slave ends with Walker leaving the house after an explosion that kills their two daughters, destroying a part of them both.
The Slave
deals interestingly with the complexities of identities and the
connection between identity and language. Walker tells Grace that he
‘did come into the world pointed in the right direction. Oh, shit, I
learned so many words for what I wanted to say. They all come down on me
at once. But almost none of them are mine’ (53). Walker sees identity
not as essential, but as a role or performance coded in the mythologies
by which we live. As an English professor, Easley represents the western
tradition that dictates Anglo-American systems of identification, ways
of seeing ourselves, which have excluded African-American experience.
Black identity in America is portrayed as an identity of double-ness,
confusing the mask with the truth, and finally not being able to
distinguish the difference between the two. Grace tells Walker, “You are
split in so many ways… your feelings are cut up into skinny horrible
strips…like umbrella struts…holding up whatever bizarre black cloth you
are using this performance as your self’s image. I don’t even think you
know who you are any more. No, I don’t think you ever knew… it must be a
sick task keeping so many lying separate ugliness together…and
pretending they’re something you’ve made and understand (61).
With The Slave Baraka continued exploring the theme he presented in Dutchman, the
‘false’ identity of blacks in America and the confrontation of a black
poet/revolutionary with the white society that seeks to destroy him.
Conclusion
Baraka has said that Dutchman “is about how difficult it is to become a man in the United States”. However, this is the same with The Slave too
that the both great works of Baraka deal with the voice of the black
man in America who has been silenced and wiped out from the history of
America. The theater of Assault is all about the story of the victim and
this is what we see in his above-mentioned plays. Both these plays
ventured a new experience of black among the white Americans. The
marginalized voice and existence is brought out/forth with the plays of
Baraka and the playwrights of the Theater of Assault.
Reference
Le Roi Jones, Dutchman, in Dutchman and The Slave: Two plays by Le Roi Jones, New York, William morrow and company, 1964
Le Roi Jones, The Slave, in Dutchman and The Slave: Two plays by Le Roi Jones, New York, William morrow and company, 1964
Lorenzo Thomas, An Essay on Amiri Baraka and The Dutchman
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