Contemporary Theatre and Its Diversity - Part 2

1. Contemporary Theatre and Its Diversity - Part 2

2. African American Theatre • Theatres and plays concerned with African Americans have probably made the greatest impact. • African American playwrights and producing organizations have greatly increased since A Raisin in the Sun was first produced. Video of A Raisin in the Sun

3. African American Theatre • The most durable of the companies was the Negro Ensemble Company (NEC), founded in New York in 1968 by Douglas Turner Ward. • The upsurge in African American theatrical activity provided a corresponding increase in opportunities for actors, directors, and playwrights. Negro Ensemble Company

4. African American Theatre • Among recent playwrights, one of the most successful has been George C. Wolfe, who first gained wide recognition in 1986 with The Colored Museum, a series of eleven exhibits about African American life that combine satire and anger. Video of The Colored Museum

5. African American Theatre • George C. Wolfe is now one of the most influential figures in the American theatre. • Suzan-Lori Parks is perhaps the most admired female African American playwright with The America Play, The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World, In the Blood, and TopDog/Underdog. Suzan-Lori Parks

6. African American Theatre • Perhaps the most praised African American playwright is August Wilson, who has declared his intention of writing a play about black experience in each decade of the twentieth century. • His first success came in 1984 with Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. Video of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom

7. African American Repertory Theatre • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgZDQeuWJNo

8. African American Repertory Theatre http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtDaQLdYJlQ

9. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom • The entire action of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom takes place in a recording studio in Chicago during one day in 1927. • Ma Reiney, “mother of the blues” and her band (all of them are black), are preparing to recording. • Their two white managers have no respect for black musicians and their music, the only thing they want is money.

10. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom • When the band arrives for recording, without Ma Rainey and her companions, tension begins to rise. • The struggle of power begin to take shape. • When Ma Rainey finally arrives, dressed in furs and other finery, with her nephew, Sylvester and her girl friend, Dussie Mae, trouble begins.

11. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom • The white men had decided Levee should play an introduction to Ma Rainey’s signature song, she had decided that Sylvester, who has a pronounced stutter, must introduce it with a spoken passage. • After several attempts, Sylvester does succeed, but they find that line to the recording booth was disconnected.

12. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom • During the interruption that occurs, Dussie Mae wanders down to the rehearsal room and, despite the warning from others about Dussie Mae’s relationship with Ma, Levee fondles and kisses her. • Eventually the recording gets completed, after which Sturdyvant informs Levee that he is no longer interested in his music. • Toledo accidentally steps in Levee’s shoe, the rage is redirected, and Levee stabs and kills Toledo.

13. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom • Wilson seems to suggest that this violence is an outgrowth of the treatment of blacks that has been discussed and dramatized in the play.

14. Latino Theatre • After African American, Latino is the most extensively developed alternative theatre in the United States. • Non until the 1960s did Latino theatre begin to make an impression on the wider American consciousness, first through the work of El Teatro Camperino, a bilingual Chicano company founded by Luis Valdez in 1965.

15. Latino Theatre • A prolific playwright, Valdez has written works that include Los Vendidos, Corridos, I Don’t Have to Show You No Stinking Badges, and Bandito. • Valdez is probably best known to the general public for his film work, especially La Bamba. Valdez

16. Latino Theatre • One of the most notable Hispanic American playwrights is Maria Irene Fornes, a Cuban American who began writing plays in 1965. • Among her plays Fefu and Her Friends, The Conduct of Life. Video of Fefu and Her Friends Video of The Conduct of Life

17. Latino Theatre • Another notable Latina dramatist is Milcha Sanchez-Scott, daughter of a Colombian father and Indonesian mother. • Her plays are Latina(1980), Dog Lady, Cuban Swimmer, Evening Star, and The Old Matador. • Her best-known work is Roosters. chicagostagereview.com

18. Roosters • Roosters, which takes place in the present-day Southwest, uses cockfighting as its basic metaphor. • The father of the family is named Gallo (meaning “rooster”, a word also signifying “macho”, the male animal focused in his own needs)

19. Roosters • The primary action of the play is concerned with the struggle for dominance between the forty-year-old Gallo and his twenty-years-old son, Hector. • Gallo prefers a life focused on cockfighting, winning at which in his eyes justifies any behavior, including cheating, con games, and even murder. • Hector, on the other hand, dreams of going beyond the mountains to escape his family and the kind of life Gallo envisions for him.

20. Roosters • The struggle between two men is brought to a head in their attempts to assert ownership of Zapata, a fighting cock that Gallo considers the culmination of his efforts to breed a champion but that has been given to Hector by his grandfather, who died while Gallo was in prison.

21. Roosters • Set against this struggle between males are the three women of the family: • Juana, Gallo’s worn-down, thirty-five-year-old wife; • Chata, Gallo’s fleshy, forty-year-old sister,who “gives new meaning to the word blowsy”; • and Angela, Gallo’s fifteen-year-old daughter who wears angel wings, plays with dolls dressed as saints. Juana Gallo

22. Roosters • Unlike Gallo and Hector, both of whom are described as being unusually handsome, the women are all homely. • The men are set off by the women, like colorful roosters surrounded by drab hens, and the women apparently are expected to feel grateful to be associated with these handsome creatures.

23. Roosters • Roosters is divided into two acts and eight scenes. • The elapsed time is unclear but apparently not more than a day or two. • The atmosphere, shifting easily between realism and fantasy, is characteristic of Latino “magic realism”. • Overall, Roosters is a powerful play that has much to say about machismo, women, love, and psychological need in a male-dominated Latino culture.

24. Roosters • There are in the United States more than one hundred Hispanic American theatre groups – • Chicano, Puerto Rican, Cuban, or other categories.

25. Asian American Theatre • Asian American have also made their mark in theatre. • Asians first came to America in large numbers when Chinese workers were imported in the mid-nineteenth century to help build railroads. • Those who remained usually clustered together within cities such as San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Seattle. Asian American Theater Company

26. Asian American Theatre • When Asian Americans were depicted by white dramatists, they were usually reduced to a few stereotypes: • dutiful houseboy, inscrutable detective, • wise Confucian patriarch, • treacherous dragon lady, • or submissive Asian doll-bride.

27. Asian American Theatre • Asian Americans began to rebel against these stereotypes around 1965, writing their own plays and founding their own theatres. • Some of the most important of the companies were the East-West Players, founded in Los Angels in 1965; • the Asian Exclusion Act, founded in Seattle in 1973 and later renamed the Northwest Asian American Theatre Company; • the Asian American Theatre Workshop, founded in San Francisco in 1973; and the Pan Asian Repertory Theatre, founded in New York in 1977.

28. Asian American Theatre • Frank Chin was the first Asian American playwright to win wide recognition; • The Ckickencoop Chinaman satirized both self-stereotyping and media-stereotyping, and his The Year of the Dragon was said in 1977 to be first Asian American play ever produced in New York.

29. Asian American Theatre • The best-known Asian American dramatist is David Henry Hwang, who first came to prominence in 1980 with F.O.B. His subsequent plays include The Dance and the Railroad, Family Devotions, Face Value, The Golden Child, and several works written in collaboration with Philip Glass.

30. Asian American Theatre • Hwang’s best-known work is M. Butterfly (1988), which focuses on race, gender, and politics and suggests that Westerners view “Orientals” as submissively “feminine”, willing to be dominated by the aggressive, “masculine” West. Video of M. Butterfly

31. Asian American Theatre • Other prominent Asian American playwrights include • Ric Shiomi, Hans Ong, Ping Chong, Elizabeth Wong, Rosanna Yamagiwa, Winston Tong, Daryl Chin, and Naomi Lizuka.

32. Native American Theatre • There have been a few Native American theatre groups. • The first all-Native American company, the Native American Theatre Ensemble, was founded by Hanay Geiogamah in 1972. With support from the LaMama company in New York. Hanay L. Geiogamah Professor

33. Native American Theatre • In recent years, Geiogamah has transformed his company into the American Indian Dance Theatr, with nineteen members drawn from a dozen tribes. • The American Indian Community House in New York has long served as a community center for Native Americans living in New York and has maintained a performing arts program that has sought to revive authentic Native American rituals and performance traditions.

34. Native American Theatre • Spiderwoman Theatre, founded by three Native American sisters, was the first all-female Native American group in the United States.

35. Native American Theatre • Still other theatres and playwrights reflect the concerns of such groups as the deaf, blind, and elderly.

36. Theatre by and for Women • Women, representing as they do roughly one-half of the world’s population, cannot on one level be considered a minority. • Throughout the theatre’s history they have been relegated to a minor position. • In England they were not permitted to appear on the stage until 1661 , and though prominent as actresses thereafter, seldom did they write plays or attain positions of power in the theatre until recently.

37. Theatre by and for Women • Only gradually since World War II have women come to be accepted as directors and heads of theatre companies. • Changes have come about primarily through concerns for women’s rights, which date back to at least the nineteenth century but were given new energy by the civil rights movement that accelerated in the 1960s.

38. Theatre by and for Women • Beginning in the 1970s, a number of theatres were formed to present the work of feminist writers. • Some of the most important of these were The Looking Glass Theatre, New Georges, Six Figures Theatre Company, Voice and Vision, Women’s Interart Theatre, Spiderwoman Native American Theatre, and the Women’s Project and Productions, all in New York.

39. Theatre by and for Women • Many female playwrights have written almost exclusively for feminist theatres and have not sought a larger audience.Others have won recognition in mainstream theatres. • Among the best known of the latter group are Marsha Norman, Beth Henley, and Wendy Wasserstein.

40. Theatre by and for Women • Norman is best known for ‘night, Mother, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1983. • Beth Henley has written primarily about colorful characters in small southern towns. • She was most successful with Crimes of the Heart.

41. Theatre by and for Women • Wendy Wasserstein is best known for The Heidi Chronicles. • Other contemporary female playwrights is Paula Vogel. Her plays include And Baby Makes Seven, The Oldest Profession, The Baltimore Waltz, and The Mineola Twins. The bet known her play is How I Learned to Drive. Video of How I Learned to Drive

42. How I Learned to Drive • How I Learned to Drive brings into focus Vogel’s twin themes of incest and pedophilia, which “drive” the play. • The play was inspired by Vogel’s reading of Vladimir Nabokov’s novel Lolita about a relationship between a man in his forties and a pre-teen girl. Video of Lolita

43. How I Learned to Drive • Vogel’s nonlinear narrative is madeup of nineteen scenes that portray the sexual initiation of Li’l Bit, beginning at age eleven and continuing to age eighteen.

44. How I Learned to Drive • Li’l Bit’s family and friends from the backdrop to explain her socially conditioned responses to her sexual initiation by an adult relative. • The story’s complexity is enlarged by Peck, whose personal history is that of pedophile, voyeur, and sexual deviant.

45. How I Learned to Drive • The play begins with Li’l Bit (all family nicknames are derived from their sexual features and her nickname derives from the family’s discovery at birth that the baby’s genitals are “just a little bit”) at age thirty-something reflecting on the “secret” of her forbidden sexual life when she was an adolescent.

46. How I Learned to Drive • The play is framed by Li’l Bit’s two monologues, which set the emotional and physical landscape for the adolescent’s sexual molestation.

47. How I Learned to Drive • Li’l Bit’s unspoken lesson is the residual effects, twenty years later, of her seven-year sexual molestation during her formative adolescent years. • She is suspended in a condition of alienation from others, having become the perpetual outsider and able to feel sensations only when she is driving a car.

48. How I Learned to Drive • In her theory of memory, Paula Vogel puts weight on the sensory dimensions of Li’l Bit’s recollections – warm nights, full moon, and the fragrance of leather car seats pressing against her.

49. How I Learned to Drive • As the narrator, Li’l Bit’s control of the narrative development affords her a creative role as she puts a figurative hand into her memory bank and pulls out the sexual initiations of her youth.

50. How I Learned to Drive • Music, like sound effects, is an important feature of Vogel’s work. • She tells us that before she sits down to write a play, she makes a tape of songs and music to play continuously throughout her process.