August Wilson: A Research and Production Sourcebook by Yvonne Shafer (review)

662 BOOK REVIEWS member becomes entangled in the retelling of the oppression. Harry J. Elam, Jr., and Alice Rayner call for viewers to "recognize how we are implicated in . the sights we abhor" (280), but come dangerously close to conflating the repulsive original act with its dramatized re-enactment, thereby making one question whether they think such events should be retold on stage. Una Chaudhuri 's analysis of Brook's Mahabharata and Marcia Blumberg's "Re-Staging Resistance, Re-Viewing Women: 1990S Productions of Fugard's Hello and Goodbye and Boesman and Lena" focus on the volatile nature of cultural reception. Blumberg questions how the political impact of these texts has changed after apartheid and, more.pointedly, how the system of symbols attained through performance creates meaning in a new time and place. While audiences are used to seeing classic plays staged with a modem sensibility, Blumberg's question is interesting because the productions she analyses span a relatively short period in chronological terms, but a profoundly significant one in political tenns. Chaudhuri's essay focuses on cultural reception across place, arguing that Brook's mammoth production took place at a critical juncture where liberal humanism was giving way to p ostcolonialism as the reigning discourse. While the body of her essay takes a balanced look at the contrast between Brook's liberal-humanist ideas and his stage practice of "contradiction, multiplicity, and choice" (92), her underlying philosophical message argues against Brook's goal of staging a culturally diverse, culturally transcendent work of art. Also of note are essays on Irish theatre by Lionel Pilkington and Esther Beth Sullivan, each of whom laments Irish theatre historiography's preference for nation-building plays over ones of resistance. Sullivan locates this omission more pointedly in the area of women's theatre. Eugene Van Evren's reflective documentation of the "Cry of Asia!" tour and John Bell's look at the last decade of the Bread and Puppet theatre provide good resource material for those researching such projects, but add little by way of argument or ideas to the collection. In assembling this collection, the editors aimed to provide "some useful, much-needed remapping of contemporary political theatre" (3). If indeed the authors do succeed in this regard, their new map proves an eclectic sourcebook for contemporary political theatre, but by no means constitutes a thorough guide to its terrain. NATALIE HARROWER, YORK UNIVERSITY YVONNE SHAFER. August Wilson: A Research and Production Sourcebook. Modem Dramatist Research and Production Sourcebooks, No. 14. Westport, Cf: Greenwood, 1998. Pp. 142. $65·00. Part of the Greenwood series "Modem Dramatists Research and Production Book Reviews Sourcebooks," this work begins with a biographical introduction tracing Wilson 's life and works through 1997. Shafer addresses each of Wilson's plays, supplying plot summaries and critical overviews. The book also contains a "Primary Bibliography" including dramatic and non-dramatic works, the latter comprised of articles by Wilson, some autobiographical, others on writing methods and cultural preferences, as in the piece "I Want a Black Director." These non-dramatic writings are annotated, as are the numerous entries in the "Secondary Bibliography," a chronological arrangement of reviews, articles, chapters, and sections of books pertaining to Wilson. One of the most significant issues in the secondary material is the 1997 Wilson-Brustein controversy concerning "black culture, multiculturalism and the theater" and Wilson's advocacy of professional black theatres ([ 1I). The final section of the sourcebook , "Productions and Credits," identifies directors, other personnel, cast members, and venues. Shafer notes a number of turning points in Wilson's life. Reared in Pittsburgh , Wilson had an unrewarding early educational experience, exemplified by his having left high school in the tenth grade because one of his teachers refused to accept that he had written a long research paper on Napoleon. In 1965, Wilson heard his first recording of Bessie Smith, a moment that marked for him the significance of the blues, the musical form that would influence his dramatic concept, along with the work of Romare Bearden, Amiri Baraka, and Jorge Luis Borges. Initially a poet, Wilson derived his interest in play writing from his early association in Pittsburgh with Rob Penny and their cofounding of the...