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Paul Carter Harrison Introduction Affirm the tradition, transcend the condition. —Playwrights Development Initiative (PDI), ETA Theatre/Chicago A play-wright, by definition, does not write a play, but rather constructs a dramatic event. This dramatic event is a construction of characters in a time/space mode that has elasticity and is guided along a road map or plot with a heightened poetic language that creates a spectacle in the process of revealing the hidden meaning, the mystery, of an event. Space is the place, intoned the late meta-musician Sun Ra, the spectral navigator of an intergalactic arc-kestra. Designation of place, however, requires a language with cultural signifiers that are transformative, that is, never subordinated to the fixed boundaries of social space. A night in Tunsia, a dawn at Minton’s, an afternoon at the Apollo Theater, the morning after Stompin’ at the Savoy—all contain a universe of signifiers that reside in the collective consciousness. But it is not necessary to squeeze the universe of collective experience into a finite locale, draining it of its cosmic potential as place, a place that resonates a night in New Orleans’s Congo Square, a dawn at Pittsburgh’s Crawford Lounge, an afternoon at Chicago’s Regal Theater, the morning after Jumpin’ Juba at a praise house on Daufuski Island. Construction does not imply the erection of the perfect arc that leads to predictable closure, but rather the manipulation of space with characters, words, and actions that reveal light in Darkness, as suggested in the dramaturgical strategies of Suzan-Lori Parks, who observes that her pursuit of dramatic illumination is in “the place where light is not . . . there are places in space, like black holes, where there is no light. We sometimes think of vision as the light, or we’re reaching for the light, but actually I’m more interested in the things that are unseen. The darkness is what I look for, the unknown ” (Mahone: 244). Construction implies the conscious manipulation of performance strategies needed to illuminate the path toward epiphany: the rhythm and repetition of sound, motion, and visual landscape. The devices used to advance the strategies depend on the cultural locations that inform the playwright’s iconographic placement of characters in a specific relationship to time and place. However, as George C. Wolfe observes, dramatic vision need not be circumscribed by cultural locations that allow merely a parochial intimacy with “the syncopation of Drum Corps, the exhilaration of church.” All performance devices can be incorporated into the construction of the event, whether they be the stilt walker in a Carnival parade, the gestural behavior of the masked puppets of the Bunraku, or the blackface characters of minstrel shows. African American dramatists cannot deny consciousness of the Euro-American traditions that have influenced their dramaturgical practice, nor can they disclaim an appreciation of European classics that depict events on a mythic scale that is larger than life. Black dramatists have shown great appreciation for the passion of Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire, the existential inquiry of Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh (although we were not seduced by the vacant hubris of his Long Day’s Journey into Night), the expressionistic devices of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman (which affirms the equal dramatic value of corporeal and spiritual forces), the metaphysical challenges of Edward Albee’s Tiny Alice, and the examination of America ’s mythic firmament in Sam Shepherd’s Operation Sidewinder. And we experienced a sense of kinship with the spiritual sensibilities of Ireland through bearing witness to the dramaturgical power of Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. But it was France that provided the most lasting impact in Jean Genet’s The Blacks (1961). Rather than exploit the tradition of Western realism, masked archetypes were assembled in a ritual reenactment of colonialism that offered a nonlinear stylization consistent with African dramatic traditions. The Blacks satisfied our ideological need for equity within a society antagonistic to our economic and political desire for social change. If the descriptive narrative of black life in the South were merely a matter of retelling events, William Faulkner would qualify as one of the most celebrated black authors in American literary history. But the truest barometer of black experience is how the story is told. In dramas that chronicle experience, the theme is the first thing that touches our hearts and allows us to respond empathetically. As George C. Wolfe...

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