Abstract
The plays Dutchman and The Slave show the transition from rituals of the scapegoat, through rituals of the ascendance of the new king, to rituals of initiation. From the cult of erosion of the self to the rhetoric of self-affirmation, Slave Ship and The Motion of History highlight the progression to rituals of revolt and protest. This change of staging rituals of incompletion and loss to staging rituals of political protest indicates Baraka’s doubts about veiled bohemian values and indefinite avant-gardism. Residing a middle ground, Black Nationalism has first meant for the dramatist individualism then belonging and engagement in the black resistance for civil and civic freedoms and liberties. Whereas ritual in Dutchman and The Slave convey unfulfilment and ruin, the kinaesthetic activity in the later plays bring action and agitation to the centre stage. Plays such as Slave Ship and The Motion of History picture joint action and expose large-scale movement and mobilization. This shift from a stance of apathy and political blindness to sociopolitical militancy underscores Baraka’s progression from bohemian precepts through nationalist leanings to leftist politics.
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Notes
Clayton Riley, “On black theatre,” in The black aesthetic, ed. Addison Gayle (New York: Doubleday).
Baraka’s theatre is a political theatre. The word political is comprehensive in that it entails the social, the economic, the cultural, and the ideological. Sollors asserts that in Baraka’s writings, “politics wins out over qesthetics”(Populism 246). In addition to that, Lloyd W.Brown not only conceives of Baraka’s theatre as a theatre of “ideological position”(164) but also describes Baraka as an “impassioned ideologue”(30) and as “a political writer”(Amiri Baraka 168). Moreover, Baraka in an interview with Melhem considers himself primarily as “a political activist”(Heroism 232). In the same vein, critic Jerry G. Watts in evoking Baraka’s commitment, accents that “Baraka’s political involvements have become legendary”(Amiri Baraka 17). It is therefore preferable, for purposes of accuracy and precision, to highlight that the protest in Baraka’s theatre is basically political and only secondarily social, as has been described by Harry J.Elam. For more information on Elam’s social theatre, see chapter four and six of his Taking It to The Street.
Amiri Baraka, dutchman and the slave (New York: Morrow, 1964), 9.
Augusto Boal, Theatre of the oppressed (London: Pluto Press, 2000), ix.
Transcript of the David Frost Show for January 5, 1969, 1–2.
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Azouz, s. Amiri Baraka’s Theatre of Ritual: from Staging Rituals of Unfulfilment to Performing Rituals of Political Praxis. J Afr Am St 22, 17–30 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12111-018-9390-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12111-018-9390-z