THE jOURNAL OF

AMERICAN DRAMA AND THEATRE

Volume 8, Number 3
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Fall 1996
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THE jOURNAL OF AMERICAN DRAMA AND THEATRE
Volume 8, Number 3
Contents
BRIAN RICHARDSON, Genre, Transgression,
and the Struggle for (Self) Representation
Fall 1996
in U.S. Ethnic Drama 1
SUSAN ANTHONY, Made in Am.erica:
Adaptations of British Gothic Plays
for the American Stage: 1 790-1820 19
D. 5. NEFF, Horse vs. Crow: Sam Shepard,
Ted Hughes, and The Tooth of Crime 35
CINDA GILLILAN, Tracers: This is our Parade
A First Look at an Understudied Vietnam Drama 50
STEPHEN NUNNS, Reflections in the Mirror:
Public Arts Funding in the United States 79
BRUCE MCCONACHIE, Parlor Combat 94
CONTRIBUTORS 103
journal of American Drama and Theatre 8 (Fall 1996)
Genre, Transgression, and the Struggle for
(Self) Representation in U.S. Ethnic Drama
BRIAN RICHARDSON
: A substantially original dramatic form, which may be designated the
montage play, has recently emerged in a number of U.S. ethnic theater
communities. Though largely ignored by contemporary criticism, this
new g ~ n r is of intense ideological significance to the ethnic group it
portrays; furthermore, it raises a number of profound questions for
dramatic theory since the plays offer innovative approaches to many of
the foundational elements of drama, including time, space, cause,
character, identity, and fictional ity.
The montage play is an anti-Aristotelian form; its subject is a diverse
group, not an individual or a family. Its successive scenes range broadly
over centuries and continents, unconnected by direct causal ties though
linked by its political perspective and its larger picture of a continuous
dynamic of oppression and resistance. It makes truth claims about history
anq contests the representational practices that have denied or distorted
its collective subject. It resists closure, ending in the medias res of an
ongoing struggle for liberation. Finally, it decisively breaks the "fourth
wall" of much traditional Western drama of the last 350 years and invites
its audience to join the actors-and most of the dramatic characters-in
a common struggle. In addition to helping to recognize a new dramatic
genre (or at the very least, a significant transformation of an earlier one),
this analysis can uncover important continuities in the history of African
American drama and better contextualize other comparable experiments
with genre and convention by politically engaged "minority" writers.
It will be most useful to begin with a detailed description of a
representative work. For a paradigmatic example of the montage play,
we may go directly to Amiri Baraka's 1967 drama, Slave Ship, an account
of which should identify the distinctive features of this genre and
underscore its ideological stakes.
1
The play begins on a slave ship and
1
For a more extended discussion that situates the play within the history of
African American drama, see Kimberly W. Benston's " Vision and Form in Slave
Ship," in /mamu Amiri Baraka (LeRoi }ones): A Collection of Critical Essays, Ed.
Kimberly W. Benston (Englewood Cl iffs: Prenti ce Hall, 1978), 174-85.
2 RICHARDSON
shows Africans being transported to the New World. Yoruba expressions
and references abound. Orisha, the supreme deity, and Shango, the god
of thunder, are invoked in vain by the slaves. The gradual dehumaniza-
tion of the African warriors is presented, as is their anguish and suffering.
No specific temporal indicators obtrude; the voyage may be taking place
at any time from 1619 to 1808, and it seems indeed to be polytemporal,
representing not one but all slave voyages.
The scene then shifts abruptly to a plantation, and the white sailors
become plantation owners. Through their costume changes, they
continue to laugh, soundlessly. A particularly servile slave, characterized
by Baraka as "Tomish," performs what is called an "old-new dance for
the boss."
2
The setting finally becomes historically specific: it is 1831
on the Virginia plantation where Nat Turner is plotting his insurrection.
The character "Old Tom Slave" hears of it and immediately informs a
powerful local white man. As the lights go down, screams and gunshots
are heard, as well as sounds Baraka describes as a "combination of slave
ship and breakup of the revolt" (140). Soon we hear the drums of Africa
again and "the screams of Black and White in combat" (140). The revolt
is suppressed, and the "Tom" character is given two pork chops for
betraying his fellow slaves.
Another anti-realistic though starkly ideological historical "loop" is
represented, as the women call out Yoruba names (lfanami, Dademi,
Akiyele); then, "the same voices, as if transported in time and to the slave
forms, call names, English slave names" (Sarah, John, Everett, Willie)
(141 ). In scenes like these we are able to witness Baraka's conflating of
d isti net historical scenes and settings into an apparent identity that
nevertheless underlines significant differences. By repeating the
representations of servitude and annihilation, Baraka attempts to ensure
they will never recur.
The play now moves into the historical present. A preacher dressed
in a modern business suit appears. Baraka's stage directions identify him
as "the same Tom as before" (141 ). He repeats the name "Jesus" six
times, and utters the following words:
Yasss, we understand ... the problem. And, personally, I think
some agreement can be reached. We will be nonviolink ... to
the last ... because we understand the dignity of Pruty McBonk
and the Greasy Ghost. Of course diddy rip to bink, of vout
juice. And penguins would do the same. I have a trauma that
2
Amiri Baraka, The Motion of History and Other Plays (New York: Morrow,
1978), 138. Subsequent references will be cited in the text.
(Self) Representation in U.S. Ethnic Drama 3
the gold sewers won't integrate. Present fink. I have an enema
... a trauma, on the coaster with your wife bird shit (142,
Baraka's ellipses).
As is obvious from the syntax and rhythm of this passage, the objects
of Baraka's contempt are Martin Luther King and others who advocated
non-violent resistance. The structure of the montage play enhances this
identification by placing King within a contemptible genealogy of
submission, servility, and betrayal. On the other hand, the nationalists
who demand black power "by any means necessary" are given the
flattering pedigree of rebel slave and African warrior, as the suppressed
history of African Americans is disinterred and the seeds of racial pride
and revolutionary change are sown and nourished.
Baraka's fusion of history, myth, and parable continues as the
preacher becomes a caricature of cowardice when confronted with the
corpse of a baby "as if they had just taken the body from a blown-up
church" (142), an obvious reference to the terrorist bombing of a black
church in Birmingham by white supremacists. The preacher continues
his "Tomming" and, according to Baraka's directions, "grinning, and
jeffing, all the time, showing teeth" while trying vainly to appear
dignified as he attempts to push the baby's body behind him with his foot
(142). Here Baraka expropriates the stereotype of the African American
that disgraced so many stages and performance arenas earlier in the
century by applying it exclusively to those he considered accomoda-
tionists. By contrast, the black man who in an earlier avatar had been
both warrior and rebel now shouts in Yoruba and calls: "Give me spear
and iron. Let me kill . .. "(143). The play concludes with a successful
revolution. The arrogant, insulting off-stage white voice is silenced, the
cowardly preacher is ki lled, and actors and audience dance together.
The montage play thus chronicles significant moments in the history
of a heterogenous group over a vast expanse of space and time, restoring
lost or suppressed material-in this case a complex African origin, a
heroic tradition of black resistance, and a militant black nationalist
alternative to more convent ional and less extreme politics. It shows how
the past informs the present and the present can force us to re-read the
past. It eschews local causal connections in favor of a larger historical
pattern, and the physical presence of the same actor playing analogous
roles gives a theatrical intensification to the ever-changing yet always
familiar drama of repression and resistance. Through the repetition of a
wide range of semiotic devices, including the pervasive smells of incense
and excrement and the recurrent beating of drums throughout the
performance, the non-verbal aspects of the dramatic spectacle both frame
and engender the fusion of the historical and the contemporary.
4 RICHARDSON
The origins of this genre may be traced to the historical pageant.
Such spectacles were widespread in early twentieth century black theater
(and, for that matter, in most regional theaters around the country). W.
E. B. Du Bois, for example, frequently advocated their production and
wrote several himself, including The People of Peoples and Their Gifts to
Men (1913), a piece both educational and uplifting.
3
This work has no
dialogue, but consists of a series of illustrative processions that reveal the
many contributions of Africans to world civilization.
It is this tradition that Langston Hughes drew on in his intriguing but
virtually forgotten "poetry play" of 1938, " Don't You Want To Be
Free?"
4
This work briefly dramatizes a number of familiar scenes from
the history of African Americans, such as an idyllic existence in Africa, a
slave auction, a crushed slave rebellion, the misery of sharecropping, a
lynching, and several specimens of contemporary indignity, including
segregation and events that led to the Harlem riot of 1935. In fact, many
of the scenes sufficiently prefigure comparable episodes in Slave Ship that
one must suspect Baraka is defiantly "signifyin" on Hughes' antecedent
piece.
For all the interesting similarities (including a mingling of actors and
audience at the end of the performance), a number of telling differences
remain. Hughes' play seeks to remind its audience of known injustices,
rather than staging events that official histories have suppressed. He rarely
contests the-systems of representation that perpetuate oppression. The
tension of "Don't You Want To Be Free?" is attenuated by its numerous
songs and rhymed dialogue. Hughes' characters often identify them-
selves as allegorical figures, and the doubling of actors is rarely used for
thematic effect. The "young man" is always only a representative young
man; "the woman" who says, "I'm the child they stole from the sand/
Three hundred years ago in Africa's land,''
5
is not portrayed by the same
actress who was shown in Africa at the beginning of the play-a potential
doubling that someone like Baraka would utilize for political and
metadramatic effect. In short, Hughes' play is a chronological succession
of well known material in a somewhat conventional (if little remembered)
3
Creative Writings by W. E. B. Du Bois, ed. Herbert Aptheker (1985) 1-5, an
unnumbered volume of The Complete Published Works of W. E. B. DuBois (White
Plains, NY: Kraus-Thomson, 1982).

4
Langston Hughes, "Don't You Want To Be Free?" One Act Play (October 1939):
360-93.
5
/bid., 384.
(Self) Representation in U.S. Ethnic Drama 5
form, that nevertheless contains the seeds of the more radical theatricality
that Baraka would later distill.
Baraka has also used a more ambitious (though more sprawling) plot
and chronological compression in The Motion of History. Leslie Lee, on
the other hand, has written a different kind of montage play that
whenever possible stays within the boundaries of dramatic realism.
Colored People's Time: A History Play consists of twelve scenes that
extend from 1859 Mississippi to Alabama in 1956.
6
The author presents
vignettes of African American life (many of them little kn.own outside the
black community) in South Carolina, Virginia, Chicago, Harlem, Kansas
City, Germany, and Detroit during the intervening decades. These scenes
both restore slighted or chapters of African American history
and reveal the personal dimension of better known h.istorical events.
Thus, we witness a white labor agent recruit black workmen in Richmond
for jobs in the North, catch glimpses of the 1919 Chicago race riot,
observe laborers take turns renting a bed for eight hour stretches, and
watch a black USO singer entertain black troops in Germany. We also
see the human impact of Marcus Garvey's march through Harlem, the
second Joe Louis-Max Schmelling fight, and the announcement of the
Supreme Court's declaration of the unconstitutionality of segregation.
These scenes are framed by a prologue and epilogue set in the
present (the 1980's), during which a narrator leafs through his father's
scrapbook, articulating the events that will be dramatized and, later,
commenting obliquely on their significance. The various events are
connected by a number of theatrical devices and thematic concerns: the
sound of a clock ticking, specimens of the wide range of African
American musical forms, and the continuous resourcefulness, courage,
and eventual success of the protagonists individually and collectively
when confronted by comparable dilemmas and injustices. One of the
most profound recurrences is Lee's interrogation of black stereotypes as
he produces a complex archeology of deleterious images of blacks,
recreating their social and historical contexts, origins, and ramifications.
Thus, in the early minstrel scene (17-22), the author reveals both the
individual pain and the economic remuneration of this embarrassing
spectacle. The characters realize that if they do not provide the desired
grotesque images of themselves, white actors in blackface will. They do
so and make money, but they indicate their resistance to this kind of
representation by applying burnt cork to their own dark faces, thus
putting their performance, as it were, under erasure. As Jesse states,
6
Leslie Lee, Colored Peoples' Time: A History Play (New York: Samuel French,
1983). Subsequent citations in the text will refer to this edition.
6 RICHARDSON
"What we doin' is special, man. It's different, that's why we's better than
them buckra' minstrels. We imitatin' ol' buckra' imitatin' us. We
double, triple outs I ickin' simple buckra', Aaron" (18-19). What Henry
Louis Gates terms "signifyin(g) parody" is thus created and enacted.
7
One of the most compelling investigations of representation occurs
in the dialogue between Gus and Marcella as they watch Marcus
Garvey's procession from -Marcella's living room. Gus is delighted to see
Garvey riding in triumph in a gold chariot. Marcella finds this excessive,
if not blasphemous, and suggests Garvey is staging himself to appear
"[j]ust like God." Gus responds that he is "a damn sight better'n that
white Jesus you keep gettin' down on your knees to," and goes on to
point out that folks now have pictures of black Jesuses in their rooms:
"Colored folks' God is black now, honey!" This image is itself an
oblique fulfillment of the goals of the African-United States Church, the
halting and dangerous founding of which Lee had chronicled in the play's
first scene. But Marcella is not so easily swayed by iconography; she
retorts: "Stop bein' some parrot, Gus," suggesting that his enthusiasm is
part of a well-scripted party line (40). Here, attempts and counter-
attempts to escape the temptations of varied forms of mimicry and to
break through to some kind of authenticity are enacted in all their
richness and ambiguity.
At other times, Lee directly confronts and refutes debilitating white
stereotypes of blacks. Depicting the Montgomery bus boycott of 1956,
he dramatizes the indefatigable resistance of a people mistakenly thought
to be irresolute; in fact they maintained the boycott by walking several
extra miles each day. Lee also daringly presents a couple of common
deleterious stereotypes, such as Abner, the small time thug, only to
reinscribe and recontextualize the character: he was not "U]ust another
pimpin' colored man;" instead, "God knows there was more to him than
that" (37). The dramaturgy effectively contests the cultural master
narrative that would too facilely reduce him to "a thing" (37).
Given Lee's decision to employ the dramaturgy of realism, the actors'
doubling of roles is generally unobtrusive. Nevertheless, a number of
parallels emerge. For example, the actor playing Sampson in the first
scene stealthily moves around the stage and speaks in a muted voice as
he attempts to found an African American church; in the 1982 New York
production by the Negro Ensemble Company, the same actor (Charles
Weldon) also moved furtively and spoke softly when playing C.J ., the
man waiting in hiding to meet the labor agent. The actor playing the
7
Gates elaborates this notion in The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-
American Literary Criticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 89-124.
(Self) Representation in U.S. Ethnic Drama 7
white labor agent also portrayed the white spectator of the minstrel show.
The most important identifications may be allegorical, however; as the
narrator states at the end of the play, "Whatever we're going through,
other folks have gone through it" (77). The figures of struggle and
triumph from a lost and distorted past now become emblems of the trials
of everyday experience. Despite the very different tone and style, Lee
extends and enhances Baraka's earlier formal and ideological achieve-
ments, and in so doing gives a radically new, historically grounded
meaning to the otherwise ambivalent term, "colored people's time."
8
Other African-American playwrights have used comparable though
ultimately quite different forms in their struggles to free the stage from
Eurocentric exclusions, prejudice, and stereotyping. One is reminded of
Charles Fuller's We, a four-play history cycle, in which analogous
dilemmas confront different characters who can be portrayed by the same
actors.
9
The work of Adrienne Kennedy is relevant here: Funnyhouse of
a Negro and The Owl Answers present a number of characters, figures,
and personae-including pseudo-historical ones like Queen Victoria,
Wi II iam the Conqueror, and Shakespeare-that are repeatedly trans-
formed into new avatars, all of which are related to the themes of self-
identity and socially imposed identities. Thus, in The Owl Answers, the
protagonist She, who is the play's governing intelligence, also becomes
Clara Passmore, the Virgin Mary, the Bastard, and the eponymous Owl.
Nevertheless, Kennedy's work has a very different resonance from that of
Baraka; hers is intensely subjectiye, ethereal, obscure, and painfully
personal, even private. Kennedy's plays are often described, with
justification, as psycho-dramas. They are not examples of the montage
play so much as alternative forms used to express many of the same
concerns. The same may be said of Ntozake Shange's innovative theater
piece, Spell #7, a series of connected monologues and dialogues on race
and its representation in Euro-American culture.
Of greater relevance to this study is George C. Wolfe's The Colored
Museum, composed of eleven scenes (or, as he calls them, "exhibits")
that portray a wide range of contemporary African-American experiences,
dealing with issues of class and gender as well as Black identity, history,
8
Baraka's anteriority and influence seem to be obliquely acknowledged by the
first extended stage. direction which calls for the music of an Ashanti air, followed by
the sounds "of speechmaking, the crack of the whip, marching feet, a quick SOUND
synopsis of black history" (10). I read this as a kind of semiotic allusion to Baraka's
Slave Ship.
9
This practice has been utilized most recently by Robert Schenkkan in The
Kentucky Cycle.
8 RICHARDSON
and representation (most self-consciously in the scene called "The Last
Mama-on-the-Couch Play"). As Harry J. Elam observes, "The Colored
Museum subverts and revises the negative connotations of the term
'colored' and redefines it as an affirmation of African-American cultural
diversity" (292) .
10
The twenty-six adult roles are played by five actors,
though the doubling of roles is not usually thematically motivated.
Though more diffuse than Baraka's Slave Ship, using fantasy and parody
and mostly set in a single time period, many of the characters transcend
the limitations of the merely real (a statue narrates his history; the
audience is cast as passengers and addressed by an airline stewardess in
" "Celebrity Slave Ship") in a postmodern interrogation of the roles black
Americans work g i n s ~ and live within.
A particularly compelling example of the montage play is Native
American Hanay Geiogamah's 1973 work, Foghorn. Even a brief
synopsis can suggest the drama's range, richness, and power.
11
It begins
with a rapid compression of several centuries of Native American
History. First, one of Columbus' sailors discerns brown-skinned men and
names then Indians ("los indios," 52). Next a male settler denigrates the
Native Americans and orders them not to speak. The sounds of gunfire
are heard. White men, a female settler, and an angry male vigilante, their
lines punctuated by electronic journey music, vituperate the natives and
call for their removal. Finally, after more gunshots, a U.S. Senator
demands their relocation onto reservations. The second scene depicts the
Native American takeover of Alcatraz Island in 1969, "the first time we
had taken back land that already was ours" (54). These scenes, the
author notes, "should suggest a forced journey, such as the Trail of Tears,
spanning the centuries from 1492 to the present and stretching geographi-
cally from the West Indies to Alcatraz Island" (51). The sets and props
reflect this multiple space setting; the stage is to "reflect a mixture of the
prison yard on Alcatraz Island ... the terrain around Wounded Knee,
South Dakota, during the 1973 incident; a composite Indian reservation;
and various national monuments across the United States, such as Mount
Rushmore and the Jefferson Memorial'' (49).
10
Harry j , Elam, " Signifyin(g) on African American Theatre: The Colored Museum
by George Wolfe," Theatre }ourna/44 (1992): 292. Elam goes on to read the play as
an extended act of signifyin(g) on the dramas of Lorraine Hansberry, Adrienne
Kennedy, and Ntozake Shange. I hope my essay suggests an additional, alternative
i ntertextual genealogy.
11
Hanay Geiogamah, New Native American Drama: Three Plays (Norman:
University of Oklahoma Press, 1980), 45-82. Subsequent citations refer to this
edition.
(Self) Representation in U.S. Ethnic Drama 9
Elsewhere in the play's eleven scenes, a Catholic nun tries to convert
the people she addresses as her "blessed savages;" a school teacher
attempts to coerce her students into speaking Engl ish and following the
American way; Pocahontas tells her version of her encounter with the
disappointing Captain john Smith; and Tonto and the Lone Ranger
perform a grim scene that never appeared on any television set. Later
episodes include the enactment of a Wild West Show and a performance
of the song "Pass That Peace Pipe" juxtaposed with a list of broken
treaties.
Rather than leaving the work a series of powerful though uncon-
nected vignettes that share a common thesis, Geiogamah employs a
number of structuring techniques that give the piece a stronger total
effect. Between most scenes a sharp drilling noise is made as lights flash
and action visuals of giant chunks of earth flying through space are
projected on the playing area. By the end of the tenth scene, the drilling
sound and projected images grow more intense, and are complemented
by the sounds of rifle shots and vistas of the terrain around Wounded
Knee, where the play's last scene is set. Other connecting devices
include repeated examples of the silencing of Native American speech
and the image of Native Americans attacking their Euro-American
antagonists. The play is framed by a number of parallels in the first and
final scenes, including the presence of a narrator and reference to both
the arrival of Columbus and contemporary Native American insurrec-
tions, references that seem to underscore the powerful continuity of the
Native American experience across centuries and over divergent spaces.
Such structuring yields an original dramatic form for the presentation
of materials that had previously been excluded from American stages. It
also underscores the essential unity of Euro-American prejudice,
ethnocentricism, and even genocide, manifested across genres (historical
account, television series, popular song, documentary drama, and
allegorical fiction). It is significant that Geiogamah is as vigorous in
negating the image of the Native American in popular culture as he is in
rewriting Native American history; the one may very well be a precondi-
tion of the other. As the author points out in an interview, any lingering
identification by the Native American audience with the Lone Ranger, the
teacher, or the nun was dissolved by the spectacle of Native American
actors playing those roles in familiar situations with radically different
endings.
12
It also reveals how deftly Native Americans can re-emplot the
12
Kenneth Lincoln, "MELUS Interview: Hanay Geiogamah," MELUS 16 (1989-
90): 79.
10 RICHARDSON
master narrative of American history, supplying it with new protagonists,
an opposite moral, and a new teleology.
The Chicana theater community has also created a comparable
dramatic form. In 1981, the San Jose chapter of Women in Teatro
performed Voz de Ia mujer, a play that dramatizes "a historical range of
women's problems, from the image of Sor Juana ... , through the
revolutionary period in Mexico, to the present day Chicana."
13
Since this
play is currently unpublished, I will quote at some length a summary of
the work from Sue-Ellen Case's Feminism and Theatre:
While a poem by Sor Juana was being performed, an actor
portrayed her writing it. This stage picture was provocative in
itself, since the patriarchal institution of the Catholic Church
forbade Sor Juana to continue reading and writing. . . . This
piece was followed by songs about women in the Mexican
Revolution, with stage pictures of women bearing arms. Then
came a variety of poems about the experiences of common
women's lives, such as male-female relationships, housework
and family problems. The final poem was "La Chicana" by
Phyllis Lopez, with the Chicana portrayed by the entire cast.
14
This drama is not an isolated experiment, but part of an established
tradition in the Chicano theater movement, as Yvonne Yarbro_-Bejarano
has documented. In this specimen of Chicana "teatropoesfa," we see yet
again the reconstruction of historical representations, though from a
subject position that stresses gender as well as ethnicity. The importance
of speech and self-representation are foregrounded once more. Here too,
not only does an actor play more than one character, but a single
character is portrayed by several actors, as the montage play continues to
disclose the richness of its theatrical possibi I ities.
15
These possibilities are realized as well in Luis Valdez' short play, Los
Vendicfos (The Sellouts, 1967) where, at Honest Sancho's Used Mexican
Lot, figures representing different moments in the history of Anglo
stereotypes of Chicanos are on sale. The stereotypes include the farm
13
Sue-EIIen Case, Feminism and Theatre (New York: Routledge, 1988), 106-07.
14
/bid., 107.
15
For additional material on the impressive achievements of the Chicana theater,
see Yvonne Yarbro-Bejarano, "Teatropoesia by Chicanas in the Bay Area: Tongues of
Fire," Revista Chicano-Requena 11 (1983) : 78-94, and her "Chicana's Experience in
Coll ective Theatre: Ideology and Form," Women and Performance 2.2 (1985) : 45-58.
(Self) Representation in U.S. Ethnic Drama 11
worker, the revolucionario, the urban tough ("Johnny Pachuco"), and the
modern Mexican-American yuppie. The revolutionary is at once a figure
of Mexican history, the Hollywood version of Villa or Zapata, the "Latin
lover" of the SO's, and also the Frito Bandito of advertising infamy. A
secretary from the Reagan administration, who had come to purchase a
dark face (but not too dark, she cautions) for ceremonial purposes, is
dissatisfied by all but the yuppie. In the end, he turns out to be as
incorruptible as the other "models;" all are acting out the roles expected
of them in order to defeat their Anglo antagonists.
Finally, I wish to draw attention to Ping Chong's Nuit Blanche: A
Select View of Earthlings, a quasi-montage play that may point to future
developments of this new genre.
16
The work is composed of a number
of discrete scenes that are both elegiac and menacing, but that bear no
obvious relation to each other. The temporal settings range from the first
half of the nineteenth century to the nineteen seventies, and the
represented places include South America, the Carolinas, and an
unnamed Third World country (in Africa?) on the verge of a revolution.
The piece is multi-ethnic and multi-racial, concerning what the author
calls "the problem of how whole cultures are unable to interact
harmoniously" (3) . The play itself was conceived as a kind of "global
newspaper," a "mirror of human beings and our superstitions" (4).
Although it is probably impossible to provide a definitive reading of this
multi-media work, one may discern a number of substantial threads
running through it. One is the legacy of various types of oppression,
including ethnic, cultural, imperial, and gender-based forms; another is
the continuous spectacle of transformation-old patterns of domination
are regularly transcended, even as other obstacles persist and newer ones
emerge. The stage directions emphasize the continuity of these experi-
ences over time by explicitly drawing attention to the same actors'
portrayals of comparable characters (13, 27), though the precise nature
of this identification is not immediately evident. In his preface Chong
states that "Nuit Blanche is really about human history, about the way
history evolves vis-a-vis the two characters in the plantation who wind up
in their respective worlds later on" (4). But the exact nature of this
identity-whether the characters separated by several generations are
descendants, avatars, or allegories of each other-is left unstated. This
makes the work all the more suggestive and all-encompassing, and allows
us to view it as a kind of global, multi-ethnic, and postmodern montage
play.
16
Between Worlds: Contemporary Asian-American Plays, ed. Misha Berson (New
York: Theatre Communications Group, 1990), 1-28. Subsequent citations refer to this
edition.
12 RICHARDSON
It should be helpful anhis point to contrast the montage play with
other comparable forms. Baraka, in his preface to the volume that
includes Slave Ship, identifies the most obvious of these, though he
describes it in terms that simultaneously reveal his own divergence from
the model: "Slave Ship is a pageant, like my grandmother had in Bethany
Baptist Church, with the old ladies dressed up in white sheets, telling the
history of Bible times. But," the author quickly adds, "this pageant is
more a scenario, a hot note of rage to be expanded, so that ... we can
all learn to be ourselves, now."
17
Though he declines to recognize the sustained tradition of the
pageant in the history of African American drama, he is certainly justified
in stressing the differences between his work and earlier comparable
ventures. Biblical and historical pageants, which perhaps descend
directly from Medieval liturgical dramas, are still frequently enacted by
reverential if amateur groups throughout the West. These performances
act out a Biblical story or ideologically streamlined historical (or, more
accurately, pseudo-historical) event, I ike the founding of St. Augustine,
Florida. The montage play, or "scenario," in Baraka's terms, both covers
a much greater temporal expanse and geographical range and, more
importantly, collapses differences as it thrusts distant history into the
present. In addition, in Geiogamah's play history, legend, and stereotype
are exposed and critiqued, rather than fused into the specious teleology
of the conventional pageant.
The ruthless historicizing and consequent demands on audience
identification and political engagement similarly distinguish the montage
play from the interlocking individuals of Schnitzler's La Ronde, the
comparatively static symbiosis of the community in Wilder's Our Town,
and the Verfremdungseffekt sought by Brecht ,in his deliberately episodic
constructions.
18
In the work of Baraka, Geiogamah, and the Women in
Teatro Collective the most far-flung assemblage of episodes always
repeats the same cruel story-a story whose reenactment demands its
abolition. The montage play's temporal sweep and its collective subject
also separate it from more recent dramas like Arthur Kopit's Indians
(1969) or john Spurling's The British Empire: Part One (1982) that weave
a number of historical flashbacks, cinema-like, around the scenes devoted
to the central character.
17
The Motion of History and Other Plays, 11.
18
1n his interview with Kenneth Lincoln, Geiogamah dismisses the connection
of his work with that of Brecht (70-71) and notes that Foghorn was originally
conceived as a psychodrama not unlike those written by Adrienne Kennedy.
(Self) Representation in U.S. Ethnic Drama 13
One play to uti I ize the montage form not written by a U.S. ethnic
author (though it probably derives from their work) is, not surprisingly,
a powerful anti-colonialist piece: Howard Brenton's The Romans in
Britain (1980). Here, three historical periods-the Roman invasion of
Britain, the Saxon incursion into England, and the contemporary British
occupation of Northern Ireland-are juxtaposed to produce an intense
political effect. Here too, successive generations of oppressors and
victims are portrayed by many of the same actors. It might also be
observed that The Trial of Dedan Kimathi, by Kenyan anti-colonialist
writers Ngugi wa Thiong'o and Micere Githae Mugo, begins with a four-
scene mime of "the Black Man's History" that seems to chronicle the
enslavement of West Africans and the subsequent brutalization of their
descendants in the western hemisphere. This niime is enacted again as
Kimathi is tortured, just offstage, at the behest of the English colonial
authorities. One wonders whether this powerful scene is indebted to
Baraka, who Ngugi met at a conference in Japan the year before Kimathi
was completed.
The montage play, we may conclude, is a significant contributi9n to
the forms of world drama and in a number of important respects
transcends the traditional dramatic pageant. Equally significant, it is a
form that seems to have been invented simultaneously by different
authors to represent disparate ethnic groups in the United States. The
dates of composition coincide with moments of profound social upheaval
that the plays both reflect and help to engender. Indeed, there seems to
be a clear connection between social revolution and the new form that
both depicts and encourages insurrectionary acts: the plays of Hughes,
Baraka, and Geiogamah conclude with scenes of rebellion, while Valdez'
play shows a successful sortie against a government agency and ends
with a call for revolution. That disparate oppressed communities would
independently invent analogous aesthetic weapons to restore their history
and reconstruct their social identity is not surprising. After all, the
struggles by Chicano groups, the American Indian MoveJTlent, and other
minority rights organizations developed largely independent of one
another along the lines pioneered by the Black Power movement.
At the same time, it is difficult to resist speculating on possible
genealogies. I suspect that Baraka (1967), Valdez (1967), and Geiogamah
(1973) independently invented the form, and that Lee and Wolfe were
well aware of Baraka's plays. Ping Chong may have known of
Geiogamah's work- both authors had their plays produced at La Mama;
and the Chicana collective would have known of Valdez' work. Earlier
versions and adaptations of the pageant form are also of course potential
14 RICHARDSON
sources that should not be ignored, especially Baraka's possible transfor-
mation of Hughes' obscure and rather inaccessible "poetry play."
19
Recognition of this emerging tradition can shed light on the
interpretation of individual plays; I hope the genealogy adumbrated
above places George C. Wolfe's The Colored Museum in a tradition
different from though complementary to that tradition of signifying
suggested by Harry Elam. On the other hand,_ analysis of these works
qualifies Kimberly Benston's assertion that:
the path of modern Black drama's aesthetic describes a curve
which moves dialectically from quasi-naturalism and overt rage
against Euro-American institutions toward the shaping of
uniquely Afro-American mythologies and symbolisms, flexibility
of dramatic form, and participatory theater within the Black
community .. . . It is a process that could be described alterna-
tively as a shift from drama-the spectacle observed-to
ritual-the event which dissolves traditional divisions between
actor and spectator, between self and other.
20
Intriguingly, this description for the most part is equally predicable of
comparable plays from very different ethnic traditions. Though it cannot
embrace the contemporary realism of Charles Fuller or August Wilson,
Benstori's analysis is perhaps even more illuminating, if also more
limited, than he suspects.
This new genre is signally capable of problematii:ing conventional
notions of dramatic theory. Traditional concepts of plot and space may
need to be re-thought to accommodate the abrupt yet fluid shifts across
centuries and continents of a diverse non-unitary subject that nevertheless
continues to experience analogous persecutions. Causal connection from
scene to scene is abandoned in favor of the demonstration of a larger,
insistent causal dynamic that gives these wildly heterogenous works an
unsettling compression, even unity. The characters-if that is the right
term for the varied collection of vignettes, stereotypes, fabrications, and
19
Samuel Hay, in African American Theatre: An Historical and Critical Analysis
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), suggests other possible genealogical
affiliations, noting resemblances between Wolfe's Colored Museum and Hughes'
" Don't You Want to Be Free?" (56), while noting that Hughes' play took its plot from
Du Bois' 1913 pageant, "The Star of Ethiopia" (24).
2
Kimberly W. Benston, "The Aesthetic of Modern Black Drama: From Mimesis
to Methexis," in The Theatre of Black Americans, ed. Errol Hill (New York: Applause,
1987), 62-63.
(Self) Representation in U.S. Ethnic Drama 15
historical personages-as individuals, are largely arbitrary. As representa-
tives of the lived, group experience of the audience, they are however
presented as both typical and realist ic. Although individual episodes
attain resolution, the plays resist closure as thoroughly as history does.
From the perspective of the theatrical spectacle, we find in the body of
the actor a contradiction of and antidote to the ephemerality of the
individual character-presentation augments and inverts representation.
In production such plays, precisely because of their political and
formal intensity, can engender a divided audience response that critical
theory has yet to come to grips. with even as new modes of audi-
ence/actor/author identification threaten to tear down the invisible walls
within which Euro-American convention and theory have imprisoned the
theatrical performance. One knows very clearly Baraka's intentions in
Slave Ship; one knows which characters he wishes us to despise and
which deserve our empathy and emulation. The characters, in short, are
to make agents of the audience in the world that both groups jointly
inhabit. Theories that question the emancipatory potential of
carnivalesque literature might do well to closely consider the insurrec-
tionary spectacles that conclude the plays of Baraka, Geiogamah, and
Valdez discussed above. These works resist recuperation into hegemonic
discourse in part because they dramatize and denounce the most
prevalent methods of recuperation.
This brings us to the most interesting challenge these works pose for
contemporary theory: the question of representation. For virtually every
variety of formalist and poststructural ist theory, every I iterary representa-
tion is always already fictitious. Robert Weimann, in an attempt to move
beyond poststructural ist stances, has recently argued that
Michel Foucault's view of the ultimate hegemony of discourse
leaves almost as much representational practice out of account
as does the traditionally mimetic approach [of] Erich Auerbach
or Georg Lukacs .. . . Even more important ... both these quite
different approaches may be said to appear monistic in that the
gaps and links between what is representing and what is
represented are viewed dogmatically, either in terms of rupture
and discontinuity. or in terms of closure and continuity.
21
21
Robert Weimann, "Text, Author-Function, and.Society: Towards a Sociology
of Representation and Appropriation in Modern Narrative," in Literary Theory Today,
eds. Peter Collier and Helga Geyer-Ryan (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990), 92. For another
cogent critique of the poststructuralist position, see Barbara Foley, Telling the Truth:
The Theory and Practice of Documentary Fiction (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1986), 25-41.
16 RICHARDSON
The montage play, by aggressively attacking conventional representa-
tional practices and offering an alternative mimesis that is presented as
more accurate, and not simply different, beneficial, or progressive,
emerges as precisely the kind of text that needs to be theorized more
effectively.
It is also the case that there is a particular urgency involved in the
representation of minority groups that is usuatly occluded in most
contemporary theory. As Stephen Siemon, discussing postcolonial
representational practices, observes:
Whereas a post-modernist criticism would want to argue that
I iterary practices . . . expose the constructed ness of all
textuality ... , an interested post-colonial critical practice would
want to allow for the positive production of oppositional truth-
claims .. .. It would retain for post-colonial writing, that is, a
mimetic or referential purchase to textuality, and it would
recognize in this referential drive the operations of a crucial
strategy for survival in marginalized social groupsY
Siemon's statements can be applied virtually in toto to U.S. ethnic
I iterature, where the importance of the referential function is painfully
obvious; indeed, as we have seen, the act of representation frequently is
itself a major thematic concern of the work.
The question of accuracy in representation has always been central
to African American I iterature. William Wells Brown's 1858 play The
Escape: or A Leap for Freedom was successful in large part because it
constituted an effective intervention in contemporary representations of
slavery. As one review noted, it was "in itself a masterly refutation of all
apologists for slavery ... abounding in wit, satire, philosophy, argument
and facts."
23
A fictional frame allowed for a more accurate depiction of
the social world than most putatively "nonfictional" writings of the
period.
22
Stephen Siemon, "Modernism's Last Post," in Past the Last Post: Theorizing
Post-Colonialism and Post-Modernism, eds. lan Adam and Helen Tiffin (Calgary:
University of Calgary Press, 1990), 5.
23
Cited in Eleanor W. Traylor, "Two African American Contributions to Dramatic
Form," in The Theatre of Black Americans, 57.
(Self) Representation in U.S. Ethnic Drama 17
As William Andrews recently observed, during the antebellum era
"black writers who aimed at a serious hearing knew that the authority
they aspired to was predicated on the authenticity that they could project
into and through a text;" furthermore, "the raw material of their stories
... would have to sound factual," and the act of narration "would have
to sound truthful or risk suspicion about its sincerity."
24
The novels of
these writers thus problematize the accepted hierarchical relation
between nonfiction and the fictional, and thereby demand "that readers
scrutinize the basis on which they accept a given discourse . .. as
fictional, fictive, or real."
25
In 1915 Du Bois called for black drama that would contest existing
stereotypes and restore lost history:
we should try to loose the tremendous emotional wealth of the
Negro and the dramatic strength of his problems through writing,
the stage, pageantry, and other forms of art. We should resurrect
forgotten ancient Negro art and history and we should set the
black man before the world as both a creative artist and a strong
subject for artistic treatment.
26
The struggle over representation articulated by Du Bois extends, as we
have seen, into the present via the montage play and related forms.
Perhaps now this issue can begin to be given the larger theoretical
attention it deserves.
The montage play, by pointing out the continuity of stereotyping in
literature, history, and popular culture, insists that some representations,
the most egregious and slanderous, are not merely deleterious, but false
as well. The cumulative effect of these plays is to call for a new theory
24
William Andrews, "The Novelization of Voice in Early African American
Narrative," PMLA 105 (1990): 23.
25
Andrews, 27. See Carla l. Peterson, "Doers of the Word": African-American
Women Speakers and Writers in the North (1830-1880) (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1995), 146-75, for additional discussion of how "fictionalization functioned as
a means through which early African-American writers could counter or supplement
'official' historical accounts by narrating their own version of history" (147).
26
Cited in Errol Hill, "Introduction" to The Theatre of Black Americans, 3.
18 RICHARDSON
of representation that can begin to adjudicate between rival versions of
the real, if only by revealing the enormous stakes of misrepresentation
and the unconquerable will of marginalized groups to self-representation.
As Baraka stated in his essay, "The Revolutionary Theater:" "we will
change the [traditional] drawing rooms into places where real things can
be said about a real world."
27
It is time for mainstream dramatic theory
to attempt to follow Baraka into those previously unimagined places.
27
Amiri Baraka, Selected Plays and Prose of Amiri Baraka (New York: Morrow,
1979), 131.
journal of American Drama and Theatre 8 (Fall 1996)
Made in America:
Adaptations of British Gothic Plays for the
American Stage: 1 790 - 1820
SUSAN ANTHONY
Gothic plays, sometimes described as works that attempt to create a
mysterious, foreboding atmosphere, first appeared in major theatrical
centers of the United States in the 1790s.
1
Because audiences of this era
preferred English plays, believing them to be of finer quality, most of the
Gothic plays, like other plays of the period, were imported from England
and presented, frequently unaltered, on the American stage.
2
However,
at least four American plays did appear during this period. John Stokes,
John Turnbull, and William Dunlap each wrote Gothic plays for the
American stage: john Stokes wrote The Forest of Rosenwald, based on
Matthew Lewis' play Raymond and Agnes;
3
john Turnbull wrote The
Wood Daemon, based on Matthew Lewis'play One O'Clock!; or The
Knight and the Wood Daemon; and William Dunlap wrote Fontainville
Abbey, based on Ann Radcliffe's novel The Romance of the Forest.
4
1
1n Gothic Drama From Walpole to Shelley (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1947; reprint Millwood, NY: Kraus Reprint, 1977), Bertrand Evans notes the
Gothic plays share features associated with gothic novels, such as "specialized
settings, machinery, character types, themes, plots, and techniques selected and
combined to serve a primary purpose of exploiting mystery, gloom, and terror," 5.
2
So great was the feeling against native plays that William Dunlap did not claim
Fontainville Abbey as his own play at its premiere in 1795. In his History of the
American Theatre (New York: J. Orancin, 1797; reprint New York: Burt Franklin,
1963), Dunlap commented that if audiences had heard that an American had written
the pl ay, that "would have been enough to condemn it,'' 264.
3
john Stokes, The Forest of Rosenwald (New York: Dramatic Repository, 1821;
reprint Three Centuries of Drama, Readex Microprint). Matthew G. Lewis, Raymond
and Agnes; or The Travelers Benighted (New York: Samuel French, n.d.; English and
American Drama of the Nineteenth Century, Readex Microprint) .
4
John Turnbull , The Wood Daemon (Boston: B. True, 1808; reprint, Three
Centuries of Drama, Readex Micropri nts); Matthew G. Lewis, One O'Clock!; or The
Knight and the Wood Daemon (London: Simpkin and R. Marshall, 1824; reprint,
20 ANTHONY
Dunlap also altered 8/uebeard by George Colman the Younger for the
New York stage.
5
Although other American playwrights may have
adapted British plays for the American stage, they did not claim the new
plays as their own, whereas these four plays have been published as
American works. Each of these plays has a British counterpart that
appeared on the London stage at approximately the same time.
James Boaden wrote the British play Fountainville Forest in 1794 and
the American William Dunlap wrote Fontainville Abbey in 1795.
6
Both
plays are set in the French countryside where Lamotte and his family
have taken shelter in a ruined abbey owned by the evil Marquis of
Montalt. Lamotte attempts to rob the Marquis and when the Marquis
threatens to press charges, Lamotte reluctandy agrees to help him seduce
Lamotte's adopted daughter Adeline. Meanwhile, Adeline discovers a
parchment in the abbey which reveals that the Marquis murdered his
own brother. When the Marquis attempts to seduce Adeline, he learns
of her discovery and orders Lamotte to kill her. Lamotte is unable to kill
Adeline and so prepares to face the Marquis' charges, but an old servant
of the Marquis comes to the trial and testifies that the Marquis did indeed
murder his brother. At this point in the British version, the Marquis
commits suicide; in the American version, the Marquis is prevented from
taking his life and is instead forced to stand trial.
The British play Raymond And Agnes; or The Travellers Benighted,
by Matthew Lewis, appeared in 1809 and the American The Forest of
Rosenwald appeared in 1821. Both plays are set in Spain and begin with
the hero Raymond and his servant Theodore leaving home to travel; they
stop in Madrid at an inn and see Agnes leaving for the convent with her
governess. Raymond and his servant are taken to the cottage of Baptista,
who heads a band of murderers. Baptista's wife Marguerette was forced
to marry him. She hopes to free herself by helping Raymond to escape.
Agnes and her governess arrive at the cottage as well. Baptista gives
everyone drugged wine, but Raymond does not drink; instead, he feigns
sleep. As Baptista is about to kil.l all of them, Marguerette stabs him and
leads the others to safety. Agnes arrives at her new home and learns that
English and American Drama of the Nineteenth Century, Readex Microprint).
William Dunlap, Fontainville Abbey in Adaptations of European Plays (New York:
Scholars' Facsimiles & Reprints, 1988).
5
Each of these plays received at least three productions at a major theatre in New
York, Philadelphia, Charleston, or Boston.
6
James Boaden, Fountainville Forest, in The Plays of James Boaden, ed. Steven
Cohan (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1980).
Made in America 21
she must enter the convent for life. She notifies Raymond that she will
escape that night, disguised as the Bleeding Nun. When Raymond sees
the figure of the Bleeding Nun he assumes it is Agnes, but it is really the
spectre of Agnes' murdered mother, who begs Raymond to save her
daughter. Agnes falls into the hands of the robbers again. When she
rejects their offers of marriage, they prepare to kill her. At this point,
Raymond, Theodore and Marguerette arrive, vanquish the robbers, and
save Agnes.
Another play by Matthew Lewis, One O'Clock!; or The Knight and
the Wood Daemon, appeared in London in 1807. The Wood Daemon,
by American John Turnbull, premiered in Boston in 1808. Both plays are
set in Germany. Una, the heroine, is about to marry the mysterious
Count Hardyknute, against the advice of her aunt (in the British version)
or sister (in the American version) Clothilda. Clothilda tells Una that her
own adopted child Leolyn is the rightful Count, and that Count
Hardyknute is an evil villain who usurped the title. Una determines to
marry the Count even though she still loves the poor but honest Oswy.
When the Count sees Leolyn, he recognizes him as the rightful heir and
decides to kill him by making him the annual sacrifice for the Wood
Daemon. Una tries to rescue the boy but is captured by the Count, who
informs her that he has made a pact with the Wood Daemon: he must
deliver a human sacrifice each year on the same date before one o'clock
in the morning or he himself will be the Wood Daemon's eternal slave.
Because Una has rescued Leolyn, she must now be the sacrifice. As the
Count prepares to stab Una, e o l y ~ pushes forward the hand of the giant
clock. It strikes one o'clock and the Wood Daemon rises and whisks
Count Hardyknute off to hell. ,
The last play, George Colman the Younger's Bluebeard, appeared
first in England; then William Dunlap altered the play for the American
stage in 1806. These plays are very similar. In each, Fatima loves Selim
but is forced by her ambitious father to marry the wealthy Abomolique,
even though the approved suitor has had several wives die under
mysterious circumstances. Fatima, accompanied by her sister Irene and
her father Ibrahim, move to Abomolique's castle. Abomolique tells
Fatima that he must leave on business and gives her the keys to the castle,
cautioning her not to open one certain door. Fatima and her sister tour
the castle and come upon the mysterious door; as they near it, they hear
moans. Fatima, fearing that someone is hurt, opens the door and
discovers a room streaked with blood. Within the room is a skeleton
holding a dart. When Fatima and her sister turn to flee, they drop the
special key and break it. When Abomolique returns he demands to see
all the keys and quickly learns that Fatima has seen the secret chamber.
He tells her that she must die and drags her to the secret chamber. As he
22 ANTHONY
is about to kill her, Selim breaks down the wall and fights the villain. As
Abomolique falls near the skeleton, it plunges a dart into his heart.
Although similar in many respects, the American versions of the plays
do differ slightly from the British, and in view of the overall similarities
these differences assume a greater importance. Playwrights (and theatres)
had to please their audiences in order to survive, particularly at this time
in American history when anti-theatrical prejudice was just abating. The
fact that playwrights altered the texts at all suggests that they believed the
revised plays would prove more acceptable to American audiences than
the British versions. Thus, a comparison of the American and British
plays may offer insights into prevailing attitudes about language, class
structure, religion, and appropriate behavior for women in America
between 1 790 and 1830.
The American plays often differ from the British versions in their
language. The American plays use more contractions and often simplify
spelling; for example, the word "honour" becomes "honor" and the
monster "Hacho" becomes "Ako" in the American version of The Wood
Daemon. American playwrights also tend to use less flowery speech as
illustrated by the following comparison of a brief scene from the
Fontainville plays:
British
Adel: Beseech you, stay, my
Lord! Lamotte would speak-
my father would explain!
Lam: Return! Return! My Lord,
vouchsafe one word-in pri-
vate!
Marq: You best know whether
'tis prudent to grant this after
what has past between us.
You can have nought to say,
but what with me your family
may share.
7
7
Boaden, Fountainville Forest, 17.
8
Dunlap, Fontainville Abbey, 171 .
American
Adel : Oh my good lord, my
father would explain.
Marq: (admiring) Thy father!
Well, sir, speak.
Lam. : In private, sir.
Marq: Sure these may hear it.
8
Made in America 23
The idea that Americans preferred plain speech is further supported
in the final scene of the American play Fontainville Abbey wherein La
Motte tells the judge, "A plain, unvarnish'd tale, my lord, requires no
tutor' ed orator to set it forth ."
9
Although differences in language used in the American and British
plays seem apparent, differences of characterization are more subtle. On
the surface the characters in both sets of plays are very similar, usually
bearing the same names and often uttering nearly identical speeches.
Each play features a threatened heroine, a murdering vi llain, and a
virtuous hero. However, American characters occasionally exhibit
different responses to situations and often express different sentiments
from their British counterparts.
American plays seem to attack rigid class structure by deleting
references to class differences or by adding references to the equality of
all men. For example, in The Wood Daemon, American playwright John
Turnbull suggests that a monarch must earn his or her subjects' support:
British
Count: Not that I conquered
forms my glory; but that I con-
quered in the cause of justice;
sceptres are only valuable
when extended to bless; and if
ever I sighed to possess
unbounded power, it was that I
might confer unbounded
blessings.
10
American
Count: 'Twas not to gratify my
own ambition that I con-
quered, to protect the humble
and chastise the insolent.
Crowns are only worthy of
honor when they encircle the
brows of virtue, and if ever I
sighed for unbounded power,
it was only that I might diffuse
unbounded happiness.
11
Turnbull also removes the line in which the Count refers to himself as
"sovereign." In another example, the evil Marquis in the British
Fountainville Forest and the American Fontainville Abbey disparages
Lamotte:
9
Dunlap, Fontainville Abbey, 201.
10
Lewis, One O'Clock, 28.
11
Turnbull, 15.
24
British
Marq: Thou wretched fool,
who wi II believe thee? When
grac'd with all the eloquence
of rank, I stand to answer to
the sullied charge made by an
outlawed gambler, and a rob-
ber. Can you ere hope it will
be credited?
Lam: If I have saved her, I
shall die with transport.
12
ANTHONY
American
Marq: 'Tis not for men like
thee to blast superiors; The
breaths of thousands, reptiles
like to thee, can never dim a
noble's lustrous name ...
Lam: Thou now hast uttered
truth. Yet know, proud lord,
that even where grim oppres-
sion holds his court, still is
there some observance paid to
justice.
13
Unlike its British counterpart, the American play adds a reference to
equality.
14
In addition to emphasizing social equality, the American playwrights
make more religious references. In the British Fountainville Forest, the
heroine's adopted father is supposed to kill her, but later reports that he
was unable to commit the crime. In the American version, the playwright
adds an entire scene in which the father, at the bedside of the sleeping
heroine, struggles with his conscience. As he aims the dagger at her
heart, he is moved by the heroine's innocent face and drops to his knees
to pray. He then rises, exclaiming, "Yes I'm resolv'd. Demons of hell,
ye're [sic] gone."
15
He exits, saved from mortal sin by prayer. American
plays also emphasize that heaven will protect and reward the virtuous.
Although the British plays also provide happy endings for the virtuous,
12
Boaden, 62.
13
Dunlap, Fontainville Abbey, 194.
14
The Ameri can version of Bluebeard also includes a reference to equality. This
play follows the British version almost verbatim until the final scene where the
American playwright inserts a section in whi ch Selim frees the slaves of Abomolique,
and the slaves respond "Thanks to our deliverer," 51.
15
Dunlap, Fontainville Abbey, 190.
Made in America 25
American plays belabor the point. For instance, the British 8/uebeard
ends with the struggle between Selim and Abomolique in which the
villain is ki lied. At the end of the American 8/uebeard, however, the
characters thank heaven for their escape, exclaiming," ... Let us away
from this rude scene of horror, and bless the providence which nerves the
arm of virtue to humble vice and oppression."
16
Another example of
religious fervor is revealed in a comparison of the ending lines in the
Wood Daemon plays. The British play ends with Clotilda's lines, but the
American play continues with Una's heartfelt thanks to Heaven:
British
Clot: My Child, my treasure!
kneel, vassals, kneel! Behold
your long lost prince! Behold
the Count of Holstein!
17
-End of play-
American
Clot: My Child! my Child! And
dost thou live? Heroic Una, savior
of our infant prince! Instrument
of Omnipotent Providence! Ac-
cept the tribute of a happy
mother's thanks!
Una: To Heaven our thanks are
due! To heaven, then, let us pour
forth the gratitude of our sou Is! Its
allseeing eye has pierced the Cav-
ern's gloom-0-its unerring
hand of justice has snatched the
helpless victim of mad ambition
from the ponderous dart of death!
Rejoice! Virtue and innocence
reign tri umphant.
18
American plays also stress that heaven will punish the wicked. In the
American version of The Wood Daemon, one character attributes the
villain's horrible demise to heavenly justice, saying, "The shameless
wretch, who blasphemingly defied Almighty vengeance, has felt its ireful
16
Dunlap, 8/uebeard, 51.
17
Lewis, One O'Clock, 66.
18
Turnbull , 31.
26
ANTHONY
arm . . .. "
19
Even the vi II a ins themselves believe they will be punished.
In Turnbull's The Wood Daemon, the villain, unlike his British counter-
part, states, "Better had it been, had I still remained in my original crust
of deformity, the monster nature made me, than to be transformed at such
a price of crime to what I am ... . "
20
Throughout the American plays the
characters comment on virtue or the lack thereof and credit Heaven with
direct intervention in reward or punishment.
American and British plays also differ in their treatment of sexuality.
American playwrights usually omit sexual references. For example, a
comparison of the British play Raymond and Agnes to the American
Forest of Rosenwald reveals a difference in the hero's assessment of
Agnes: In the British version he exclaims, " What a divinity! What a
shape!"
21
In the American play the hero says merely, "What a
divinity!"
22
Similarly, in the British One O'Clock!; or The Knight and the
Wood Daemon, Una is under the spell of a love charm from the villain,
who declares that it will seduce all female hearts.
23
In the American
version of The Wood Daemon, however, the playwright eliminates the
device of the love charm; instead of desiring the Count's person, Una
desires only his wealth and position. American plays also avoid any
extended discussion of virginity, serious or comic. In Raymond and
Agnes, the British Cunnegonde, presented as old, vain, and unattractive,
makes repeated references to her virginity. For example, at the convent
of St. Clair, she says, "Adieu dear mother and when a few more years
are passed over my head, I too may leave the temptations of mankind,
and take the vows of eternal virginity within the walls of St. Clair."
24
The
American counterpart Beatrice makes no such remark. Later in the British
play Cunnegonde again refers to her virgin state crying, "Oh that I had
dedicated myself to a life of perpetual virginity in the holy convent of St.
Clair! Then should I have escaped the dangers with which my innocence
19
/bid.
20
Turnbull, 28.
21
Lewis, Raymond and Agnes, 7.
22
Stokes, 9.
23
Lewis, One O'Clock, 32.
24
Lewis, Raymond and Agnes, 7.
Made in America 27
is surrounded."
25
Once again, the American character omits this speech.
Overall, Amer ican characters do not exhibit any interest in the physical
charms of other characters, nor do they make any humorous references
to virginity.
Another topic treated differently by the American and the British
playwrights is the social behavior of female characters. The American
versions of the plays present the female character as less self-sufficient
than her British counterpart-unless she is directly aided by heaven. For
example, in both The Forest of Rosenwald and in Raymond and Agnes,
the character of Agnes is described as "innocent" and "delicate." In the
British play, delicate Agnes manages to gun down a villain; whereas in
the Amer ican play, Agnes runs upstage during the climactic fight scene
and waits for the men to save her.
26
If an American heroine is assertive
and self-reliant in a play, she attributes her unconventional actions to
divine guidance. For example, in Fontainville Abbey, although the
American Adeline stands up and accuses the villain in a public trial
whereas the British Adeline is represented by males, the American
heroine hastens to explain that her unconventional behavior was inspired
by Heaven: "Heav'n hath preserved me from his baneful arts, that I might
meet him, face to face, and blast him."
27
Overall, the American female
characters appear more passive, exhibiting less assertiveness and self-
sufficiency than the British characters.
If a female character in an American play does act unconventionally
and if she fails to attribute her deed to heavenly guidance, she is
characterized as morally flawed. In both the Forest of Rosenwald and in
Raymond and Agnes, Marguerette, reluctant wife of the bandit Baptista,
stabs her husband in order to free herself and the captives. The play-
wrights differ in their justification of Marguerette's actions. In the British
play, Marguerette stabs Baptista as he is about to murder the innocent,
sleeping heroine. In the American play, Marguerette stabs Baptista as he
is descending the stairs, making her deed seem cold-blooded. The British
playwright also allows Marguerette to justify her life with Baptista; in the
British play, Marguerette explains, " .. . necessity, not choice, has made
me what I am."
28
The American playwright omits this line, permitting
25
Lewis, Raymond and Agnes, 14.
26
1n the British play, the stage directions note that the villain Jacques "is shot by
Agnes, " 24.
27
Dunlap, Fontainville Abbey, 23.
28
Lewis, Raymond and Agnes, 14.
28 ANTHONY
Marguerette no excuses for her questionable life. Finally, .in both plays,
Marguerette has an infant son. In the British version, she automatically
takes him along when she leads the captives to safety; in the American
version she forgets him. Although Marguerette eventually returns for the
baby, her momentary forgetfulness suggests that she is an unfit mother.
29
The British playwright makes Marguerette a more sympathetic character;
the American playwright portrays her as morally flawed and unwomanly.
Thus, in the American play, Marguerette's aggressive, unconventional
behavior is aligned with undesirable qualities.
In addition to demonstrating that American female characters behave
in conventional ways or offer appropriate excuses, American playwrights,
more than British, emphasize the desirability of matrimony. In fact, in
one American play, the playwright takes pains to ensure that the
audience realizes a female character is the villain's battered wife rather
than his battered mistress. In The Forest of Rosenwald, the American
play, Marguerette painstakingly explains the legality of her marriage:
British:
Marg: By brutal force he made
me his; by force detains me
here, to witness deeds of hor-
ror that harrow up my soul!
30
American
Marg: In a wretched hour he
dragged me to the unfre-
quented village church, in
whose unpeopled chancel
none but the officials of the
ceremony witnessed my vows
of duty uttered in terror of a
bandit's threats. Hither he
bore me back as his wife and
prisoner.
31
Another reference to matrimony appears in the American version of The
Wood Daemon: Una asks the Count, "What greater proof of love can
you exact, than what I have already given-my voluntary consent to be
29
1n "The Cult of True Womanhood," American Quarterly 18 (Summer 1966):
151-1 7 4, Barbara Welter observes that a "true woman naturally loved her children;
to suggest otherwise was monstrous," 171.
30
Lewis, Raymond and Agnes, 1 0.
31
Stokes, 14.
Made in Ameri ca 29
your bride, whene'er 'twill please you to conduct me to the altar."
32
This
parti cular reference is not present in the British play.
In addition to extolling matrimony as the most desirable state for a
woman, females in both the American and the British plays glorify
motherhood; all the heroines explain that they grew up without a
mother's influence, and most seek surrogate mothers in other female
characters.
33
The heroines not only venerate their mothers, they
themselves wish to become mothers; if they do not express the wish
directly, they imply it through their antipathy toward a l ife of enforced
celibacy in the convent.
34
Once again, the American plays make even
more references to motherhood than do the British. For example, in the
American version of The Wood Daemon, Una, the childless heroine
exc!aims, "Ah moment of a mother's joy-how I envy and applaud thy
transports!" Clotilda responds, "Ah, who could mistake the transports of
a doating [sic] mother, when bounteous Providence restores to her arms
a lost son."
35
Neither of these speeches appears in the British play. The
American Fontainville Abbey also makes more references to motherhood
than does the British play.
36
Although heroines in both the American and the British plays are
encouraged to contemplate matrimony and motherhood, they are not
permitted to contemplate physical love with the hero, even within
marriage. The British heroines frequently contemplate the horrors of
forced sexual relations with the villain, usually outside of marriage,
whereas the American heroine is not permitted to do even that. In the
American plays, the villain does not overtly threaten the heroine sexually;
therefore, she is prevented from musing aloud about a fate worse than
death. For example, in the British Fountainville Forest, the lascivious
Marquis directly propositions Adeline, saying, "This lonely place will
32
Turnbull, 18.
33
1n the Fontainville plays, Adeline finds Madame Lamotte who serves as a
mother figure. In the Raymond and Agnes plays, Agnes notes that the abbess of St.
Clair was like a mother to her. In the Wood Demon plays, Una turns to Cloti.lda
(depicted as her sister or her aunt) for guidance.
34
For example, in Fontainvi!ie Abbey, the heroine describes the convent as " a
dreary, si ckly, endless, hopeless void," 165.
35
Turnbull, 13.
36
Adeline in the American Fontainville Abbey, opens her f irst lengthy speech
with " 0 my kind mother-so l'ni taught to call thee ... " 163.
30 ANTHONY
rather fix a gloom forever on your youth, that should be led to happier
scenes of gay, voluptuous love." Adeline understands only too well and
retorts, "I thank you, Sir, for thus at once displaying the glaring infamy
design'd for me!" The Marquis then declares that Adeline must be his
"by kindness, or by forcel"
37
By contrast, in the American version,
William Dunlap removes entirely the scene in which the evil Marquis
attempts to seduce Adeline; not only does the action occur offstage, but
the Marquis manages only to hold Adeline's hand before he is stopped.
38
This alteration ensures that American audiences would be spared
suggestions of illicit sex. In another example, Una in the American
version of The Wood Daemon never muses on the physical attractiveness
of the villainous Count Hardyknute, but her British counterpart does.
Although both British and American female characters desire matrimony
and motherhood, American characters express these sentiments more
often, yet are less likely to discuss any aspect of sexuality.
In summary, an examination of these American alterations for
American audiences reveals some obvious changes in the language of the
American versions of the plays and more significant changes in senti-
ments expressed by American characters. The American versions include
speeches not present in the British works, speeches that attack class
structure and extol equality. In addition, the American plays make many
more religious references than do the British plays and credit heaven with
direct intervention in saving the virtuous and punishing the wicked.
Third, American plays eliminate nearly all references to sexuality.
Finally, American female characters exhibit less assertive behavior than
do their British counterparts, and they express more positive attitudes
toward matrimony and motherhood. Perhaps the changes made to the
British plays reflect prevailing American social attitudes towards
language, equality, religion, _sex, and the appropriate social behavior of
women.
The changes to the language of the plays as well as the repeated
references to equality suggest that the playwrights believed the audience
held strong views about these matters. Many Americans did argue for an
American language, urging that the new nation "purify" its language from
37
Boaden, 34.
38
Just as La Motte, watching from a window reports, "See how the blushes clothe
her beauteous cheek while now with rank familiarity he seizes her hand," the
Marquis is stopped, 184.
Made in America 31
British corruption and adopt simple spelling and plain speech.
39
References to equality also. echoed sentiments of the period. The
colonies had only recently fought the Revolutionary War and would soon
engage in the War of 1812. The nation sought to forge an identity apart
from Britain. Changes in language, the elimination of references to
monarchy, and an emphasis on social equality helped to accomplish this
objective.
40
The increased religious references as well as the decreased sexual
ones in American plays may have been responses to the religious revivals
throughout New England. In addition, American playwrights may have
believed that frequent references to God would make their plays more
acceptable to those members of the audience who retained doubts about
the morality of the theatre. Theatre in the colonies was still new:
permanent theatres had only recently been established and long-standing
bans against theatre had not been repealed until the early 1790s.
41
Even
after this time clergymen continued to publicly oppose the existence of
theatres on the grounds that they promoted immorality and idleness and
attracted some unsavory patrons, particularly prostitutes.
42
Playwrights
may have attempted to forestall censure by ensuring that the plays overtly
promoted virtue. They then went one step further by suggesting that the
theatre could foster virtue. In his History of the American Theatre, first
published in 1797, William Dunlap championed this view, asking,
39
Noah Webster promoted a more phonetic system of spelling. In the article
"Words as Social Control: Noah Webster and the Creation of the American
Dictionary," American Quarterly 28 (Fall 1976), Richard Rollins notes that Webster,
in his earlier works, attempted to forge "An American tongue," to encourage
America's independence from "a vile and corrupt England." Rollins contends that as
early as 1788 Webster believed that the use of language could "purify society," 424.
40
See Mary Diana Neufeld's dissertation "The Adaptation of the Gothic Novel
to the English Stage, 1765-1826," PhD diss., Cornell University, 1978, for a
comparison of several American plays to British versions.
41
1n 1792, Charleston repealed its Vagrancy Act which prohibited theatricals; in
1793 Boston repealed its Act of 1750 which had prohibited theatricals. See Weldon
Durham, American Theatre Companies, 1749-1887 (New York: Greenwood Press,
1986).
42
See Claudia Johnson's study, "That Guilty Third Tier: Prostitution in Nineteenth
Century American Theatres," in Victorian America, ed. Daniel Walker Howe
(Pittsburg: University of Pennsylvania, 1976). For an opposing view, see Rosemarie
Bank's article, "Physics and the New Theatre Historiography," Journal of Dramatic
Theory and Criticism (Spring 1991): 65-83, in which she argues that evidence usually
cited in this matter is questionabl e.
32 ANTHONY
What engine is more powerful than the theatre? No arts can be
made more effectual for the promotion of good than the dra-
matic and the histrionic. .. .
43
American plays also differ from the British in their narrow interpreta-
tion of morally acceptable behavior for females. The fact that only the
morally flawed characters act unconventionally suggests that only an
"unwomanly, " morally flawed female could exhibit such unconventional
behavior.
44
In addition, the female characters emphasize the desirability
of matrimony and motherhood and do not refer in any way to their
sexuality. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, marriage
was considered a "woman's appointed destination." Indeed society made
little provision for a single woman. She often ended up in the home of
a male relative, serving as a helper; therefore, women sought
matrimony.
45
The American female characters also extol motherhood to
a greater extent than do the British characters. Perhaps this emphasis can
also be attributed to prevailing attitudes in American society. Following
the Revolutionary War, the American concept of motherhood was
" significantly transformed" in response to a rapidly changing world.
46
During these years, the new nation was in " social disequil ibrium"
because of urban growth, westward expansion, and the rise of industrial-
ization. This disequilibrium and the ensuing concern over the nation's
morals and its stability caused Americans to stress maternal responsibili-
ties.47 After the Revolution, motherhood was perceived as the major
43
Dunlap, History of the American Theatre, 130.
44
Welter identifies the "four cardinal virtues" of True Womanhood as " piety,
purity, submissiveness, and domesticity," 152.
45
Janet Wilson James, Changing Ideas About Women in the United States 1776-
1825 (New York: Garland Publishing, 1981), 127.
46
Sally Allen McNall , Who is in the House (New York: Elsevier, 1981), 3.
47
McNall, 13.
Made in America 33
source of women's power; women assumed responsibilities for fostering
the proper morals as well as Republican virtues, so that their sons would
become the leaders of the future.
48
Although American female characters were encouraged to dream of
marriage and motherhood, they were not permitted to dwell on thoughts
of a sexual nature, either in marriage or outside of it. In three of the
American plays, the heroine is not sexually threatened by the villain.
This repression of sexual references reflects the values of American
society in the first decades of the nineteenth century. Perhaps the
repressive prudery associated with American society after 1830 was
al ready applied to public entertainments of the 181 Os and 1820s.
Historian Nancy Cott notes that the ideal women of this time (between
1790 and 1830) were sexually "passionless." Cott explores the origins of
this view, noting the influence of Calvinism and the possible influence of
literature. In the early eighteenth century, writers such as jeremy Collier
and Samuel Richardson began to attack "aristocratic libertarianism," and
portrayed "sexual promiscuity as an aristocratic excess that threatened
middle class virtue and domestic security."
49
Cott associates the ideology
of passionlessness with the rise of evangelical religion, observing that
women represented the majority in the Protestant churches in America
by the mid-1700s and continued to increase their numbers into the
nineteenth century. By the mid 1700s, ministers had discarded similes
to Eve and instead portrayed women as more attuned to religion than
men. The evangelical view of women emphasized their spiritual natures
rather than their physical qualities. 5 American playwrights of this period
may have tried to adapt their heroines to the expectations of the
audience, to reinforce the existing views about appropriate female
behavior.
These alterations made by American playwrights suggest that
American audiences were opposed to rigid class systems and welcomed
mention of the inherent equality of all men. American audiences also
apparently welcomed public declaration-s of the importance of virtuous
living and appreciated frequent references to the power of heaven.
Conversely, audiences evidently did not welcome any public references
to sex and did not tolerate comic treatment of virginity. Finally,
48
Linda Kerber, Women of the Republic (Chapel Hill : University of North
Carolina, 1980), 170.
49
Nancy F. Cott and Elizabeth H. Pleck, A Heritage of Her Own (New York:
Simon and Schuster, 1979), 165.
5
Cott, 1 p4.
34 ANTHONY
American audiences, even more than the British, seemed to view the
ideal woman as a sexually passive and unassertive being who considered
matrimony and motherhood her greatest achievement. The fact that these
plays succeeded on the American stage suggests that audience members
approved of the sentiments expressed; therefore, these plays, " made in
America," may reflect uniquely American views on important issues
between 1 790 and 1830.
journal of American Drama and Theatre 8 (Fall 7 996)
Horse vs. Crow:
Sam Shepard, Ted Hughes, and The Tooth of Crime
0.5. NEFF
You see, I throw out the eagles and choose the Crow.
1
Will you stop fucking around with that dead crow? It makes me sick!
It's morbid and black and dark and dirty! It makes me sick! Can't you
see what's happening here?
2
In the summer of 1971, besieged by marital discord, professional
setbacks, and a heavy drug habit, Sam Shepard set off for England, hoping
that a "radical change geographically"
3
would replenish his creative
reservoir and allow him to break into the music scene in London, which
Shepard considered "notorious for its rock 'n' roll bands."
4
Even though
Shepard did not manage to become a rock star during his stay of three
years in England, he overcame his drug dependency and "found out what
it means to be an American" during his self-imposed exile.
5
Shepard
noted with some amusement that The Tooth of Crime (1972), which has
1
Quoted in Ekbert Faas, "Ted Hughes and Crow," London Magazine 10 (January
1971): 20.
2
Sam Shepard [and Patti Smith], Cowboy Mouth, in Fool for Love and Other
Plays {New York: Bantam Books, 1985), 148. All subsequent quotations from Cowboy
Mouth will be cited in parentheses in the text.
3
Quoted in Michael VerMeulen, " Sam Shepard: Yes, Yes, Yes," Esquire,
February 1980, 80.
4
Quoted in Kenneth Chubb, et a/., "Metaphors, Mad Dogs and Old Time
Cowboys: Interview with Sam Shepard," in American Dreams: The Imagination of
Sam Shepard, ed. Bonnie Marranca (New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications,
1981), 200.
5
Quoted in Chubb, eta/., American Dreams, 198.
36 NEFF
been called "as American as rolled joints or faded Levis,"
6
was neverthe-
less "written in the middle of Shepherds Bush."
7
That Shepard grew to
realize during his time in London that he coLJid not "be anything other
than an American writer"
8
does not mean that he was unaffected by the
British milieu, however. Ted Hughes' Crow: From the Life and Songs of
the Crow, which was published in October 1970,
9
has hitherto earned
only a very brief mention in connection with Shepard in Doris Auer-
bach's excellent study of possible British and Continental sources for The
Tooth of Crime.
10
It appears upon closer examination that not only Crow
itself, but also Hughes' public comments on and the early critical
appraisals of his controversial series of poems-information that would
have been available to any interested reader-exerted a not inconsider-
able influence on the setting, plot, characterization, and themes of
Shepard's freewheeling rock 'n' roll tragedy. Indeed, The Tooth of Crime
may be read as an implicit critique of Hughes' repulsive and yet utterly
6
Charles Marowitz, quoted in Don Shewey, Sam Shepard (New York: Dell,
1985),91.
7
Quoted in Chubb, eta/., American Dreams, 199.
8
Sam Shepard, "Language, Visualization and the Inner Library," in American
Dreams, 216.
9
Even though most readers are probably familiar with the 1972 American edition
of Crow, that edition contains eight poems (seven new and one substitution) not found
in the 1970 British edition, the one that Shepard would have been able to read during
the composition of Tooth. Therefore, the edition used in this essay will be Ted
Hughes, Crow: From the Life and Songs of the Crow (London: Faber and Faber, 1970).
All quotations from Crow will be cited in parentheses in the text.
Even though there have been full critical analyses of Crow that have made use of
newly discovered biographical materials and unpublished Crow poems (Alan Bold,
Thorn Gunn and Ted Hughes [Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1976], 116-28; Keith Sagar,
The Art of Ted Hughes, second edition [New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1978],
1 01-45; Ekbert Faas, Ted Hughes: The Unaccommodated Universe, With Selected
Critical Writings by Ted Hughes & Two Interviews [Santa Barbara: Black Sparrow
Press, 1980], 97-116; Stuart Hirschberg, Myth in the Poetry of Ted Hughes [Totowa,
NJ: Barnes and Noble, 1981], 69-128; and Leonard M. Scigaj, The Poetry of Ted
Hughes: Form and Imagination [Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1986], 122-62),
this essay will use-almost exclusively-interviews, analyses, and reviews from the
1960's and early 1970's in order to give the reader a fairly clear picture of the popular
and critical reception of Crow at the time that Shepard was working on Tooth.
10
Doris Auerbach, Sam Shepard, Arthur Kopit, and the Off Broadway Theater
(Boston: Twayne, 1982), 34.
Horse vs. Crow 37
mesmerizing black bird,
11
an important transitional drama that, on one
important level, seeks to analyze and redefine strategies for success in
rock 'n' roll, an art form that Shepard had earlier conceived of as being
quintessentially American,
12
but that seemed to be becoming dangerously
divorced from its cultural roots in an era that apparently cared more for
style and technique than for an authentic melding of musicianship and
experience.
Although Hughes, who had read widely and deeply in studies of
shamanism, totem ism, and comparative religion,
13
stated that he tried to
"forget'' the "comparative religion/mythology background" to Crow in
his effort to "produce something with the minimum cultural accretions
of the museum sort-something autochthon us and complete in itself, as
it might be invented after the holocaust and demolition of alllibraries,"
14
he was nevertheless tempted periodically to provide some help for those
who were nonplused by those "songs that a Crow would sing . .. songs
with no music whatsoever, in a super-simple and a super-ugly language
which in a way shed everything except just what he wanted to say."
15
11
See Bernd Heinrich, The Ravens in Winter (New York: Summit Books, 1989),
17-20, for an ornithological perspective on the common confusion of crows and
ravens. Since Hughes tends to treat the two birds as one in his references to Native
American mythology and British totems, as does Shepard in "The Curse of the Raven's
Black Feather," in Hawk Moon: A Book of Short Stories, Poems and Monologues (los
Angeles: Black Sparrow Press, 1973), 46-50, crows and ravens will be regarded as
being the same throughout this essay.
12
0n Shepard, rock 'n' roll, and American values, see Bonnie Marranca,
"Alphabetical Shepard: The Play of Words," in American Dreams, 29; Robert Coe,
"Image Shots Are Blown: The Rock Plays," in American Dreams, 57-66; Ruby Cohn,
New American Dramatists, 1960-7980 (New York: Grove Press, 1982), 180-83;
Vivian M. Patraka and Mark Siegel, Sam Shepard (Boise: Boise State University Press,
1985), 5-9; Lynda Hart, Sam Shepard's Metaphorical Stages (New York: Greenwood
Press, 1987), 44-49; Martin Tucker, Sam Shepard (New York: Continuum, 1992),
89-93; and David J. DeRose, Sam Shepard (New York: Twayne, 1992), 52-56.
13
See Hughes' "Shamanism," in Faas, Ted Hughes: The Unaccommodated
Universe, 174-75, for a succinctly stated view of the quest of the shaman. See Michael
Sweeting, "Hughes and Shamanism," in The Achievement of Ted Hughes, ed. Keith
Sagar (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1983), 70-89; and jarold Ramsey,
"Crow, or the Trickster Transformed," in The Achievement of Ted Hughes, 171-85,
for insights into Hughes' use of ritual, the Trickster, and shamanism in his poetry in
general and in Crow in particular.
14
Quoted in Sagar, 107.
15
Quoted in Faas, "Ted Hughes and Crow," 20.
38 NEFF
The dust jacket of the first edition of Crow cautioned that the collection
included "about the first two-thirds of what was to have been an epic
folk-tale."
16
Ekbert Faas, who had conversations with Hughes in 1970
while Hughes was preparing the typescript of Crow for publication, notes
that the deaths of Hughes' companion and her daughter (Assia Guttman
Wevill and Shura) altered "the original impulse behind Crow," which
was supposed to have been the story of "Crew's descent into the
underworld where the quester rescues a desecrated female through his
own disintegration before both become bride and bridegroom."
17
In his .
brief yet useful compendium of evidence for an original master plan for
Crow, Leonard M. Scigaj observes that "Crow was to succeed at the end
of his journey after an encounter with an ogress at a river bank. The
ogress refuses to let Crow cross the river unless he carries her on his
back. As Crow carries his burden across the river, the ogress asks him
seven puzzling questions about love. He sinks deeper into the water with
each wrong answer, and his burden lightens with each correct answer .
. . . As in many folktales, the ogress would probably transform herself
into Crew's lovely bride Nature once he healed his psyche and found all
seven right answers. "
18
After apparently abandoning his original intention, Hughes presented
his readers with various interpretations of what he was trying to achieve
in his truncated mythic cycle with its compelling Trickster hero. Crow is
"God's nightmare's attempt to improve on man,"
19
the
shadow of man [who] ... never does quite become a man ....
[H]aving been created he's put through various adventures, and
disasters and trials and ordeals, and the effect of these is to alter
him not at all, then alter him a great deal, completely transform
him, tear him to bits, put him together again, and produce him
a little bit changed. And maybe his ambition is to become a
man, which he never quite manages.
20
16
Quoted in Leonard M. Scigaj, Ted Hughes (Boston: Twayne, 1991), 71.
17
Faas, Ted Hughes: The Unaccommodated Universe, 118.
18
Scigaj, Ted Hughes, 72.
19
Quoted in Faas, Ted Hughes: The Unaccommodated Universe, 99
20
BBC broadcasts of24 June 1970 and 17 December 1970, quoted in Scigaj, The
Poetry of Ted Hughes, 157.
Horse vs. Crow 39
The purpose of Crow's exploits is "to eventually make him a man."
21
That "being men called God," the
man-created, broken down, corrupt despot of a ramshackle
rei igion . .. accompanies Crow through the world in many
guises, mis-teaching, deluding, tempting, opposing and at every
point trying to discourage or destroy him. Crow's whole quest
aims to locate and release his own creator, God's nameless
hidden prisoner, whom he repeatedly but always in
some unrecognisable form."
22
Hughes also revealed that "one of the starting points" for his
sequence of poems was that "the Crow, as the bird of Bran" was not only
/fthe oldest and highest totem creature of Britain" and "England's
autochthonus Totem," but also "Odin's bird . .. the totemic bird in chief
of the Angles, Saxons, etc., and of the Norsemen." Hughes even went
so far as to assert that "whatever colour of Eng I ish man you scratch you
come to some sort of Crow."
23
Don Shewey observes correctly that The Tooth of Crime "picks up
where Cowboy Mouth [1971] feft off,"
24
and it seems not unreasonable
to interpret Tooth as a reworking of Cowboy Mouth that acquires added
mythic, historical, and cultural resonance by broadening, through
inspiration provided by Hughes' Crow, the struggle between two
archetypal opponents in the arena of rock 'n' roll stardom. In Cowboy
Mouth, Shepard and Patti Smith make use of battles between Raven and
Coyote, two Native American Trickster figures, to add a primordial,
timeless quality to the sparrings between Cavale, "a chick who looks like
a crow, dresse[s] in raggedy black" (145) and is extremely attached to a
crow talisman, and Slim, a cowboy figure associated with a coyote, in
their efforts to fashion "a rock-and-roll Jesus with a cowboy mouth"
(157). In Tooth, the Cavale figure, the shape-shifter who "goes through
a million changes" as Cowboy Mouth moves to its ambiguously
apocalyptic conclusion (154-ltalics in the original), becomes transmuted
into Crow, a Trickster figure who is a striking amalgam of the ancient
Native American ethos and the postmodern values that Shepard saw as
21
/bid.
22
Liner notes for Crow, Claddagh Records CCT 9-10, 1973.
23
Quoted in Bold, 117.

90.
40 NEFF
.emerging on the British rock scene.
25
Cavale's opponent, Slim, becomes
Hoss, a more mature and self-reflective representative of values emerging
from the American West, values that Shepard viewed as particularly
American. No longer symbolically associated with the characteristics of
the Native American Coyote, Hoss is an American cowboy from head to
toe, facing an enemy who is connected historically and in popular culture
with forces seeking to undermine the lives of pioneers and frontiersmen
who were forging their identity in the New World.
Shepard's exposure to Crow and to Hughes' accounts of its genesis
may have had the effect of making The Tooth of Crime a tantalizing
reimagining of the American Revolution and the cowboys-and-Indians
tale. Further, Shepard's awareness of Hughes' Crow could have
sensitized him to the horse and crow as animals whose behavior could
help to shape dramatic and thematic elements in his play. The Hoss and
Crow "style match[es]"
26
may be interpreted as integral features of a
battle between totemic animals whose basic characteristics transcend
national and historic boundaries.
The crow is "the most intelligent of birds, the most widely distributed
(being common on every continent), and the most omnivorous," a
"carrion eater" that "kills a little himself," but is mainly "dependent on
the killing of others." That "least musical of songbirds," "black all over,
solitary, almost indestructible," produces songs that can only be
described as "harsh and grating."
27
The crow's songs may not be sweet,
but, as Bernd Heinrich explains, the creature that serves as the model for
Shepard's Crow is "an imposing bird" that "has a greater variety of calls
than perhaps any other animal in the world except human beings." Just
as crows and ravens are characterized as "the ne plus ultra of
25
1n "Rip It Up," Shepard's persona writes that " Rock and Roll is definitely a
motherfucker and will always be Rock and Roll made movies theatre books painting
and art go out the window none of it stands a chance," and refers to "the constant
frustration of the other artists to keep up" with a protean art form that is " more
revolutionary than revolution" (Hawk Moon, 55). Leonard Wilcox, in " Modernism
vs. Postmodernism: Shepard's The Tooth of Crime and the Discourses of Popular
Culture," Modern Drama 30 (1987): 560-73, offers an insightful and valid reading of
clashes between modernity and postmodernity in Tooth. Any new discussion of the
Hoss/Crow conflict, including this essay, must acknowledge a deep indebtedness to
Wilcox's analyses because they offer what seems to be the best explanation for the
cultural dynamics underlying Shepard's rock 'n' roll tragedy.
26
Sam Shepard, The Tooth of Crime, in Seven Plays (New York: Bantam Books,
1984), 230. All subsequent quotations from The Tooth of Crime will be cited in
parentheses in the text.
27
Sagar, 105.
Horse vs. Crow
41
up-and-coming birds," belonging to the "most species-rich and rapidly
evolving line of birds,"
28
Shepard's Crow is the hottest new thing on a
very competitive rock scene; he is wily, hardy, and sure to spawn entirely
new variants of himself that will be closely associated with innovations
in popular music.
Shepard, whose family had horses at their ranch at Duarte and whose
interest in horse husbandry, horsemanship, and rodeo has not escaped
notice/
9
may have made the opponent of the crow a horse instead of a
coyote not only because the horse is so intimately associated with the
cowboy in American culture, but also because the horse, having
disappeared from the New World sometime after 9000 B.C. and having
been reintroduced during Cortez's conquest of Mexico (1520-30 A.D.),
was dispersed among the Native American tribes of the Great Plains only
very recently in history. Since the conquistadors did not allow Native
Americans to own horses and since there were no "feral and Indian
horses west. of the Mississippi before the 1680s,"
30
the horse had
acquired almost no totemic value for those relatively ancient cultures
whose myths and rituals were concerned with their chief food source, the
buffalo.
31
There is even a fascinating possibility that Shepard, interested in
exploring the fullest symbolic potential in the crow/horse dichotomy,
may have based not only the relations between Hoss and his entourage,
but also the general setting, atmosphere, and plot structure of The Tooth
of Crime, on the behavior of wild horses. Arthur Vernon, in his classic
study of the history, myths, and legends of the horse, provides an acces-
sible and popular account of equine ethology that makes use of the work
of Ernest Menault, a nineteenth-century French naturalist who studied
communication between wild horses. According to Vernon, the Great
Plains were transversed by "vast, swarming hordes of thousands and
thousands" of feral horses. "In spite of the huge size of these equine
armies, there was no internal disorder during the great, stamping marches
across the plains. They were not "tumultuous mobs," but rather "organ-
ized legions, almost tyranically ruled by the chief leader," who would
28
Heinrich, 19-21.
29
VerMeulen, 80, 86. Shepard's knowledge of rodeo is used to very good effect
in "Voices from the Dead," a monologue written for The Open Theatre in 1969
(Hawk Moon, 88-89).
30
Robert West Howard, The Horse in America (Chicago: Follett, 1965), 8, 28.
31
Cottie Bueland, North American Indian Mythology (New York: Tudor, 1965),
81.
42 NEFF
send out as scouts "a small company of horses, spread out at intervals,"
that "preceded the whole army to find out the lay of the land and detect
the presence of any considerable enemy."
32
The surrealistic setting of
Tooth, with its grids, territories, reconnaissance missions, and raids, bears
a close resemblance to struggles for self-preservation between and among
such large migratory groups of wild horses. Smaller groups of feral horses
comprising the equine armies, like the astrologers, disc jockeys, pushers,
groupies, and drivers in Tooth, " choose their own leaders and travel in
a herd .. . . The leader is invariably a stallion and is invariably obeyed to
the finest detail by his following." According to Menault, the lead
stallion communicates with the rest of the herd by using five very
different neighs conveying happiness, desire, anger, fear, and sorrow.
The leader is usually the sole mature male in his group, and he makes
decisions concerning whether to fight, ignore, or flee from potential
threats. The "highly organized world of wild horses" is "not without
unavoidable internal friction," with the leader called upon to defend his
position "whenever another stallion dispute[s] his rights of priority." In
a passage describing an inevitable conflict within the herd of horses that
closely parallels Hoss' s dilemma in Tooth, Vernon writes that
the chief ruled by might, kept his station by might and eventually
lost it by loss of might. When a chief leader grew old, he was
challenged by some younger stallion who was in a condition to
defeat him. Most chief leaders fought to the end, and died, at
least, as chief.
33
"
Sometimes, however, a successful usurper does not "bother" to kill the
lead stallion that he has vanquished. Then the conquered animal, "his
ruling days over," makes his way "out into the prair.ie alone to die"-a
situation that resembles the defeat and ultimate suicide of Hoss in
Shepard's drama.
34
Of course, delving into possible influences on The Tooth of Crime
exerted by the complex mythological, historical, and anthropological
underpinnings of Crow remains only an intriguing exercise in speculation
unless specific parallels between Hughes' collection of poems and
32
Arthur Vernon, The History and Romance of the Horse (New York: Dover,
1946), 127-34.
Horse vs. Crow 43
Shepard's play can be analyzed. The best place to begin such an
endeavor is with Shepard's analysis of his Crow:
The character of Crow in Tooth of Crime came from a yearning
toward violence. A totally lethal human with no way or reason
for tracing how he got that way. He just appeared. He spit
words that became his weapons. He doesn't "mean" anything.
He's simply following his most savage instincts. He speaks in an
unheard-of tongue. He needed a victim, so I gave him one. He
devoured him just like he was supposed to.
35
Shepard's Crow, like Hughes', just inexplicably appears in the world. In
Hughes' "Conjuring in Heaven" (44), Crow drops out of the sky onto the
ground, "cataleptic," a "nothing, ... put inside nothing/Nothing ...
added to it," with ,,nothing more [that] could be done with it." There is
,,prolonged applause in Heaven', accompanying such an arrival, but a
careful reader of other songs in Crow realizes that it is almost certainly
not the judea/Christian God who is doing the' applauding.
It seems that in the Crow mythos there has occurred a basic split
within the Godhead that is in some ways analogous to that proclaimed
by the Gnostics in their heretical revisions of Jewish and Christian
doctrine and by William Blake in his creation of an ironic "Bible of
Hell.,
36
In "Crow's Theology, (30), the reader learns that "Crow
realized there were two Gods-/One of them much bigger than the
other, " a divinity with "all the weapons" who not only ,spoke Crow,,
but who also made that word flesh by allowing Crow to live as ,His
revelation,, as the nightmare alternative to the Biblical God's creation.
In "A Horrible Religious Error" (37), the serpent makes jehovah
,grimace,, and man and woman abjectly bow to it, but Crow, having
been engendered by the Other God, only peers at that "sphynx of the
final fact,, grabs it "by the slackskin nape,, beats it up, and devours it.
In "Crow's First Lesson, (16), the Biblical God, displaying more of his
New Testament aspects, attempts to teach Crow to say "love," but all that
Crow can do, try as he might, is gape, convulse, and retch, bringing all
sorts of killers, including humans, into existence. In "Crow's Nerve
35
"Language, Visualization and the Inner library," 217.
36
See Hans jonas, The Gnostic Religion: The Message of the Alien God and the
Beginnings of Christianity, second edition revised (Boston: Beacon Press, 1963), for
a basic survey of Gnosticism, and j. G. Davies, The Theology of William Blake (1948;
rpt. New York: Archon Books, 1966), 82-94, for a useful discussion of Blake's
heterodox views on the judeo-Christian concept of God.
44 NEFF
Fails" (38), Crow is described as never able to "fly from his feathers,"
pinions that have "homed on him" and have turned black because of the
"living dead, that root in his nerves and his blood." Crow, ''trying to
remember his crimes," discovers "his every feather the fossil of a
murder."
Three powerful poems in Crow may have helped Shepard conceive
of the word-wars engaged in by Hoss and Crow. In Hughes' alternative
myth of the Fall, which is most clearly related in "A Disaster" (28), the
word was once supreme, "killing men," "bulldozing/Whole cities to
rubble," "poisoning seas," and "burning whole lands/To dusty char."
Leaving all people "digested inside" itself, the word next "tried its great
lips/On the earth's bulge, like a giant lamprey," attempting to drain all
life from the world. The word could not devour nature, however, and,
"its effort weakened" because "it could digest nothing but people," the
word shrank down to almost nothing, "its era ... over." The effects of
the mythic fall of signification and of humankind's decreasing hold, literal
and semantic, on nature are made clear in two poems presenting vivid
and disturbing images of titanic, yet ultimately failed, word-battles. In
"Crow Goes Hunting" (45), that ultimate predator tries to capture a hare,
imagining "some words for the job, a lovely pack-/Clear-eyed,
resounding, well-trained, with strong teeth." Just as it is about to be
confined within Crow's signification, the hare changes into various
shapes, and even though Crow changes his words into "bombs" to blow
up "a concrete bunker," a "shotgun" to decimate "a flock of starlings,"
and "a reservoir" to contain "a cloudburst," Crow can never really
encompass "the bounding hare," and he gazes after that animal,
"speechless with admiration." In "The Battle of Osfrontalis" (29), it is
Crow himself who remains uncannily impervious to words, to "the glottal
bomb," the overwhelming "light aspirates," the "guerrilla labials," and
the "consonantal masses" that attack, bombard, surround, infiltrate, and
overwhelm him, only to retreat "into the skull of a dead jester/Taking the
whole world with them," leaving Crow to yawn in boredom.
Shepard has stated that his idea for Crow's "victim" originated "with
hearing a certain sound which is coming from the voice of this character,
Hoss. And also this sort of black figure appearing on stage with this
throne, and the whole kind of world that he was involved in, came from
this voice."
37
Such an epiphany may have been inspired by a reading of
Hughes' "The Black Beast" (23), in which the persona asks, over and
over, "Where is the Black Beast?" and is answered by various details
about the life of the Crow, one of which is particularly relevant to Tooth:
37
Chubb, eta/., in American Dreams, 200.
Horse vs. Crow 45
"Crow sat in its chair, telling loud lies against the Black Beast." In
Shepard's play, the stage is bare "except for an evil-looking black chair
with silver studs and a very high back, something like an Egyptian
Pharoah's throne but simple." Hoss comes on stage dressed "in black
rocker gear with silver studs and black kid gloves," (203, Italics in the
original). In Hughes' poem, Crow hides in the Black Beast's bed "to
ambush it" and in Tooth, Crow usurps Hoss's chair (227) and ambushes
that stallion/cowboy by creating a completely false picture of Hoss's
life-filled with cowardice, masturbation, and homosexual sex-in the
first round of their verbal bout (235-37): A ferocious, and ultimately
hopeless, battle between a hero and a fearsome, protean bird-like foe in
"Crow's Account of St. George" (26-27) may have further preserved in
Shepard's imagination an image of a chair as a feature in an apocalyptic
struggle. The hero of that extremely violent song confronts "a bird-head,/ -
Bald, lizard-eyed, the size of a football, on two staggering bird-legs" that
"gapes at him all the seams and pleats of its throat,/ Clutching at the
carpet with horny feet." The hero picks up a chair and "smashes the
egg-shell object to a blood-rag/A lumping sprawl" that he "tramples" to
a "bubbling mess." The foe changes into different shapes (a "shark-face
.. . screaming in the doorway," a giant hairy crab- monster), and the hero
attacks with the chair and then with "a ceremonial japanese decapitator."
He finds, however, that he has somehow destroyed himself by attaining
what seemed to be a victory because in reality he has slaughtered those
most dear to him-his wife and children.
Hoss's equine name and the unremitting fears he expresses to Becky
Lou about an inner weakness making him "go too soft" (218) could have
been shaped by a reading of Hughes' "A Bedtime Story" (59-60), whose
hero is "a person/Almost a person," with an "intermittent" body, and
hands that turn into "funny hooves just at the crucial moment." Such a
person gazes into the eyes of "the most beautiful girls" who lie with
"their faces on his pillow staring him out," but "somehow his eyes" are
"in the wrong way round." Like the owl in Hughes' "Owl's Song" (46)
that sings "how everything had nothing more to lose" in a world peopled
by Crow, Hoss declares that he is "just a man" (225) in a confusing new
kind of world where he feels "outa' control. ... pulled and pushed
around from one image to another," where "nothin' takes a solid form,"
where "nothin' [is] sure and final" (243). In Hughes' "Crowego" (50),
Crow is described as gazing "into the quag of the past/Like a gypsy into
the crystal of the future/Like a leopard into a fat land," and that particular
characterization may have formed the basis for Hoss's fascination with
and ultimate repulsion at Crow, the "Gypsy" who has marked him for
destruction (214). just as Hughes' Crow, the acolyte of the violent Other
God, is a frightening new force within the judea/Christian world,
46 NEFF
Shepard's Crow is a product of "a whole underground movement going
on" in the rock 'n' roll scene, where the "next genius is gonna be a
Gypsy Killer" who lives "outside the game" because "genius is some-
thing outside the game" (207). Even though Hoss is " a complete beast
of nature" who has been "sharpened ... down to perfection" (207), he
operates according to the strict code of behavior that has governed what
he has conceived of as a violent but strangely moral way of life in a vastly
competitive universe. Becky Lou insists that the rise of the Gypsies calls
for just a "temporary suspension" of the code, but Hoss knows better.
He is sure that he is living in "the last days of honor" when "the code's
going down the tubes." The coming of Crow makes Hoss' s "killer heart"
falter, compelling Hoss to decide whether he wishes to go on in a world
governed by no code-a daunting prospect because, as Hoss exclaims,
"Without a code it's just crime. No art involved. No technique, finesse.
No sense of mastery. The touch is gone" (215-1 7).
The-peculiar dynamics of the Hoss/Crow fight may be grasped more
completely by understanding Shepard's feelings about British and
American varieties of rock 'n' roll. In "Who Would've Thought,"
Shepard's persona exclaims, "Who would've thought the English would
cop our music"
38
-a reference to the British Invasion in the early 1960's,
in which rock groups from Great Britain, having nurtured themselves on
American blues, rock, soul, and folk, came back across the Atlantic, in
what might be interpreted as belated revenge for the American Revolu-
tion, and embarrassed a nation that had forsaken its musical roots as it
sacrificed pure rock 'n' roll on the altar of popular music.
39
The British
rockers had become so adept at their craft that, by the late 1960's and
early 1970's, the rock scene in Britain was felt by some to be eclipsing its
American counterpart, which led to the ironic situation of aspiring
American rockers, like Shepard, who had been raised in the cradle of that
musical form, traveling to Britain in their efforts to become rock stars. At
first, Hoss seems to feel that Craw's mimicry of his style is a compliment
(228-29), but Hoss complains more loudly when Craw's imitation
threatens to displace almost completely the original -that inspired it
(232-33). Hoss can be said to have been bitten by the Mallarmean "tooth
of crime" because even though he, like Shepard and all the other
American rockers forced to accede superiority to the British, may have
38
Hawk Moon, 39.
39
See Ed Ward, Geoffrey Stokes, and Ken Tucker, Rock of Ages: The Rolling
Stone History of Rock & Roll (New York: Summit Books, 1986), 209-89, for a useful
discussion of the American rock 'n' roll scene in the early 1960's and the effect of the
British Invasion on rock music.
Horse vs. Crow 47
real , vital links to rock's past, such apparent advantages are rendered
meaningless when marauding thieves can usurp the image and style of
the art while discarding the rich cultural matrix that produced it.
40
Crow, then, is the ultimate criminal according to Hoss's (and
apparently Shepard's) definition. Hoss proclaims that "there ain't no
heart to a Gypsy. just bone" (221 ), and that such a new kind of rock 'n'
roller is "nothin' but flash. No Heart" (237). Crow nonchalantly admits
the truth of such appraisals, summing up his modus operandi in a
disturbing refrain to his song: "But I believe in my mask-The man I
made up is me" (232-33). Hoss gets very angry when Crow, perverting
the particularly American styles of the cowboy and the Chicago gangster,
lies about the past in the first round of their fight. After yelling to the ref
that Crow, who should have been playing "honest pool," was "pickin'
at a past that ain't even there" (237), Hoss tries to overwhelm Crow's
skillfully sardonic demystification of any delving into "past roots" or the
"retrograde," by going back into the African-American ancestry of rock
'n' roll. Such a maneuver seems to force Crow back against the ropes,
but the ref interrupts the round, saying that "somethin's outta whack"
with such a strategy. Hoss goes into the third round, vowing to remain
an "original" and "stand solid." Crow, however, immediately detects
the uselessness of such a posture, and taunts Hoss by telling him to "get
the image in line" and develop a "fantasy rhyme" in order to come into
the present. The ref ultimately stops that final round, declaring a T.K.O.
for Crow. Hoss, letting loose "a blood-curdling animal scream" (Italics
in the original), shoots the ref to death (232-41 ).
Early in Tooth, Becky Lou tells Hoss that "it's back down to survival"
(217) with the advent of the Gypsies, but Hoss only gradually realizes the
consequences of living in a world where, as Crow says, "the image is my
survival kit" (249). Hoss's murder of the ref, then, can be seen as a
defiant gesture against a time and place where the rules have changed,
where style is everything and words can establish no lasting hold on
experience. Being defeated in the match means that Hoss must turn for
lessons in survival to Crow, the ultimate Hoss-thief who, without even
caring, has somehow stolen him from himself, all for the sake of
establishing an appearance that will be remorselessly cast aside when the
40
A close analogy to such cultural theft may be found in Walter Benjamin, "The
Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, " in Illuminations, ed. Hannah
Arendt, tr. Harry Zohn (New York: Schocken Books, 1978), 217-51. Benjamin sees
much the same kind of larceny as that perpetrated by Shepard's Crow being
perpetrated by mechanical means of reproducing art forms that formerly lived only
through the intimate contact between performers and the audience. In other words,
mechanical means of reproducing art tend to rob art of that ineffable "aura"
engendered by a personal communal experiencing of that art.
48 NEFF
need arises, as it most surely will, throughout the myriad reinventions of
what passes for the self in the rock culture. To survive, Hoss must
become like Crow, learning to develop eyes that look right through
people, seeing "no pictures just pure focus." Hoss is told to "re-program
the tapes" in order to empty his mind until it becomes like "a clean
screen," allowing "no doubt" and "no fear" to disrupt the quest for
self-preservation (241-47).
Shepard's association of Crow with the notion of pure, soulless
survival could have resulted from reading early reviews of Crow, which
emphasized that creature's ability to thrive in an extremely violent,
protean world. A. Alvarez states that Crow's "one unequivocal attribute
is survival. jaunty and insatiable, disgusted and not a little disgusting, he
bobs up again from each disaster . ... Like hope, he is unkillable. But he
is unkillable precisely because he is without hope."
41
Alan Brownjohn
explains that Crow is mainly about "survival achieved by confronting the
terrible and the meaningless, and exacting from it [sic] a kind of ironical
stamina, and appetite for existence."
42
Derwent May, commenting on
Hughes' creation of a "landscape" of "phantasmagoric extremes of
human chaos and suffering," notes that it is Crow's "totally insensitive
preoccupation with survival" that allows him to make his way across
such a world.
43
Tony Harrison observes Crow's "modes of minimum
survival" and argues that "his scarcely triumphant tenacity [is] what he
has to crow about" because he has "achieved a better adaptation to the
Universe than either God or Man."
44
Hoss's suicide can be read as his (and Shepard's) comment on the
prospect of surviving in the worlds of Crow and Tooth . Cowboy Mouth
concludes with the Lobster Man, having been challenged by Slim's
music, metamorphosing into a black-clad rock messiah, and escaping
alive from his round of Russian roulette (162-65). Perhaps in part
because of his reaction against Hughes' Crow, Shepard can not allow
Hoss to opt for mere survival. In Hughes' truncated poetic cycle, suicide
by a gunshot to the head, which is evoked through imagery in "A Kill"
(12), "Crow's Account of the Battle" (21-22), and "Dawn's Rose" (48),
seems to be a preferred mode of protest against, and departure from, the
horrifying world of the Other God and His Crow. Indeed, Hoss's heroic
41
A. Alvarez', "Black Bird," The Observer, 11 October 1970, 33.
42
Aian Brownjohn, "On Survival," New Statesman, 16 October 1970, 491.
43
Derwent May, "Bird Words," The Listener, 29 October 1970, 603.
44
Tony Harrison, "Crow Magnan," London Magazine, 10 Uanuary, 1971 ): 86.
Horse vs. Crow 49
refusal to become like Crow, his courageous stance of taking his life in
his hands by bringing about his own death (249), may have been
suggested by the powerful image of the "humane-killed skull of a horse"
in "Crow Improvises" (53-54).
Hoss's death begins the moment he even considers seriously the
alternative of surviving on the rock scene by becoming as big a
style-monster as his final adversary. Ironically, Crow, who has never paid
attention to any potential meaning in his words, sings that "it's time to
squeeze the trigger" when "there ain't no Gods or saviors who'll give
you flesh and blood" (232), and Hoss, the American cowboy/rocker, the
man whose anachronistic faith in someone being able to maintain his
"own image" as a "one and only" and "an original man" (241), does
exactly what Crow sings about, going "out in the old style" (249) in a
world where the past has never been lived and history is good only for
providing the external trappings of any subsequent changes in style.
Becky Lou's odd pantomime of a failed sex act during Hoss's decline
(246) may constitute a bleakly ironic undermining of the Hindu
Asvamedha, or Horse Sacrifice. In the Hindu ritual, the queen of the
kingdom, in order to ensure future fertility for the king and his realm,
mimes sexual intercourse with a stallion that has been ritually
sacrificed.
45
In Tooth, however, the sex act is not consummated, which
may symbol ize the basic sterility of Crow and the ultimate emptiness of
his triumph.
The "tooth" of rock 'n' roll"crime" makes Hoss pay a terrible price,
and yet Shepard allows him (and us) a dignity that, for all their inexplica-
ble power, lies beyond his and Hughes' Crows, each of whom will be,
forever, in the words of "Crow's Playmates" (49), "his own leftover, the
spat-out scrag," something that "his brain could make nothing of,"
leaving everything else in his world
1
even "the least, least-living object
extant/ .. . Lone I ier than ever."
45
See David M. Knipe, Hinduism: Experiments in the Sacred (San Francisco:
HarperSanFrancisco, 1991), 39, and Wendy Doniger O'Fiaherty, "Horses," in The
Encyclopedia of Religion, ed. Mircea Eliade (New York: Macmillan, 1987), 6:463-68,
for discussions of the Horse Sacrifice, and see the Satapatha Brahmama, second edi-
tion, tr. julius Eggeling (1900; rpt. Delhi : Motilal Banarsidass, 1966), 5:274-440, for
a thorough description of those complex ri tes.
journal of American Drama and Theatre 8 (Fall 1996)
Tracers: This is our Parade
A First Look at an Understudied Vietnam Drama
CINDA GILLILAN
1
Drama, more than any other literary genre, needs a resonance in history.
-Walter Benjamin
August 1986, Tucson, Arizona. Hot, humid, the park crowded with
men, women, and children, all there for 'Nam Jam, an annual celebration
-of service and survival. I wandered through the gathering, listening to a
distant voice occasionally breaking free of the music, laughter, and
conversation.
Where's the firing com in' from? Anybody know what the fuck' s
goin' on? Who's doin' the shooting? What direction we
supposed to be goin' in? Movement in the tre.eline! Form up!
2
In a clearing, a man stood alone, the sun making him sweat. He read
from a thin black book.
I'm gonna get a medic. You'll be okay, Dinky Dau. Wbo's
shootin'? Fuck, somebody's still shootin'. Where's my rifle?
Fuckin' M-16! Gotta keep it together. Be cool, Scooter, be cool.
Gotta keep your sanity, man. Christ, what happened to my
mind? (1 00)
The cadence of his delivery reminded me of a televangalist, preaching
from his "good book." I stepped forward to listen.
1
The author would like to thank John Difusco for his time and efforts in support
of this paper. Also Richard Chaves, Mitch Hale, Lupe Vargus, Esther Reese, and Jody
Norman. And a special thank you to Dr. Robert Schulzinger for reading an earl ier
version of this essay.
2
Difusco, John, eta/., Tracers (New York: Hill and Wang, 1986), 100. All
subsequent citations appear in the text and are to this edi tion of the pl ay.
Tracers 51
Oh no! Oh, Christ! Bleedin' all over the place! Pressure points?
Oh, fuck it! Press some dirt down on top of 'em. That oughta
stop 'em. Stop bleedin', you motherfucker! Stop! Fuckin' stop!
Keep it together, keep it together. Don't want to go into shock.
Most guys die of shock- that's what they taught us. Gotta keep
it together .. . (1 01)
A crowd gathered, their gazes fixed on the preacher. A man standing
next to me in old fatigues trembled, tears rol ling down his face as the
preacher read: "I don't wanna die. I don't wanna die here . .. " (102).
The preacher's arms shot above his head, the book waving. Some of
the men took a step forward, some a step back.
Medic! Medic! Medic! Please, God, I need a medic! Please,
God, don't let 'em die. Don't let everyone die here. Talkin' to
God. I need a medic! I hate you, God! You hear me?! I hate
you! You motherfucker! (1 02)
The preacher dropped to the ground, hugging his knees to his chest,
rocking, moaning: "Mama ... mama .. . . " No one moved. It was
surreal. Was he crazy? Was he still reading? Was he an actor?
The preacher levered up, swinging himself around to sit cross-legged
on the grass. He opened the book and continued to read, first in a
whisper, then his voice gaining strength and volume.
Someone told me you're a vet. Someone told me you had a gun.
You ki lled people. You were only nineteen? You volunteered?
You're bullshitting me. You're one of the lucky ones who made
it back. I'm sorry. I suppose you don't want to talk about it?
Yeah, we saw that on TV. How was the heat? How was the
rain? How were the women? How were the drugs? How was
Bob Hope? How does it feel to kill someone? You were a
pawn. You were a hero. You were stupid, you should have
gone to Canada. You were there? You were there? You were
there? You were there? You were there? You were there? (1 04)
The preacher closed his book, the sermon over. The spectators moved
away and he retreated to the shade of a tree. I ventured forward, asking
him what he was reading from. "Tracers," he told me. "It's the truth."
My introduction to Tracers, a play written by Vietnam veterans about
their experiences, can only be described as emotional, and emotion is the
heart of this play. Often listed. among the standout dramas dealing with
52 GILLILAN
Vietnam, Tracers remains to be analyzed in depth. This essay begins that
process through an examination of the evolving structure of Tracers and
the critical reception the play received.
3
This is a necessary first step
before the play can be explored in a broader context of representations
of Vietnam and the accompanying evolution of our national ideology
embodied in images of the war and its warriors. I find that Tracers
preserves an overall veracity absent in other Vietnam plays and films, and
it is the nature and source of this authenticity that motivate my interest in
and analysis of the play.
jane Tompkins, a historian, states: "all accounts of events are
determined through and through by the observer's frame of reference ...
there really are no facts except as they are embedded in some particular
way of seeing the world." Thus historians (and playwrights) cannot
escape the limitations of their subjective position in history, and their
products are extensions of the circumstances from which they spring.
4
An inevitable dialogue exists between the present and the past, but
elements of historical authenticity exist. The historian wants "first and
foremost to let the past be the past, strange before it is familiar, particular
before it is universal."
5
Tracers maintains a distinct connection with the
war experiences of the veteran authors, while at fhe same time develop-
ing within a cultural setting that has shaped and reshaped the war and its
veterans over the past two decades. The veracity of Tracers is the text's
greatest strength, and its contribution is to our understanding of the war
and the men who fought it.
Since so little work has been done on this play, I begin here with a
description of the drama,
6
then examine the history of the play, with an
emphasis on the changes made to the structure of the text between 1980
3
Theatre companies large and small, as well as many colleges, have produced
Tracers since its original publication in 1983. (The exact number of college
productions is unknown at this time, but it is high enough-that Difusco could not
make a guess at the number.) DiFusco directed all of the productions discussed in this
essay with the exception of the Chicago Steppenwolf Theater Company, the Ar izona
State University, and the Denver Theater on Broadway productions.
4
jane Tompkins, " 'Indians' : Textual ism, Morality, and the Problem of History,"
Critical Inquiry 13 (Autumn 1986): 101-119.
5
Natalie Zeman Davis, '"Any Resemblance to Persons Living or Dead': film and
the challenge of authenticity," Historical journal of Film, Radio, and Television 8
(1988) : 280-294.
6
The description presented here is based on the Hi II & Wang 1986 text and my
observations as an audience member at the 1994 Los Angel es production.
Tracers 53
and 1994. Next, I examine the critical responses to the play from both
journalists and scholars, offering an alternative understanding of the play
as an "experience" in response to the academic critique of Tracers as a
"story." I conclude with suggestions for future work on the play.
Performed on an almost empty stage (the only props absolutely
necessary are six M-16's), Tracers is propelled by the dialogue, actions,
and emotions of its six major characters as they experience bootcamp, the
war, coming home, and the present time. As John DiFusco, the play's
creator and director, describes it, Tracers is "visual, emotional, poetic,
often comical."
7
What Tracers is not is a linear narrative. The play lacks
a central protagonist, shifts locations and times in a non-linear fashion,
and has multiple, contradictory endings.
Tracers opens with the "Prologue," a list of questions and comments
the veterans heard when they returned from the war:
Someone told me you're a vet! Someone told me you had a gun.
You killed people? You were only nineteen? You volunteered?
You're bullshitting me. Oh, you're one of the lucky ones who
made it back. I'm sorry. I suppose you don't want to talk about
it. Yeah, we saw that on TV. How was the heat? How was the
rain? How were the women? How was Bob Hope? How does
it feel to kill somebody? You were a pawn. You were a hero.
You were stupid, you should have gone to Canada. You were
there? You were there? You were there? You were there? You
were there? You were there? (6-7)
The "Prologue" lacks a specific time referent, making it immediate to the
performance of the play. The characters speak in the moment. This
scene and others like it in Tracers create a present-mindedness, recapitu-
lating past experiences using the ongoing, current memories of the
veteran actors. This results in an immediate connection between the
characters and the audience. But this is a connection in reverse. The
characters speak to the audience, and in doing so, recreate each viewer
as a veteran: "You were there." Thus before the play really begins, the
audience is constructed as participants in the drama. They cannot watch
the story as spectators; they must experience it along with the other
characters.
7
John DiFusco, "Synopsis," Tracers: A Reunion Celebration, 1994. The
playbook for the 1994 Bar Triangle Entertainment production, Schoenberg Hall,
University of California, Los Angeles.
54 GILLILAN
Act One begins with "Home From the War-The First Tracers," a
series of monologues set at the end of the war. The veterans' immediate
reactions to their experiences in-country are revealed, making it clear that
some of the men dealt with their service better than others. Next is the
"Saigon List
11
-words and phrases which evoke the Vietnam experience.
For example:
La dai, motherfucker! Mas skosh! Deedee mau! I kinda fuckin'
doubt it. There it is, G.l. I can't feel my legs. Sorry 'bout that
shit. Dog tags. He's dead. Wasted. KIA. Head wound.
Stomach wound. A fuckin' suckin' chest wound. Medevac.
Dustoff. Clear to fire in any direction ... . (1 0)
Jeffrey Fenn (1992), in his discussion of the Vietnam' dramas, including
Tracers, states that the "Saigon List":
. .. no doubt means much to those who have had to fill sand-
bags and crouch behind them, and who have personal memories
of particular places. The images must remain unintelligible to
the uninitiated, however, and the scene would seem to appeal.
primarily to an audience of veterans rather than a regular theater
audience.
8
However, this is not the case. The audience has already been made
participants. Individuals might not understand each word or phrase, but
before their tour of duty is over, they will. The scene ends with an
explanation: " You're all going to Vietnam; if you don't pay attention,
you're gonna die" (11 ).
The "Saigon List" returns the narrative from the immediate post-war
setting of the "The First Tracers" back to the timeless position of the
"Prologue." It reminds the audience that it is along for the ride to come.
Both the and the "Saigon List" suture the Vietnam experience
across time, merging the "then" and the "now." The result is the
creation of a shared space in which audience and actors can interact.
This also gives audiences their first glimpse into the experiences they and
the actors/characters are about to share. However, it is only an glimpse,
since the images evoked in the "Prologue" and the "Saigon List" are
contextual ized over the course of the play.
8
Jeffrey W. Fenn, Levitating the Pentagon: Evolutions i n the American Theater
of the Vietnam War Era (Newark, NJ: University of Delaware Press, 1992), 27.
Tracers 55
Tracers moves next to "Day One," a scene encapsulating the boot
camp experience and providing clues to each character's personality and
motivations. The range of character types-patriotic volunteer/draftee,
scholar/blue collar, etc.-offers a range of identification for audiences.
"Day One" is followed by "Day One Epilogue," a moving monologue
for drill instructor Sergeant Williams that foreshadows one of the play's
endings: "Before they are twenty-one, nearly half of them will be killed
or wounded ... eighty percent are targets" (24-25).
From the relative safety of boot camp Tracers moves to "Sense of
judgment," another monologue, this time by one of the soldiers, Baby
San, who tries to reconcile himself to his first kill.
9
Temporally, this
monologue takes place after the next scene, "Initiation," the patrol during
which Baby San is forced to kill. This juxtaposition of time, experience,
and emotion collapses them all into a dynamic "now" that stretches from
boot camp to the present, making all the play's experiences immediate
and powerful. This juxtaposition also mirrors the way DiFusco and the
other actor/veterans experienced time and events. Difusco describes the
phenomenon of recalling events from his service in Vietnam, but being
unable to remember when during his tour of duty they occurred.
10
Thus
the fluidity of time and place in the play echos the lived experiences of
the men writing it.
"Initiation" traces the characters through daily life in Vietnam and
out on patrol, where they end up in a firefight. The scene is set during
the war, but includes Dinky Dau's first monologue, which he narrates
from the subjective position of the present. The temporal placement of
his monologue is cued by his opening line, "I remember the sky was
overcast ... " (37). and by the use of the past tense throughout. At the
end of the monologue, the action returns to the bush, but Dinky Dau
continues to reflect from the present: "Everyone was into it. I was eager.
I was angry!" (38). At the end of "Initiation" past and present converge,
shifting from one to the other in the dialogue, creating the extended
"now" and embracing events in Vietnam and in the present. This
conflation strengthens the play's emotional immediacy, bridging the
experiences of the veterans who were there and the audience which is
taken there.
9
According to DiFusco, most of the character names were simply the actors'
nicknames while in Vietnam-Baby San, Dinky Dau, Scooter, and a b u ~ "Professor"
was a modification of the actor's nickname "Senator." And "Little John" was both
a nod to the mythos of Robin Hood and a personal conceit for the play's creator, John
DiFusco. "Doc" is the only figure named after an actual casualty of the war.
10
John DiFusco, telephone conversation with author, 7 September 1995.
56 GILLILAN
"Fourth of July" picks up the in-country chronology, tracking Dinky
Dau as he responds to his kill earlier that day. And, like "Initiation," this
scene includes a monologue by Dinky Dau that slips from Vietnam, " ...
keep your fuckin' paws off my pound cake," to the present, "I couldn't
sleep that night ... " (31 ). However, instead of the scene ending in a
blend of past and present as "Initiation" does, "Fourth of july" returns to
Vietnam after the monologue with Baby San and Dinky Dau proceeding
to get high on heroin while Little john watches and drinks.
Act One ends with "Touchdown," Habu's monologue set during
the war. However, the monologue is delivered during a mimed patrol,
a surreal reminder that Habu's words could also be memory. By keeping
the language of "Touchdown" in-country, the play creates a sense of time
passing there and strands the audience in Vietnam over the short
intermission.
Act Two opens in Vietnam and remains there through the next
several scenes, including "Fun and Games," a conversation between
Dinky Dau and Baby San, who speak at but not to each other. Baby San
worries over the possibility that he impregnated a local girl, while Dinky-
Dau laments over his girlfriend back home and his present boredom.
"In the Rear with the Beer and the Gear," pttle John's monologue on
a trip to a local massage parlor, follows. A not so subtle commentary on
the language of these soldiers-"Went out on a fuckin' ambush one
fuckin' night. Stayed out in the fuckin' boonies for ten fuckin' days ... "
(41)-the monologue both adds humor and desensitizes the audience to
the profanity that was common speech. Through the repeated use of
"fuck" throughout the speech, the word loses its shock value and at the
same time reminds the audience of the frustration and dehumanization
behind that loss. This scene is temporally ambiguous in the same way as
the "Prologue" and the "Saigon List" and could be occurring in-country,
just after the war, or in the present. Set between two in-country scenes,
this monologue reminds the audience that they are present in the past
with the characters.
Next, "Cheryl's Letter" returns us firmly to Vietnam.
11
The scene
begins with Dinky Dau reading a "Dear John" letter aloud and ends with
Dinky, Scooter, and Baby San heading off to get laid in Saigon.
"Friends," the next scene, is a conversation between Baby San and
Professor and is also set in-country. This scene establishes Professor's
loner attitude, " I just don't like to get too close to people" (44), that is
later explained in "Professor and Doc."
11
1 n some versions of the play, another scene titled "Got Your Ass" occurs
between "In the Rear with the Beer and the Gear" and "Cheryl ' s letter." I will
discuss it in more detail later in the essay.
Tracers 57
"Blanket Party", another Vietnam scene, follows. The specter of drill
instructor Williams reminds the audience that "Eighty percent are targets"
(45) while Baby San, Little John, Professor, and Dinky Dau carry out the
grisly task of collecting the remains of dead American soldiers. The men
talk about their R&R to take their minds off the task, but that proves
impossible. When Little John becomes obsessed with piecing two of the
bodies back together a fight breaks out between him and Dinky Dau.
Professor ends the scene with: "Can we please just get this over with?!"
(47).
"Parallel Vietnam Ambiguities," Professor's monologue, follows, set
in Vietnam, but foreshadowing later events in his "1984 Tracers"
monologue. "Professor and Doc," another in-country scene, follows.
Suffering with a rat bite, Professor goes to see the medic (Doc), who starts
him on rabies injections and talks with him about Pirandello. The scene
ends with Professor's second monologue, set again in the present: "Well,
I went back to see Doc for the thirteen days and the thirteen rabies shots
... " (53). He explains that Doc had committed suicide. At the end
Professor states: "But, as hard as I tried, I could not shed one tear for my
friend who had just killed himself. I guess the machine just refused to
shut itself off" (84).
The next scene, "The Machine," is a flashback to boot camp, and in
it Professor explains what the machine is, and what function it serves:
"The machine was a defense mechanism I dreamed up in boot camp.
When things got tough, I would just turn my mind off and become a
machine" (85). These two scenes re-establ ish the past/present conflation,
reminding the audience that "then'' and "now" are inseparable, before
the play moves into its double ending.
"Fuckin' A, We Like it Here" returns the characters and audience to
Vietnam for Habu's short-timer's party. The excitement over Habu's
apprdaching departure is overshadowed by Scooter's revelation that he
"can't leave, I just extended six months" (56). This scene is foll owed by
''1984 Tracers," a series of monologues where the characters speak to the
audience from the present, whenever that may be. Each of the characters
survived Vietnam, some better than others. Professor returns to Bangkok
in 1984 to hear: "The war is over. It's time to go home" from a young
Thai girl. Little John learns that he is dying and his children are disfigured
due to his exposure to Agent Orange. Habu left the military only to
return and become a lifer. Dinky Dau, in a wheelchair, celebrates his six-
month long relationship with Mary, a Vietnamese woman. And Scooter,
released from prison, travels to see the Wall. He recounts a dream in
which all the boys from his high school graduating class are dead, but
they come to life: " We've all come home-together" (59) .
58 GILLILAN
This reflection on the past disappears in the fervor of "Ambush."
And, as the play describes, "We are jolted back to 'Nam" (59) for another
patrol. Remaining fi.rmly in the time frame of the war, this scene, parts
of which I quoted at the very beginning of the paper, ends with all the
characters dead or dying, a sharp contrast to the preceding monologues.
Having just seen that the characters-and therefore the audience-have
survived, "Ambush" reminds spectators of the fickleness of war and both
the audience and the characters are forced to die. This strands both
characters and audience in a particular limbo. They are neither dead in
the past nor alive in the present, and they are both dead and alive. This
juxtaposition of realities, dead and alive, elevates the characters beyond
their individual personalities to representatives of all the men who served,
those who lived and "the 59,000 who missed the Freedom Bird," to
whom the play is dedicated. The veterans and the audience have died
and yet survived, the experience permanently marking them.
"The Resurrection," also called "The Ghost Dance," follows
"Ambush." This wordless "ritualistic choreography to raise the dead and
pay tribute to the 59,000 who were killed in Vietnam" (64) is a collage
of potent martial imagery: the Wall, the hand salute, the 21-gun salute,
and Tai Chi . Of all the moments in Tracers, this is the most visually
oriented, and description can only do the scene partial justice. As
DiFusco describes it: "It's deep, but it's not words . .. we're doing some
kind of communication there."
12
Lighting, sound, actor movement, and
the resulting ambience is "magical," as I overheard one observer at the
1994 Los Angeles ,performance describe it:
"The Ghost Dance" touches you deep inside. It's magical. I
think that emotional effect occurs because the moment occurs
without words. The language it speaks is something more than
words. It speaks an emotional truth that words cannot embody.
The scene occurs in a timeless, dream-like space that is both real and
imaginary, representing both what might have been and what was. Like
the young men resurrected in Scooter's dream, so too the "dead"
characters from "Ambush" are resurrected. The scene ends with each
character positioned before the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the Wall.
In the 1994 production, the blocking of the characters at the Wall echoed
their positions at the very start of the play in "Home From the War-The
12
John DiFusco, Richard Chaves, and Mitch Hale, interview with the author.
Video recording. Los Angeles, CA, 12 September 1994.
Tracers 59
First Tracers," bringing the audience closer to where they began their
journey through the Vietnam experience.
The play is carried full circle by the "Epilogue," and Tracers ends
with a return to the same questions posed in the beginning of the play in
the "Prologue." However, unlike the beginning, "Epilogue" can only be
described as celebratory, the characters dancing and speaking accompa-
nied by a pounding drumbeat.
13
The two and a half hour spiral of shared
experience provides the audience the answers to these questions, "You
were only nineteen? . . . How were the drugs? . . . How does it feel to kill
somebody? .. . You were there?" (1 04), because, as Richard Chaves
(Dinky Dau) states, "We've showed you how it feels."
14
And, "for those
two and a half hours it was real."
15
An idea that creator John DiFusco carried around for more than a
decade while working as an actor, director, and writer, Tracers originated .
out of the collaborative work of a group of Vietnam veteran actors
16
and
one writer, Sheldon Lettich. It developed from a one-act play in 1980
into a complex two-act play by 1985, made up of the scenes and
monologues described above.
17
As DiFusco explains in an interview: "I
was obsessed with the thought that every war has its chroniclers. Every
war but this one [Vietnam]. No one wants to talk about it-so the veteran
13
For the 1994 Los Angeles performance, ex-Door's drummer John Dinsmore
created and performed the final percussion arrangement.
14
John DiFusco, Richard Chaves, and Mitch Hale, interview by author. Video
recording. Los Angeles, CA, 12 September 1994.
15
Michael Cruff, "Tracers is a successful war drama," Arizona State Press, 9
February 1990, 15.
DiFusco believes that "Resurrection"/"The Ghost Dance" and "Epilogue" are
the hardest scenes for any cast to "get right" with regard to the ritual and celebratory
nature of both scenes. As a result, he has traditionally begun each rehearsal with
these scenes and employs them as a collective "warm up" before each day's work
starts. In this way he is able to ensure that the actors are well prepared for the scenes
by the time of the performance. Uohn DiFusco, telephone conversation with the
author, 10 February 1996.)
16
Vincent Caristi (Baby San), Richard Chaves (Dinky Dau), John DiFusco (Doc),
Eric E. Emerson (Habu), Rick Gallavan (Scooter), Merlin Marston (Little John), and
Harry Stephens (Professor).
17
The chronology here is based on the Hill & Wang Tracers (1986), the playbill
for the Bar Triangle Entertainment, September 1994, University of California at Los
Angeles production of Tracers, and interviews with Mr. John DiFusco, the play's
creator/author.
60 GILLILAN
is walking around with all this suppressed information .. . . "
18
Elsewhere
DiFusco speculates: "I guess the motivation for the piece is the fact that
you were there, and it's probably the most important thing that ever
happened to you in your life, and if you're an artist you' ve got to deal
with it."
19
DiFusco concludes: "We were just boys saying the truth."
20
Based on the actors' personal experiences-if not always literally
true-Tracers provides snapshots from the lives of Vietnam veterans as
they journey through the psychological minefields of war and its
aftermath.
21
While working in theatre, DiFusco met Vincent Caristi, later Baby
San, and received encouragement to pursue the Tracers project.
DiFusco's twelve-year experience with experimental theater and
improvisational techniques using groups of actors inclined him to think
that Tracers might be developed that way,
22
provided he found a group
of actors who had Vietnam war experiences.
23
Not being acquainted
with any other veteran colleagues but Caristi, DiFusco ran an ad in
Drama-Logue-a theatre trade paper-in March of 1980.
24
Approximately thirty-five actors responded to the ad, and after an
initial audition, DiFusco called back about half of the men. Without a
script, the auditions consisted of a monologue about the actor's Vietnam
experience, a few improvisations, and discussions about the war.
DiFusco ultimately singled out six men in their late-20s to mid-30s who
18
Kathleen Hendrix, "A Personal Play, and Purgative, About Vietnam," The Los
Angeles Times, 21 November 1980, 5:3.
19
Leslie Bennetts, "The Vietnam War as Theater and an Act of Exorcism," The
New York Times, 27 January 1985, 2:4.
20
John DiFusco, Richard Chaves, and Mitch Hale, interview with the author.
Video recording. Los Angeles, CA, 12 September 1994.
21
Bennetts, 4, 19.
22
Hendrix, 3, 18.
23
0tis L. Guernsey jr, ed., The Bums Mantle Theater Yearbook: Best Plays of
1984/85 (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1985), 165-177.
24
The ad read: "Casting Notices/Non-Equity Actors who are Vietnam veterans are
needed to participate in a workshop leading to an original production. No fee. Mail
your pictures and resume to John Difusco ... . " Hendri x (1980): 3.
Tracers 61
had served as enlisted men in Vietnam from 1967 to 1972 in the Army,
Marines, and Air Force. Most had volunteered, a few had been drafted.
25
In April 1980, DiFusco organized the group and began holding
workshops in the cafeteria of the Veterans' Hospital in Brentwood,
California.
26
Arranged through the efforts of VA official Shad Meshad, the
site was free. The collaborative process took six months, the first three
conducted in complete privacy while the actors learned to trust and open
up with each other. During the last three months, the actors worked on
scenes to the accompaniment of VA patient life. DiFusco recalls one man
who paced the hospital halls calling cadence. Richard Chaves (Dinky
Dau) recalled other veterans who sat watching the performers, occasion-
ally shouting at them: "What the hell are you doin' that shit for! Shut the
f- up!"27
Meeting five nights a week, for no pay, they talked about what had
happened to them in Vietnam and how it had affected their lives. The
actors often found themselves describing painful personal memories only
to find them part of the script the next day-nightmares ready to be
enacted. As Merlin Marston (Little John) told one reporter: "It forced you
to relive experiences you'd forgotten. After rehearsal, I'd go home and
cry. Sometimes I wasn't even sure what I was crying about, but the next
day I sure felt good about it."
28
Due to the personal nature of the play's
material, the actors made a promise to each other not to disclose who
had which experience, believing this would allow them to express their
feelings and still protect their privacy and professionalism as actors.
29
A frequent participant in the workshops, writer Sheldon Lettich
transcribed the improvisations, and DiFusco then edited the developing
play. On july 4, 1980 a work-in-progress performance was given at the
intimate 45-seat Odyssey Theater on the west side of Los Angeles.
Receiving an encouraging response from an invited audience made up of
DiFusco's theatre peers and friends came as a surprise. DiFusco assumed
that the audience would be uninterested since they were generally liberal
25
Hendrix, 18.
26
The workshops employed a variety of theatrical techniques including personal
improvisation, rap sessions, psychodrama, physical work, trust and ensemble work.
27
John DiFusco, Richard Chaves, and Mitch Hale, interview with author. Video
recording. Los Angeles, 12 September 1994.
28
Hendrix, 18.
29
/bid.
62 GILLILAN
well-to-dos and therefore not as affected by the war. When they
responded enthusiastically, workshops resumed with renewed vigor.
30
In October 1980, DiFusco completed the overall structure of the one-
act version of Tracers, including scene order, music and sound design,
choreography, and final editing. The play opened on October 17, again
at the Odyssey, to sparse attendance.
31
Groups of Vietnam veterans
brought in by Shad Meshad constituted many of the audiences during the
first month. DiFusco resorted to calling friends to fill seats, but was told:
"Oh, John, no one wants to hear about Vietnam."
32
By November, positive reviews and word of mouth helped the play
gain momentum and its own unique following of theatre people and
Vietnam veterans and their families. The veterans often came in groups
and responded well to the production, calling it therapeutic. "One thing
this show has done for us," actor Harry Stephens (Professor) stated, "We
came back. There was no hoopla. No confetti. This is our parade."
33
Running nine months to mostly sold out houses, the production quickly
became a critical success and was nominated for its first award within
three months,
34
going on to receive the Drama-Logue Critics' Award for
direction, and the Los Angeles Drama Critics' Circle Award for best
ensemble performance.
After it closed at the Odyssey, Tracers was produced in 1981 by The
Bear Republic Theater in Santa Cruz, California.
35
Running for a week
with sold out houses, the production provided the cast with their first
encounter with "bush vets"-veterans who lived in the woods near Santa
Cruz-who came down out of the mountains to see the play.
36
Appear-
30
John DiFusco, telephone interview .with author, 7 September 1995.
31
Produced by Lupe Vargus and Ron Sossi. Directed by John DiFusco.
32
John DiFusco, Richard Chaves, and Mitch Hale, personal interview with
author. Video recording. Los Angeles, CA, 12 September 1994.
33
Hendrix, 19.
34
John DiFusco, telephone interview with author, 7 September 1995.
35
The Bear Republic Theater was the premiere experimental theatre in Santa Cruz
at the time and was loosely associated with the University of California at Santa Cruz
Theater Department. Many theatre actors, writers, and directors from Los Angeles
migrated to Santa Cruz to work in the theatre, which was originally a large redwood
barn. (John DiFusco, telephone conversation with the author, 10 February 1996.)
36
john DiFusco, telephone conversation with the author, 10 February 1996.
Tracers - 63
ing next in January 1983, Tracers was produced by the Steppenwolf
Theater Company of Chicago. Gary Sinise directed the production,
which received the 1984 Joseph Jefferson Award for best ensemble
performance.
37
In January 1985, Tracers made its New York debut at the Public
Theater. This production was presented by Joseph Papp, produced by
Thomas Bird and the Vietnam Veterans Ensemble Theater Company
(VETCo), and directed by DiFusco. DiFusco credits Thomas Bird and
VETCo for bringing Tracers to New York and ensuring its popularity. In
1979, Bird founded the company with a $25,000 grant from the National
Endowment for the Arts.
38
VETCo was an acting company composed of
Vietnam veterans and dedicated to presenting the human side of the war.
Established in response to a major call to action agai nst the silence and
isolation confronting Vietnam veterans in the late 1970s, it was less
concerned with any overt political debate over whether the war was right
or wrong than with the insistence that a particular experience be
recognized as something historically significant.
39
The play featured two members of the original Los Angeles Odyssey
cast, Vincent Caristi (Baby San) and Richard Chaves (Dinky Dau).
DiFusco and David Berry, known for his own Vietnam play G.R. Point,
edited and restructured the play for the New York performance, resulting
in the two-act narrative described earl ier.
40
Several significant changes
were made in the play as it moved from one to two acts.
37
DiFusco flew to Chicago for the last two weeks of rehearsals. He worked with
Sinise, polishing the changes to the play.
38
Fred Bernstein, ''Vet-Turned-VIP Tom Bird is Struck on New York' s 'Mayflower
Madam'," People Weekly 23 (17 June 1985): 95-102.
39
Christopher Edwards, Spectator review in the London Theater Record 5 (1985):
769.
40
DiFusco wanted to restructure and rewrite Tracers. David Berry was a well
known playwright with a successful Vietnam play, C.R. Point, which was performed
in Los Angeles where Sally Kirkland saw it. She had also seen the Odyssey
production of Tracers. A friend of Tom Bird, Kirkland suggested that Berry and
DiFusco work together on Tracers. Since DiFusco knew Berry and respected his work
he agreed, and changes were made right up to the last night before the performance.
(John Difusco, telephone interview with author, 7 September 1995.)
64 GILLILAN
First was the permanent inclusion of a minority character. Habu
became African-American.
41
This change was one that DiFusco had
wanted to make all along. A review of the 1980 Odyssey production
included the following observation:
The group seems unanimous in their regret that there is not a
black in the play ... . Blacks were very much a part of the
Vietnam experience, and, it is apparent, of these men's particular
experiences.
42
Second, the imagery of the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial, or "the
Wall" as it is more commonly known, was added, becoming the
backdrop for "The Resurrection"/"The Ghost Dance". This went hand
in hand with the inclusion of the "1984 Tracers" to give the characters
contemporary lives, which DiFusco felt made the play more effective.
43
At the same time, the "Epilogue" was moved to the end of the play so it
did not conclude on "a downer."
44
A third change involved the removal of the "Got Your Ass" scene at
the request of Joseph Papp and Thomas Bird. DiFusco wanted to keep
the scene, but was over-ridden by the producers who wanted to cut the
overall length of the play.
45
Not included in the opening description, this
scene fell between "In the Rear with the Beer and the Gear" and
"Cheryl's Letter" and consisted of a conversation between Little John and
Baby San as they played cards. The R.C. Dispatch, the official newsletter
for fans of Richard Chaves (Dinky Dau) describes the scene: "Although
the characters of Little John and Baby San never truly come right out with
it, the implication is that both have engaged in homosexuality with an
Army colonel." The Dispatch goes on to state that the scene "was
considered too strong for the more sensitive members of the audience
during prior performances of the play" and was cut. Whether for length
41
According to Difusco, this shift first occurred in the Chicago production and
was a condition of Sinise being allowed to produce the play. By the September 1994
production, Tracers included two African-Americans (Habu-and Little John), and one
Latino (Dinky Dau).
42
Hendrix, 19.
43
janice Arkatov, "Viet War Vets Return to Front in 'Tracers'," The Los Angeles
Times, 11 November 1985, 5:5.
44
John Difusco, telephone interview with author, 7 September 1995.
45
/bid.
Tracers 65
or content reasons, the scene was removed for the New York production
and was not returned until September 1994. The Dispatch stated that it
was returned at that time "for the express reason that homosexuality was
a matter-of-fact in Vietnam . . .. "
46
With complete control over the 1994
production, DiFusco replaced the missing scene to restore the historical
wholeness of the play for future generations of viewers who wi II see the
videotaped version.
47
Critically acclaimed, the New York run played to capacity houses for
six months. The critic for Newsweek sums up the accolades:
Tracers is something special. ... Nothing bland about this
devastating evocation of the individual, personal apocalypses
that were Vietnam. Tracers is a land mine of a play that blows
complacency to shreds. Tracers meets reality with a force and
dignity that creates honor out of horror.
46
DiFusco received the 1985 Drama Desk Award for sound and music
design, and Chaves the Theater World Award for outstanding new talent.
In August 1985, the play moved to the Royal Court Theater in London,
England, as part of the New York Shakespeare Festival exchange
program.
49
Returning from London, the play opened again in Los
Angeles, this time at the larger Cornet Theater, running there from
November 1985 through February 1986.
50
Presented next at the Annenberg Center on the University of
Pennsylvania campus 12-16 February 1986, the play then toured
Australia (Sydney and Melbourne) during the remainder of February and
April of that year. In spring 1987, Susan Dietz produced a New England
46
Denise Stoltenberg, "Tracers: A Review of the Play," The R.C. Dispatch 2 (5)
1994, 3.
47
john DiFusco, telephone interview with author, 7 September 1995.
48
jack Kroll, " Vietnam of the Spirit," Newsweek, 4 February 1985, 51 .
49
Co-produced by joseph Papp and Tom Bird, directed by John DiFusco. Tracers
competed with and was picked out of six or so possible plays to be included in the
exchange program. Oohn DiFusco, telephone interview with author, 7 September
1995.)
50
The popularity of the play helped three of the actors land televisi on spots.
DiFusco appeared on The Greatest American Hero, Caristi on Magnum P.t. ; and
Chaves in a made-for-TV movie, Fire on the Mountain. All three played veterans or
military characters.
66 GILLILAN
tour for Tracers, including stops in Connecticut, New Hampshire, New
jersey, New York, Maine, Massachusetts, and Vermont. In the fall of
1987, Rubin Sierra produced the play at the Group Theater in Seattle,
Washington.
51
For the Seattle performance (the first with a non-veteran cast) Tracers
underwent another structural change, "The Resurrection"/"The Ghost
Dance" being modified, though not for the first time. "The Ghost
Dance" underwent several incarnations, beginning with Harry Stephens'
audition, where he performed a mime of a person unable to escape an
invisible box. The work-in-progress rendition of Tracers at the Odyssey
used that visual metaphor. However, Difusco wanted the actors to
participate in learning something physical while in the workshops. Eric
Emerson (Habu) taught them some Tai Chi. In the 1980 Odyssey run,
"The Resurrection"/"The Ghost Dance" was a combination of Stephens'
mime and the Tai Chi. The scene involved Baby San falling dead and the
others paying tribute, each in his qwn way. As Difusco describes it:
It's a resurrection, a raising of the dead. And we show the Wall
to show you that if this hadn't happened, there would be 59,000
other forty-year olds walking around this world, maybe doing
something good for the world. It's mostly about resurrection and
recognition.
52
The choreography changed again in Seattle with the addition of the
"Universal Greeting," a series of hand gestures, each with a specific
meaning.
53
Difusco had used the "Universal Greeting" in an earlier
production of Hair, which he also directed, and decided to include it in
Tracers as bridge between the actors on stage and the audience. Richard
Chaves (Dinky Dau) explains that "'The Ghost Dance's gestures are like:
connect. It's inviting the audience in."
54
Olympia Dukakis produced the play next at the New jersey Whole
Theater in Montclair for the 1987/1988 theatre season. When it closed
in Montclair, Tracers moved to The George Street Playhouse in New
Brunswick, New Jersey. On 7 February 1990, Tracers opened for four .
51
Difusco directed this production as well as playing the Dinky Dau role.
52
John DiFusco, Richard Chaves, and Mitch Hale, interview with author. Video
recording. Los Angeles, CA, 12 September 1994.
53
/bid.
54
/bid.
Tracers 67
performances between Wednesday and Saturday, at the Arizona State
University in Phoenix. The production was directed by Wanda
McHatton as part of the requirements for her Masters of Arts degree.
McHatton used an all student cast. Reviews of the production share one
thing in common. Despite the fact that the production was directed by
a young woman and performed almost exclusively by actors too young
to remember the war, reviewers still found the play to be "verytrue to
life."
55
In March 1990, the "hand grenade of a show"
56
was produced at the
California State University at Northridge with an all student cast as part
of the Los Angeles Olympic Festival. DiFusco directed his first teenage
cast, but the result was still"a show featuring some remarkably convinc-
ing grunts."
57
Peter Sellers, who produced the festival and had seen
Tracers in New York, spoke to DiFusco at the time about a possible
Kennedy Center production of the play-artistic differences suspended
the discussion.
58
Also in March 1990, the Denver Theater on Broadway produced
Tracers under the direction of Steven T angedal. Described by a Denver
critic as the "best thing ever done at Theater on Broadway,"
59
the
production garnered nominations for five Denver Drama Critics Circle
Awards: best play,_ best ensemble performance, best direction, best
lighting, and best sound.
60
The production won best ensemble perfor-
mance and was re-staged at Theater on Broadway a second time in
August 1994, also under the direction of Tangedal.
61
In September 1994, a Tracers reunion celebration resulted in two
benefit performances at the University of California, Los Angeles,
55
Francine Stahl, "War lives on in Tracers," State Review, 7 February 1990, 15.
56
Ray loynd, "Explosive Tracers Reopens Postwar Wounds," The Los Angeles
Times, 17 March 1990, F: 1.
57
/bid.
58
john Difusco, telephone interview with author, 7 September 1995.
59
Aian Stern, "Tracers tells unique war story," The Denver Post, 13 April 1990,
F: 1.
60
Sandra Dillard-Rosen, "Tracers tops theater nominations," The Denver Post,
21 August 1990, E:1.
61
Sandra Dillard-Rosen, "Vietnam drama worth repeating," The Denver Post,
12 March 1 994, E: 1 .
68 GILLILAN
Schoenberg Hall Theater. The production reunited four of the surviving
cast members from the original Los Angeles production: Richard Chaves
(Dinky Dau), John DiFusco (Doc), Rick Gal Iavan (Scooter), and Harry
Stephens (Professor).
62
The two performances, rehearsals, and several
planned takes were filmed, and a video version of the play is in post-
production.63
Upon release of the video, the evolution of Tracers will come to an
end, the play joining the myriad of other film and video representations
of Vietnam. However, because of Tracers' long development, this final
product has far more to offer than might be expected. DiFusco states:
We meet kids, kids that come to our rehearsals, or come to our
show and they think they're coming to see some kind of Steven
Segal thing. I like those movies. They're okay, they're action,
they're escapism, but they're not the truth about war. I think we
represent that truth and I' m really glad we finally were able to
put it on video.
64
It is ironic and appropriate that a fixed version of Tracers wi l l emerge at
the same time as the Hollywood popularity of the Vietnam veteran begins
to decline, but more on this later. I turn now to a description of the
critical reception of the play.
The Otis Guernsey's Best Plays of 1984/85 synopsis states that the
play developed from an improvisational process to a "frozen'' script
form,
65
but this description is far from the truth, as an examination of the
play's chronology makes clear. Under almost constant production since
1980, Tracers has undergone significant structural changes over time.
This evolution sets Tracers apart from other Vietnam dramas and films.
Tracers is "a personal play, not a political one. The actors incorporated
62
Two of the original cast members have passed away, Vincent Caristi and Merlin
Marston.
63
For this production a final change was made to the play's structure. Prior to
1994, songs from the 1960s and 1980s were used throughout the performance as
transitions between scenes. In this production the songs were replaced by an
instrumental and sound effects score.
64
John DiFusco, Richard Chaves, and Mitch Hale, interview with author. Video
recording. Los Angeles, CA, 12 September 1994.
65
Guernsey, 165.
Tracers 69
the play into their ongoing dealings with the war."
66
Or, as DiFusco
describes it: "Tracers is structured emotionally. It's not a story type
play."67
The 1985 New York and London productions of Tracers garnered the
bulk of the critical response, and three themes emerge in the reviews,
which describe Tracers as something more than other Vietnam dramas.
First, reviewers comment on the play's origins in the collaborative work
of a group of Vietnam veterans, or authorship by committee. This is
directly related to the second theme, the authenticity of the production,
a result of the actors' lived experiences as veterans. These two character-
istics of the play work together to heighten its emotional impact, creating
an almost documentary feel to the production, or "oral history for the
stage" as Guardian reviewer Nicholas dejongh described it.
68
Finally,
and more common in the academi.c criticism, is the non-linear structure
a_nd the ambiguous endings found in Tracers. I will address each of these
in turn.
The majority of work done on Vietnam dramas centers on the work
of David Rabe and other particular playwrights and their war plays, the
majority of which were written and staged from the late 1960s to the
mid-1970s.
69
lhese authors are regarded as "artists" with unique
perspectives on the war. In his book, Levitating the Pentagon, Jeffrey
Fenn complains that Tracers lacks a guiding consciousness and intensity,
individual perspective, and thematic unity.
70
He finds fault with the fact
that there is no central voice, no authority or auteur representing his
singular experience of the war.
However, this lack of an obvious central voice opens the Tracers text.
Written out of the memories and experienc:es of eight individuals, Tracers
explores the multiple voices of the veteran community, rather than a
i ndividual vision. Tracers is a series of intertwined stories speaking to
66
Hendrix, 3, 18.
67
john DiFusco, telephone interview with author, 7 September 1995.
68
Nicholas dejongh, Guardian review in the London Theater Record 5 (1985):
766.
69
For example: H. Wesley Balk's The Dramatization of 365 Days; Tom Cole's
Medal of Honor Rag; Amlin Grey's How I Got That Story; Arthur Kopit's Indians;
Emily Mann's Still Life; Terrence McNally's Botticelli; David Rabe's The Basic
Training of Pavlo Hummel, Sticks and Bones, and Streamers; Megan Terry' s Viet
Rock; Michael Weller's Moonchildren, etc.
7
Fenn, 29.
70 GILLILAN
many viewers/readers.
71
DiFusco states that he hopes Tracers wil l reach
several audiences:
. . . for veterans, I hope this can be a purging experience . .. . For
the uninitiated, I hope it' s informative. I hope they understand
some things about the war they didn't understand before, and I
hope they understand some things about veterans.
72
Tracers is a play drawn out of the veteran actors' hearts, minds, and
memories.
73
As the critic for The Nation describes it: "The play was
written and performed by Vietnam veterans. This fact makes all the
difference. The result is that, watching Tracers, you feel closer to the war
than anything else is likely to make you feel."
74
This is an example of the
second theme of the critical response, the play's authenticity.
For the critics, the ultimate value of Tracers resides in its ability to
"tell us exactly like it was,"
75
to take images overly familiar within the
mass media and infuse them with new legitimacy and emotion/
6
Edith
Oliver, reviewer for The New Yorker magazine, maintains that:
"However familiar sounding the material, this play is different. The
difference lies in the clarity with which it portrays confusion and
frustration."
77
This clarity, confusion, and frustration are all part of
Tracers' authenticity, its ability to dramatize the real events experienced
or witnessed by the actors themselves. This aspect even turned up in an
action-adventure fiction novel, Koko, where one of the characters is
described as having attended the New York production of Tracers:
71
1 would also argue that DiFusco's direction has provided Tracers with a
constant guiding consciousness. However, this is not necessarily apparent in an
examination of a singl e production and is outside the scope of this essay.
72
Bennetts, 19.
73
Bennetts, 4.
74
Paul Berman, "Theater," The Nation 240, 1985, 31 6-317.
75
Jim Hiley, Listener review in the London Theater Record 5, 16 (1985): 768.
76
Michael Feingold, " Tongues of War, " The Village Voice, 29 january 1985,
V:83.
77
Edith Oliver, " The Theater: Off Broadway," The New Yorker 60, 4 February
1985, 92.
Tracers 71
Tracers put you very close to Vietnam, and virtually every minute
of it called up pictures and echoes of his time there. He found
himself crying and laughi ng, undone by uncontrollable feelings.
78
A veteran who loaned the Phoenix production several film projectors
only asked for tickets in return. The director explained that the man gave
the tickets to his family so that they "could see what it [Vietnam] was
like," but he was unable to attend because the play brought back too
many memories.
79
Told from a multiple perspective, Tracers is able to maintain a
firsthand authenticity even when performed by actors too young to
remember the war, as was the case with the performances in Phoenix,
Northridge, and Denver in 1990.
80
This level of authenticity transforms
the drama into dramatized documentary or oral history,
81
the actors not
just acting, but re-enacting real experiences, giving an extra-theatrical
dimension to the performance.
82
The result is the characters' ability to
speak for the entire Vietnam generation and their bonds of " common
experience."
83
Or, as one reviewer summarizes: " If you don't know
anyone who fought in Vietnam, go see Tracers . .. you'll get to know six
who did."
84
Another criti c writes:
Subjects never go stale if freshly seen, heard, smelled, and felt.
All the expected scenes are here, but again and again something
particularized, pungent, and palpable to the imagination clinches
78
Peter Straub, Koko (New York: New American Library, 1988), 243.
79
Keira Wright, "Tracers: It's Vietnam conflict all over again," The Phoenix
Gazette, 3 February 1990.
80
Stern, 1.
8 1
Christopher Edwards, Spectator revi ew in the London Theater Record 5, 16
(1 985): 769.
82
deJongh, 766.
83
Ci ive Barnes, The New York Post revi ew in the New York Theater Critics'
Reviews 46, 4 (18 March 1995): 353.
84
Cruff, 15.
72 GILLILAN
them with the unexpected ... . A play that is more of a docu-
mentary, but that comes off as a play nonetheless.
85
However, there is a price to be paid for authenticity-in this case, a
straightforward linear narrative. Because Tracers tells many stories it
lacks a central protagonist, shifts locations and times in a non-linear
fashion, and includes multiple, contradictory endings. Toby Silverman
Zinman, in her article on the dramas of the Vietnam War, argues that
America's Vietnam plays, Tracers included, lack meaning and aesthetic
form.
86
For Zinman Tracers' fluctuations in time and setting is problem-
atic. However, she saves her harshest criticism for the end of the play:
... as the play approaches the paltry resolution provided by this
chronology, the stage action returns to Vietnam. Thus, the
structure mirrors the minds of the characters; these tracers are
more inescapable than their wheelchair. Additionally, there is
the implication that, just as tracers signify the approaching end
of a clip of ammunition and the need to reload, so the play's title
reflects the interminable firefight, the renewal of the war.
87
Zinman mistakes the function of Tracers' non-linear narrative, which
sets out not to tell a story, but to allow the audience to experience
Vietnam along with the veterans. This experience is complex, ambigu-
ous, and, in the end, incomplete. It is rooted in emotion. As veterans,
the actors' ability to draw the audience into the war occurs through an
artistic tapping of "primal" reality that does not conform to a linear
trajectory. The result is summed up by a reviewer for The New York
Times, who writes:
58.
When a nation's horror tale is told by its actual witnesses-and
told with an abundance of theatricality, a minimum of self-
pity-it can still bring an audience to grief. Many of the play's
85
John Simon, "Good Violence, Bad Sex," New York 18, 5, 4 February 1985, 56,
86
Toby Silverman Zinman, " Search and Destroy: The Drama of the Vietnam
War," Theater }ourna/42 (1) (March 1990): 6.
87
Zinman, 8.
Tracers 73
segments are straightforward oral histories ... . The concerns are
more primal than polemical.
88
These experiences do not constitute a renewal of the war, as Zinman
argues, but rather an experience and understanding of it. "Tracers not
only reports to tell us what it was like, but lets us feel what it was like."
89
Thus, far from destroying its own structure/
0
this spiral brings the
audience back to the beginning so the questions posed there (i.e. "How
does it feel to kill somebody?") can finally be answered by veteran and
non-veteran alike.
David DeRose, in his article on Vietnam dramas, also attacks Tracers,
stating that the play's narrative voice, juxtaposed with moments of high
emotional intensity, enables the veteran artists to communicate their war
experiences via their eventual grasp of their significance and conse-
quences. The actors are, in essence, "doing our thinking for us" DeRose
claims.
91
I would suggest that rather than interpreting the war for us
through subjective manipulation, Tracers allows each member of the
audience to share the experience and understand it in their own
subjective, individual terms. By necessity the experience remains
incomplete because Tracers itself is incomplete in any one particular
production. Zinman's "inconclusive conclusions"
92
reflect not shoddy
writing but the veterans' -and the culture's-journey-in-progress.
88
Frank Rich, "Stage: Tracers, Drama of Vietnam Veterans," The New York
Times, 22 January 1985,3:1.
This is not to say that Tracers cannot be read as a political critique of the war in
Vietnam. As producer Thomas Bird states, "The appeal of the play is that it says, 'We
are who we are because of Vietnam. You can accept us or not"' (Bernstein, 96).
This is a condemnation of the war at one level as DiFusco observes: "When the
truth is told about war, it cannot help but be a statement for peace." Oohn DiFusco,
"Director's Notes" in Tracers: A Reunion Celebration, 1994. The playbook for the
1994 Bar Triangle Entertainment production, Schoenberg Hall, University of
California, Los Angeles.)
89
Lawrence Christon, "Vietnam Nightmare in Tracers," The Los Angeles Times,
19 November 1985, Vl:1 .
90
Zinman, 10.
91
David j. DeRose, "A Dual Perspective: First-Person Narrative in Vietnam Film
and Drama," America Rediscovered: Critical Essays on the Literature and Film of the
Vietnam War, Owen W. Gilman and Lorrie Smith eds. (New York: Garland
Publishing, Inc., 1990), 109-119.
92
Zinman, 10.
74 GILLILAN
Through the fragmentation and juxtaposition of experiences, Tracers
points out the ambiguities and the contradictions of the overall experi-
ence of Vietnam, both then and now. Jeffrey Fenn, in his article on the
dramatic responses to Vietnam, describes three types of rites in plays
about the war: rites of separation, rites of experience, and rites of
reintegration. According to Fenn, Vietnam plays typically document the
progression of an individual through his induction into the army, his
experience overseas, and his attempts at reintegration into the society
from which he has been alienated as a consequence of his military
training and experiences. Typical of all of these plays, Fenn states, is the
failure of culture to support the process, resulting in the ultimate failure
of the rite. "Novitiates are left in an existential void, isolated and
alienated, separated by their experiences from the old order, but never
fully integrated into the new."
93
Fenn sees Tracers as also failing in these
terms.
However, Tracers, as of the 1985 performances, takes place in three
time periods: the present, just after the war, and during the war. This
allows for a dramatization of every phase of the combat infantryman's
life, from patrols and helicopter assaults to nightmares, flashbacks, and
verbal abuse by civilians, as well as a visit to the Vietnam Memorial.
94
Tracers integrates the rites of separation, experience, and reintegration,
not falling cleanly into any one particular category. This integrative
approach realistically portrays the range of experiences and responses
among the veteran authors. Tracers' ambiguous ending, with some of the
characters remaining alienated and separated and others achieving
integration, also mirrors the experiences of actual veterans within society.
The themes described above-authorship by committee, the play's
authenticity, and the non-linear narrative structure-work together to
make Tracers an experience rather than a story, an experience that unites
veterans and non-veterans, an experience that teaches, heals, and
remembers. As the critic for The Village Voice sums up:
Tracers is an attempt to bridge the gap between those who
served in Vietnam and those who didn't, an impossible task, but
93
jeffrey W. Fenn, "Vietnam: The Dramatic Response," Tell Me Lies About
Vietnam: Cultural Battles for the Meaning of the War, Alf Louvre and Jeffrey Walsh
eds. (Philadelphia: Open University Press, 1988), 202.
94
Edward K. Eckert and William). Searl e, "Creative literature of the Vietnam
War: A Selective.Bibliography," Choice Oanuary 1987): 725-735.
Tracers 75
necessary if the two groups are going to have any hope of
sharing one nation and one history.
95
Tracers makes the turn from art to communication because:
In this case art itself is only a convention, presented as such
w ithout apology, for communicating something else, a burden
that lies between this particular set of artists and the rest of us,
containing some incomprehensible thing, waiting to be lifted up
by time, by history, by political change-a task that art, for all its
expressive usefulness, can' t finally accomplish.
96
Tracers taps the incomprehensible thing that is combat, and Don
Ringnolda describes the result in his article on Vietnam dramas as:
"taking the bloody glamour out of war."
97
Tracers is personal as well as
cultural "truth," and, as DiFusco describes:
Tracers is a surrealistic portrayal of the Vietnam war and its
veterans. The structure is emot ional rather than plot-orientated.
A series of stories intertwined .... It is meant to work on the
audience's heart and mind, in that order . ... It is a tribute to the
dead and a celebration of survival. Mostly, it stands on truth and
spirit.
98
DiFusco describes Tracers as emerging from a time of national silence
about the war and its veterans:
When we first did it, it was in a time of .. . silence. It was in a
time when nobody wanted to talk about it [the war] . The hawks
wanted to forget it because they considered it a failure, and the
95
Feingold, 83, 86.
97
Don Ringnolda, " Doing It Wrong Is Getting h Right, " Fourteen Landing Zones:
Approaches to Vietnam War Literature, Philip K. jason, ed. (Iowa City: University of
Iowa Press, 1991), 72.
98
john DiF usco, "Synopsis," Tracers: A Reunion Celebration, 1994. The
playbook for the 1994 Bar Triangle Entertainment production, Schoenberg Hall,
University of California, Los Angeles.
76 GILLILAN
doves wanted to forget it because they considered it a disgrace.
And we [the veterans] were left in between .. ..
99
At the same time as Tracers made its debut, Jan Scruggs began working
to get the Vietnam Veterans Memorial built, and a hunger strike occurred
among the veterans at the V.A. Hospital in Brentwood. The silence was
cracked, and as DiFusco states, the veterans started coming out and
saying: ' " Wait a minute, you know. We deserve something here.' And
artistically we became a part of that."
100
When Tracers became a hit in
Los Angeles and later New York, DiFusco speculates that the play let
Hollywood know that it was finally okay to talk about the war again. The
silence was over.
101
As I stated earlier, the video version will be released as attention to
Vietnam and the veterans declines. CNN, as part of its coverage of the
20th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, ran a segment on the films of the
Vietnam war, the commentator stating that the latest efforts coming out
of Hollywood were box office duds, and that the cycle of popularity ~
once again swinging away from the war and its veterans.
Tracers participates in the same processes Fenn attributes to
individual Vietnam dramas-the processes of separation, experience, and
reintegration. Begun in the silence of 1980, the play evolved within the
cultural context that elevated Vietnam and the veterans who fought the
war to near mythic status over the next decade. This cultural transforma-
tion is present in Tracers when the evolution of the play is taken into
account. Now, as the video version nears. completion, both the play and
our culture have apparently reached a stage of reintegration, the exact
nature of which remains to be seen. In any case the play will : "bring you
closer to the truth about one of this nation's most tragic episodes."
102
99
john DiFusco, Richard Chaves, and Mitch Hale, interview with author. Video
recording. Los Angeles, CA, 12 September 1994.
100/bid.
101/bid.
102
Kyle Lawson, "ASU actors hit target in Vi etnam drama Tracers," The Phoenix
Gazette, 9 February 1990.
Tracers 77
Future work on Tracers needs to address several issues. First, the
play's structural changes need to be analyzed in the context in which
they were enacted, both socio-culturally and personally within the lives
of the actors and writers. In particular, Tracers is not just a Vietnam
drama. The play also is able to evoke the decade of the 1960s for many
m e m ~ r s of the audience, whether they were veterans or anti-war
protestors.
103
How that historical aspect plays into Tracers' veracity needs
to be addressed.
Second, an examination of the relationship between the non-linear
narrative structure and the emotional qualities of the play needs to be
undertaken. Third, the extent to which DiFusco provided a guiding or
"auteur" influence on the play should. be examined. And lastly, Tracers
needs to be compared and contrasted to other Vietnam dramas, as well
as to other cultural representations of Vietnam-films, television series,
novels, and poetry. It is my hope that with the release of the video
version of Tracers, scholars will begin to look more closely at this rich
text.
I give the last word to the producer of Tracers: "All of those involved
with the production had one thing in common, their sincere passion and
commitment to the message that Tracers-brings. Honor, remembrance,
and respect in tribute, united in the demand for peace."
104
And to John
DiFusco, who articulates what might be Tracers' most lasting legacy:
I think Tracers is almost more important now because of how
America and the rest of the world is inundated with violence.
Young people don't realize that violence lives with you, haunts
you for the rest of your life. In that sense, I think it's more timely
now.
105
Tracers is determined through and through by its authors' frames of
reference, multiple and contradictory. From these particular ways of
seeing the world, DiFusco and the other actor/writers recreated the
experience of the war and gave audiences an understanding of the
warriors who fought it. Tracers has a particular resonance with history,
103
john Difusco, telephone conversation with the author, 10 February 1996.
104
"Producers Notes," Tracers: A Reunion Celebration, 1994. The playbook for
the 1994 Bar Triangle Entertainment production, Schoenberg Hall, University of
California, Los Angeles.
105
John Difusco, Richard Chaves, and Mitch Hale, interview with author. Video
recording. Los Angeles, CA, 12 September 1994.
78 GILLILAN
an authenticity or veracity of experience that was recognized by the
critics, even when they had other objections to the play. The nature and
essence of this veracity remains to be fully explored. As Dittmar and
Michaud state in their to From Hanoi to Hollywood,
representations of Vietnam are about power: the power to make war and
destroy lives; the power to make images; the power to challenge myths
and prevailing ideologies.
106
Tracers is a reassessment of personal as well
as national history and ideology. And, I believe, it has much to teach us
about the legacy of war and violence, and the meaning of "Vietnam."
106
Linda Dittmar and Gene Michaud, "American's Vietnam War Films: Marching
toward Denial," From Hanoi to Hollywood: The Vietnam War in American Film
(New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1990), 1-15.
journal of American Drama and Theatre 8 (Fall 1996)
Reflections in the Mirror:
Public Arts Funding in the United States
STEPHEN NUNNS
It was one of those nights in New York. After standing around the
lobby of La MaMa for about an hour hoping for a ticket to a sold-out
production, my friend and I were turned away by a box office attendant.
Something of a mix between Blanche DuBois and the Marquis de Sade,
he leered at us through the box office window and said, "Ah told ya, ya
might not git in." We weren't about to give up so easily-we wanted our
experimental theatre and we wanted it now-and twenty minutes later
we found ourselves in another line snaking around the outside of
Performance Space 122 on First Avenue, waiting for tickets to Ron
Athey's 4 Scenes in a Harsh Life.
Although he hadn't appeared in New York City in almost a year and
a half, Athey was a celebrity of the moment, mostly because of a
Minneapolis Walker Art Center performance on March 5, 1994. The
actual production-which involved human "scarification" and
mutilation-came and went with little fuss. But it did generate a formal
complaint to Minnesota State health officials from audience member Jim
Berensen, which in turn brought the show to the attention of the
Minneapolis Star Tribune. The paper published two articles on the show
approximately a month later.
1
While there is little doubt that the Star
Tribune's coverage was both hyperbolic and misinformed (the longest
critique of the performance in the March 29th paper was by staff writer
Mary Abbe, who admitted in the article that she had never attended the
show), its effects were immediate and predictable. Within a month, art
debunkers like jesse Helms were denouncing the performance, and
liberal periodicals like The Village Voice and trade publications like
Theatre Communications Group's American Theatre were supporting the
work. The latter publications set Athey up as the right's new whipping
boy, suggesting he'd replaced the "NEA Four" (performance artists Karen
Finley, john Fleck, Holly Hughes, and Tim Miller, whose grants were
vetoed by NEA Chairperson John Frohnmayer in June 1990), Andres
1
Minneapolis Star Tribune, 24 and 29 March, 1994.
80
NUNNS
Serrano (whose 1987 work Piss Christ raised the ire of a variety of
Christian groups), and the late Robert Mapplethorpe (whose posthumous
1989 collection of photographs, Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect
Moment, . became the standard-bearer for controversial NEA art) . Now
Athey was to become the latest excuse to eliminate the National
Endowment for the Arts. The implication of these articles-the most
extreme being a piece in the Voice in which the writer, Guy Trebay, went
on a shopping trip with Athey who was buying hypodermic needles for
the show
2
-was that Ron A t h e y ~ work was simply not that big a deal.
I went into the performance as a supporter. I had been spending the
last few months defending Athey to people who questioned the artistic
legitimacy of this material, since I was used to over-reaction from people
like Helms and the American Family Association's Reverend Donald
Wildman. I was also worried about the "slippery slope" of arts funding.
Like the question of free speech, I felt there was no such thing as a little
bit of censorship; obviously, there couldn't be a government rule book
about what was and what wasn't acceptable art. It was all or nothing.
All the same, I hadn't seen Athey's work. In order to be a true defender,
I had to see the material for myself.
There had been rumors of people fainting at the Minneapolis
performance, of live human mutilation, and of HIV-positive blood being
dripped on the audience. Unsubstantiated rumors, naturally, by those
involved in the politics of fear. However, my friend and I were taken
aback when audience members were asked to sign the following
statement:
RELEASE AND WAIVER OF ALL CLAIMS
I understand that in tonight's performance of 4 SCENES IN A
HARSH LIFE by Ron Athey blood will be drawn and prints from
it will be exhibited as part of the performance. By entering the
performance, I agree not to hold liable Ron Athey, Performance
Space 122 or its staff or Board of Directors, 122 Community
Center Inc or its staff or Board of Directors, or any other persons
connected with tonight's performance for any injuries, property
damage or incidents of any kind that may occur in connection
with .the performance. Further I understand and agree that I am
releasing the above mentioned parties from any and all claims of
any kind for loss, damages or costs incurred, now or in the
future, from any injuries, property damage or incidents of any
2
Guy Trebay, "Ron Athey's Slice of life," Village Voice, 1 November 1994, 38:
Public Arts Funding 81
kind that may occur in connection with the performance.
3
Sobering stuff, but we signed and went in.
Interestingly, none of the preliminary reports prepared me for Athey's
work. As we entered the theatre, a tableau vivant was set up on stage.
Athey, wearing something that looked like a monk's frock, stood center
stage. A woman, clothed only in a loincloth, her skin glistening with
either sweat or some kind ~ oil, stood beside him, her arms lashed
together and tied to the ceiling. A number of long, porcupine-like pins
stuck out of her back (a reference, perhaps, to Early Italian Renaissance
paintings depicting the martyrdom of St. Sebastian). A smoke machine
was on, so it w ~ s difficult to see, but it looked as if her back was
bleeding. She seemed to be trembling. Athey, who grew up in a strict
fundamentalist household, told an autobiographical story of his child-
hood preoccupation with saints and the first time he ever cut anyone with
a knife (it was his younger sister). He then went on to the "anointment
part of the ceremony" where assistants pulled people up from the
audience and anointed them on the head with the oil/body fluids from
the woman's back.
Two audience members left after this scene.
The next scene was entitled "Working Class Hell" and included the
now-famous cutting of patterns into a cast-member's skin, sopping up the
blood with paper towels, and pinning up the bloody towels on a
clothesline that spun out over the audience's head. Perhaps we were all
prepared for it, but unlike Minneapolis where "the audience reportedly
scrambled to get out from under the blood," in New York the audience
watched quietly, one might even say patiently. Nobody fainted.
Another person left after this scene.
There were three more scenes in one of which Athey, in a state of
extreme anxiety, inserted hypodermic needles into his arm and head,
which caused quite a bit of bleeding. Finally, there was a scene in which
Athey-again in the role of minister-"married" three women in his cast,
and played drums along with the rest of the cast while the women
danced unti I balls attached to their bodies ripped their skin, once again
causing quite a bit of bleeding. At the end of the performance, neither
my friend nor I applauded ("That didn't seem like the right thing to do,"
she said). As we got up to leave the theatre, I noticed that there was a
goodly amount of body fluid (blood and sweat) left on the floor of the
3
1nsert from program for 4 Scenes in a Harsh Life at Performance Space 122, 27-
30 October, 1994.
82 NUNNS
stage. A couple of stage hands with plastic gloves were left with the
unpleasant duty of cleaning the mess up.
Walking around in a daze later that evening, something that Athey
had said during the "marriage ceremony" stuck in my head. He said " I
dismiss-! refuse to acknowledge-a white, racist, middle-class, homo-
phobic culture," the implication being that these people on stage were
creating their own culture.
Of course, this is a bit disingenuous. First, simply " stealing" another
culture' s rituals-in this case, riffing on African tribal ceremonies-and
calling them your own is neither "original " nor endearing (I suspect a lot
of African-Americans would agree). More importantly, for Athey to
suggest that neither he nor his material is acknowledging a middle-class
bourgeois culture is patently ridiculous. Clearly, Athey and his work exist
because of this culture. He is a reaction against the culture-a counter-
culture; he is responding to it, rather than "recreating" it in a vacuum.
Whether or not one believes that Athey is talented, he is certainly
fulfilling one of the duties of the artist. As Representative Pat Williams
said in the House's re-authorization hearing on the National Endowment
for the Arts last year:
When we want to know how we look in the morning, we look
in the mirror. If we want to know what America looks l ike, I
suppose we are going to have to get America to look in the
mirror ... I maintain that artists possess the mirror.
4
Often, the reflection in that mirror is a troubling one.
Nevertheless, are we particularly surprised when these challenges to
the status quo are in turn challenged by the bourgeoisie in the form of a
reluctance to part with tax dollars? When I posed the question to my
friend that night, she replied, "Well, then, are you saying that no more
federal money should go to any performance art?" "Ah," !thought, "the
slippery slope again."
The argument seemed hyperbolic. It's all or nothing. There' s no
such thing as a little censorship. If funds are withheld from Ron Athey,
everyone's at risk. And therefore there will be no more funding for any
arts. After spending an hour watching something I felt was rather
exploitative and sensationalistic (not to mention amateurishly written and
performed), that logic seemed flawed.
4
House of Representatives, Subcommi ttee on Labor-Management Relations,
Committee on Education and Labor. Hearing on the National Endowment for the Arts
(Washington, D.C. : Government Printing Offi ce, 1994), 1.
Public Arts Funding 83
***
Ironically, only a year later, after a huge Republican victory in the
1 04th Congress and a Contract with America to be reckoned with, the all-
or-nothing argument assumed the weight of prophesy. In November of
last year, the NEA ended its Individual Artists Program-basically the only
program through which someone like Athey would be able to get federal
funds. Content restrictions (a long-time litmus test for arts advocates and
civil libertarians alike) prohibiting the Endowment from "promoting,
disseminating, sponsoring, or producing materials or performances that
depict or describe, in a patently offensive way, sexual or excretory
activities or organs," or "denigrate the objects or beliefs or the adherents
of a particular religion,''
5
have been accepted by the NEA as a kind of
dance with the devil. After all, the beleaguered Endowment itself is
bracing for major cuts (32 percent in 1996 from 1995, 40 percent in each
of the following two years, according to the recent Senate bill) and worse
(planned total elimination in 1998).
6
Even arts-oriented publications seem resigned. An editorial in last
February's American Theatre stated that the NEA could yery well be
abolished outright or "allow[ed] to falter through benign neglect."
7
This
year, FYI, a newsletter published by the New York Foundation for the
Arts, featured a pragmatic article by visual artist Steven Durland entitled
"Post-Apocalyptic? Or Just Post-NEA?," which began:
Okay, I'm just going to assume the NEA is dead and gone.
Sentiment grows annually in Congress to kill it so let's just go
ahead and project its death as a logical conclusion.
8
It's silly to suggest that Athey was singularly responsible for this
although Robert Byrd, ex-chairman of the Senate Appropriations
Committee, which recommended the five percent cut in the Endowment
for the 1995 fiscal year (which was eventually reduced to two percent),
expressed dismay about Athey's Minneapolis performance. That Athey
did briefly become the new hot spot for the NEA is ironic, mostly because
the amount of money he received was either ridiculously small ($150 at
5
Barbara Janowitz, "Senate Restores Some Arts Funds," American Theatre,
October 1995, 108.
7
Peter Zesler, "Setting the Terms," American Theatre, February 1995, 5.
8
Steven Durland, "Post-Apocalypse? Or Just Post-NEA?," FYI, Winter 1995, 1.
84
NUNNS
the Walker) or non-existent (P.S. 122 went to great lengths making it clear
that no federal funds were used for its production) . By election time
Athey was already irrelevant, however, rarely mentioned in most articles
about the NEA. Tha't his notoriety lasted for such a brief period can't be
attributed to the minuscule amount of money involved. If that was the
case, the NEA with its piddling $167 million budget would also never be
an issue. However, the fact is NEA detractors have made dollars the
issue, deciding against a critique that focused on morality in favor of
good, old-fashioned fiscal responsibility. Art was no longer the point.
Federal money-or lack thereof-was.
***
The artistic community's reaction to the attacks by the right have
been similar to the left's defense of liberal causes-disorganized and
apologetic. Rather than simply reaffirm values and beliefs that may be
momentarily unpopular, artists and their supporters have attempted to
out-Republican the Republicans. NEA Chair jane Alexander is no
exception. Since her appointment in 1993, Ms. Alexander has spent a
lion's share of her time traveling throughout the United States, attending
sewing bees, school plays, and Native-American Folk Festivals, trying
rather disingenuously to suggest that this is where federal tax dollars are
going. Not surprisingly, this approach has failed. After all, folk arts
existed without federal subsidies for several hundred years (they have, of
course, metamorphosed over time, but that's what folk arts are supposed
to do), and no one can deny that a huge amount of funding goes to large
urban areas.
9
Interestingly enough, this kind of defense has actually turned the
tables. Whereas now the left takes a relatively unsophisticated view of
art, suggesting that, as Martha Bayles put it in an op-ed piece for The New
York Times, art should be "as bland and benign as a cup of chamomile
tea,'
110
the right sees art for what it always has been: a dangerous and
subversive critique of the status quo. This holds true for even the most
innocuous of artists, say, Norman Rockwell. What most people fail to
see is that Rockwell's anecdotal scenes of small-town life didn't simply
reflect his world (he was, after all, born in New York City). They were
actually a challenge-a challenge asking whether this simple and naive
world of boys in watering holes; fat, jolly cops wandering down friendly
9
See Representative Williams' opening remarks, Hearing on the National
Endowment for the Arts, 1994, 3.
10
Martha Bayles, "The Philistine Consensus," The New York Times, 30 January
1995, A:19.
Public Arts Funding 85
streets; and brave soldiers returning physically and emotionally intact
from the war could actually exist during and after the destitution of the
Great Depression, and the death and destruction of World War II.
When Jesse Helms attacks a Robert Mapplethorpe or an Andres
Serrano, he knows what he's talking about. These artists explore aspects
of our culture (homosexuality and sacrilege) that some of us have acted
upon and that all of us have certainly thought about. That's precisely
what makes Helms uncomfortable. Although I'm not a big fan of Ron
Athey, I can appreciate his specific, important, and disturbing presenta-
tion of the American experience. As he wrote in his program notes:
It' s too easy to write off "autobiographical work," and avoid
looking at the issues: scenarios born from grieving AIDS deaths
including my/our own HIV infection, collapse of the "American
Dream," hate crimes endured for being queer, a national history
of drug abuse.
11
Like it or not, Mapplethorpe, Serrano, and Athey are indeed artists. They
are celebrants of individualism and free-thought, and as such they are all
inherently American. They are also extremely dangerous. And danger,
not chamomile tea, is what art should be about.
***
This is the core of the problem. There is an inherent problem with
spending public funds on something that, by definition, flies in the face
of that public's moral and ethical standards. Newt Gingrich criticizes the
NEA for being "self-selected elites using tax money to pay off their
friends,"
12
the implication being that the Federal government shouldn't
throw its money away on such trivia. Gingrich is only half right, and
once again, his colleague Senator Helms fills in the rest of the picture.
"I say again, Mr. President," he thundered during the debate in the
Senate over Piss Christ in 1989, "[Andres Serrano] is not an artist. He is
a jerk."
13
Helms knows better than to suggest that this art business is
frivolous; he's far more worried that these "jerks" will end up as the pied
11
Ron Athey, " Ron Athey on 4 Scenes in New York," published in the program
for 4 Scenes in a Harsh Life at Performance Space 122, 27-30 October, 1994.
12
Newt Gingrich, quoted in Bayles, "The Philistine Consensus."
13
jesse Helms, "Debate in Senate over the NEA, May 18, 1989," quoted in
Culture Wars; Documents from the Recent Controversies in the Arts, ed. by Richard
Bolton (New York: New Press, 1992), 30.
86 NUNNS
pipers for the masses, leading them down the immoral road to national
ruin. In this post-Cold War world where there are no ideological foes
except those in the mirror, this is the true issue at hand. Federal subsidies
for artists create in-house social critics, and at a time when this country
is feeling sensitive and confused about its national identity, it's not
surprising that these commentators have become the enemy.
All of this implies that the debate about public funding for the arts is
new. Indeed, the controversy about the NEA really did not begin until
1989 with the Serrano case (the same year, it's worth pointing out, that
the Berlin Wall came tumbling down). Until then, things were quiet at
the NEA. While there were a couple of minor scraps with politicians
(Erica jong's thanks to the agency in Fear of Flying's acknowledgements
being one of the more notable), the Endowment had gotten off relatively
lightly since its founding in September 1965. Nevertheless, this wasn't
the first fracas between the arts and government in this country.
***
In 1936, the Works Progress Administration's Federal Theatre Project
had been in existence for only a year. The mother of all welfare
programs, the WPA not only over-saw the construction of thousands of
buildings and more than half a million miles of public roads, but
included a number of other programs designed specifically to assist artists
through the economic devastation of the Depression. These included the
Federal Arts Project, the Federal Writers Project, and the Federal Theatre
Project.
The Theatre Project had a number of successes in New York (Orson
Welles' African-American version of Macbeth, for example) and, perhaps
more importantly, in the heartland as well. Although Charlton Heston's
recent suggestion that "before the NEA, theatre was confined to a twenty-
block radius in New York City"
14
may have proved that his heart was in
the right place (and a peculiar one at that, considering the actor's past
endorsement of such right-wing playpens as the National Rifle Associa-
tion), the fact is that the WPA's Theatre Project had created a regional
theatre phenomenon over thirty years before the Endowment. Indeed,
theatre has been part of the American cultural landscape ever since the
advent of the railroad systerJl, which carried New York touring compa-
nies to the rest of the country. By the end of the nineteenth century,
there were over five thousand theatres throughout the nation, up from
14
See Frank Rich, "Saviors of the Right (Conservative Arts Patrons Ready to
Defend the National Endowment for the Arts)," The New York Times, 19 January
1995, A:19.
Public Arts Funding 87
forty at the time of the 1848 Gold Rush.
15
All the same, the WPA's
Theatre Project did mark the beginning of a true "regional voice" for
local artists, which in turn led to controversy. As Walter Pel I wrote in the
magazine New Theatre in 1937:
Throughout the United States, WPA h;3.s succeeded in making a
new audience theatre-conscious ... a critical taste based on a
consciousness of the social function of the theatre has been
quick in developing. This evolution has been reflected in the
character of the plays presented . . . .
In Mt. Angel, Oregon, in one of the greatest flax centers of the
world, the Federal Theatre of Portland created a flax pageant
which pictured the exploitation of the workers in graphic terms.
In Birmingham, Alabama, Altars of Steel has been collectively
written out of the local experiences of steel workers.
16
Not surprisingly, the prospect of making political "workers' theatre"
(read, Communist) with federal monies raised the hackles of many
politicians. Events came to a head on January 23, 1936, when Elmer
Rice, Regional Director of the Theatre Project for New York (and a well-
known playwright), resigned over a controversy involving the Theatre
Proj ect's first "edition" of The Living Newspaper, a piece titled Ethiopia.
The play, which dramatized the events leading up to Mussolini's invasion
the year before and the League of Nations' inability to react, raised the ire
of the Roosevelt administration which at the time was officially neutral
regarding European politics. As the play readied for production at the
beginning of 1936, Jacob Baker, Assistant Administrator of the WPA,
ordered a number of drastic script changes (Baker had also called off an
earlier Federal Theatre Project in Chicago because of its uncompl imen-
tary depiction of the local Democratic administration). When Rice
refused to make the changes, Baker issued the following statement:
When difficulties have arisen in the past ... you have proposed
either to resign or to take the difficulties to the press. Now that
a problem has arisen in connection with a dramatization that
may affect our international relations, you renew your proposal
of resignation to [WPA Administrator Harry] Hopkins. This time
15
Stephen Langley, Theatre Management and Production in America (New York:
Drama Book Publishers, 1990), 120-121.
16
Walter Pel!, "Which Way the Federal Theatre?," New Theatre, April 1937, 7-8.
88 NUNNS
I accept it, effective upon receipt of the letter.
17
Rice was not about to take this lying down. As a final duty, he
arranged for an open rehearsal of the play at the Biltmore Theatre the
next day at noon-minus sets and costumes-for members of the press.
At the performance, he handed out a letter which said in part:
The implied charge that a carefully documented factual presenta-
tion of public events could conceivably affect our international
relations is absurd ... Mr. Baker is merely trying to raise a
smoke-screen to conceal the real issue. That issue is clearly free
speech ....
. . . The issue of free speech and the preservation of the bi II of
rights seem to me of greater moment today than they have ever
been in the history of America. I cannot conscientiously remain
in the service of a government which plays the shabby game of
partisan politics at the expense of freedom and the principals of
democracy.
18
The following day, Brooks Atkinson reviewed the play for the New
York Times. While acknowledging that the play "is no masterpiece," he
found the production "sobering and impressive." More importantly, he
recognized the complexity of the issue, particularly regarding free speech .
. . . any one can understand the government's unwillingness to
sponsor out of public funds a play that would certainly be
misinterpreted in Italy. The international situation is danger-
ously sensitive; officially we are neutral ... it would be miscon-
strued in Italy as evidence of American animosity, subsidized by
the government, and it would provide another irritant in
diplomacy.
But the theatre is reduced to innocuous commonplaces when it
has to conform to diplomatic manners. This episode ... shows
how futile it is to expect the theatre to be anything but a
sideshow under government supervision . ..
17
Jacob Baker in a l etter to Elmer Ri ce, quoted in " The WPA Theaters and
Censorship," by John Howard Lawson, New Theatre, February 1936, 3.
18
Eimer Rice, "A Statement by Elmer Rice," New Theatre, February 1936, 2.
Public Arts Funding 89
. .. What we all know now is that a free theatre cannot be a
government enterprise.
19
***
Like all artists since who have found themselves in a similar situation,
Rice invoked his First Amendment rights. Indeed, one could interpret the
quickness with which artists and NEA supporters quote the Constitution
as an indication that they are well-acquainted with the document.
Unfortunately, that's not the case.
A close reading points out the flaws. The initial problem is obvious:
while the First Amendment is very specific in its support of freedom of
speech, many politicians with anti-funding tendencies have been equally
specific in their criticism. Artists, they claim, are always free to do and
say what they want, but at their own-or at private-expense. Certainly
there is nothing in the Constitution regarding subsidized speech.
However, as Stanley Brubaker points out in an article published in
The Public Interest, "In Praise of Censorship," the document is con-
cerned with people's rights, not virtues. According to the Fifth Amend-
ment, no one may be "deprived of life, liberty, and property." Censor-
ship, regardlessof where the money's coming from, is verboten since, as
Brubaker puts it, it "meddles with mens' souls."
20
So, perhaps Rice was
correct. In the case of Ethiopia, there was a clear case of censorship on
the WPA's, and therefore the government's, part. Or was there? Almost
since its inception, the Supreme Court has made it perfectly clear that the
government could limit free speech. As Archibald Cox puts it, the First
Amendment protects "expressions separable from conduct harmful to
other individuals and the community,"
21
and restrictions on such conduct
do not constitute "censorship." Since the country was on the brink of the
Second World War, a piece like Ethiopia, with its obvious anti-fascist
slant (even Rice and the authors with all their "factual presentation" talk
couldn't disagree with that), could be considered the theatrical equivalent
to shouting "Fire!" in a crowded movie house. Only in this case, the
19
Brooks Atkinson, "Ethiopia, the First Issue of The Living Newspaper, Which the
Federal Theatre Cannot Publish," The New York Times, 25 January 1936 (n.p.).
20
Stanley C. Brubaker, "In Praise of Censorship," The Public Interest, no. 114,
Winter 1994, 50.
21
Archibald Cox, quoted in "There' s No Such Thing as Free Speech and It's a
Good Thing, Too," by Stanley Fish in Debating P.C., ed. by Paul Berman (New York:
Laurel Trade Paperback, 1992), 235.
90 NUNNS
movie house was the whole industrialized world.
Of course, it's worth noting that the definition of what conduct is
"harmful" has always been up for debate. Oliver Wendell Holmes shed
light on the issue in the 1919 decision Schenck v. United States, when
he wrote that "the question in every case is whether the words are used
in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and
present danger ... It is a question of proximity and degree."
22
It's also
worth mentioning that in the specific case of Ethiopia, history proved
Rice right.
The other constitutional issue which rarely comes up-but which
Brubaker also notes in his article-is in Article One, Section Eight, which
lists the limited powers of a federal government. There, according once
again to Brubaker, it states that the Congress will have the power "to
promote the progress of Science and the useful Arts ... " He defines
"useful arts" as "agriculture, medicine, commerce, and engineering. Not
the fine, soul improving arts-like music, poetry, painting, drama and
literature. No censorship, but no funding."
23
Brubaker's argument is persuasive-what else could a "useful art"
be?-until one takes the trouble to actually check the source. Indeed,
with a subtle editing job, he has changed the meaning of the terms. The
text of the Constitution reads "Congress shall have the power ... To
promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts." Brubaker's addition of
"the" implies that "the useful arts" is a specific term-quite appropriate
for his conservative agenda-when in fact the founding fathers used a far
more ambiguous term.
So much for "no funding." Upon reading this, an artist might think
that the creators of the Constitution have given her a green light for
government subsidies. But this proves not to be the case. "To promote
the Progress of Science and useful Arts," it says, "by securing for limited
Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective
Writings and Discoveries."
24
The Article is the justification behind the
creation of a Copyright Office and perhaps the Library of Congress-two
government agencies that are important to creators of all kinds-but it
certainly has nothing to do with government funding.
Running to the Constitution is a futile exercise for both sides. While
House Majority Speaker Dick Armey may have a point when he says
22
0iiver Wendell Holmes, Jr., The Essential Holmes, ed. by Richard A. Posner
(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992), 315.
23
Brubaker, 51.
24
Constitution, art. I, sec. 8.
Public Arts Funding 91
"there is no constitutional authority for this agency to exist,"
25
it's also
true that intellectuals, the poor, farmers, or, for that matter, middle-class
homeowners who write their mortgage interest off their income taxes also
have no constitutional right to government support. All of these groups
enjoy one form of welfare or another, and none of these benefits are
constitutionally protected. In fact, if this 208-year-old piece of paper was
our only guide to what the federal government could or couldn't spend
money on, our government would only fund the Treasury, the Armed
Forces, the Post Office, and, chances are, the Internal Revenue Service.
Perhaps this is what the new federalism is about, but it seems a
simplistic and naive take. The founding fathers may have been firm
believers in a free market but, as the very term "amendments" makes
clear, this was never viewed as a stagnant document. One would hope
we had learned something from the two hundred years that have passed
since the creation of the Constitution, years that have included two
depressions (one world-wide) and countless recessions. From a
pragmatic stance, federal regulations-which subsidize many segments
of society-are not only important for altruistic reasons. They're
necessary.
But how does a country decide what it will fund? The basic concept
of a federal government presupposes that there is some greater purpose
at work, some common good. The new federalism espoused by
contemporary Republicans, with its emphasis on decentralized power,
seems more intent on decimating the union than preserving it. (It's hard
to miss the irony that members of the party of Lincoln are the architects
of such a plan.) Obviously, nobody is interested in treading on state or
for that matter individual rights, but a strong federal government, one that
attempts to shape a vision and direction for the country, is what
federalism is all about. Without it, there is little reason to have a United
States of America at all.
Shaping a vision requires encouraging all aspects of culture, through
as many means as possible. Certainly European countries have realized
this for many years (Goethe's theatre was being federally subsidized in
_Weimar while the delegates in Philadelphia composed the Constitution).
But the United States is fundamentally different from other countries (and
democracies), not only because of its healthy disrespect for officially
sanctioned intellectualism but, more importantly, because its basic
conceptual structure is loaded with contradictions. Though it may seem
there is little reason for a federalist state if there is no overall concept of
25
Dick Armey, quoted in "Is the NEA's Number Up?" by Barbara Janowitz,
American Theatre, February 1995.
92 NUNNS
the common good, the United States was in fact created without such a
concept in mind. Isaiah Berlin argued- in his famous 1958 speech at
Oxford that there were two liberties: positive and negative. He said:
Pluralism, with the measure of "negative" liberty that it entails,
seems to me a truer and more humane ideal than the goals of
those who seek in the. great, disciplined, authoritarian structures
the ideal of "positive" self-mastery by classes, or peoples, or the
whole of mankind. It is truer, because it does, at least, recognize
the fact that human goals are many, not all of them commensu-
rable, and in perpetual rivalry with one another. To assume that
all values can be graded on one scale, so that it is a mere matter
of inspection to determine the highest, seems to falsify our
knowledge that men are free agents, to represent moral decision
as an operation which a slide-rule, in principle, could perform.
26
No republic's charter or constitution exemplifies the concept of
negative liberty more than this country's Constitution and Bill of Rights.
These documents form a skeletal mechanism for a society. In a true
capitalist, laissez-faire spirit, the goals, the needs, and the values of the
society are left to the free market.
This poses problems. Basing rules for society on the concept that
there are no rules is pretzel logic. And whether this works for the good
of a society has proved questionable. The fact of the matter is that true
"negative liberty" has never existed in the U.S. for good reason: a free
market inevitably benefits the haves more than the have-nots. Federally-
controlled, "positive liberty" programs (including school lunches,
middle-class tax breaks, Medicare, and the NEA) are simply attempts at
the democratization of our society. Nevertheless, it's important to factor
in Berlin's concept when considering the direction we're going, since the
alternative, as we have seen, can open the door to fascism and total itari-
anism.
This conceptual struggle is at the heart of the debate over subsidies
for art and culture. The "simple" act of defining this country's
culture-and subsidizing it-is at odds with its constitutional structure.
In fact, both the WPA's arts projects and the NEA went to great lengths
not to be definitions of our culture: the WPA was simply a work-fare
program and the NEA, with its structure of artists' panels making grant
decisions, serves as an award of recognition by one's peers rather than by
26
1saiah Berlin, "Two Concepts of Liberty," published in The Democracy Reader,
ed. by Diane Ravitch and Abigail Thernstrom (New York: HarperCollins, 1992), 92.
Public Arts Funding 93
the society at large. The idea-to avoid "government-sanctioned" art-is
a commendable one. But it may be the Endowment's very
lack of authority as an official cultural voice that will prove to be its
undoing. Certainly, it has been the central argument of Pat Buchanan,
who considers it "the upholstered playpen of the arts and crafts au xi I iary
of the Eastern liberal establishment."
27
Ultimately, the NEA's problems are only a reflection of the nation's
cultural identity crisis. The Endowment, like Public Television and the
National Endowment for the Humanities, is simply an easier target than
other examples of government social construction. This is partly because
it is something that has never gone over very
well in a populist country, but more importantly it's because our insecure
society, struggling desperately for a unifying, monolithic definition of
itself, is hardly going to open its collective arms to embrace its in-house
critics. There is something ironic about a government that pays to have
its basic intellectual, moral and ethical values questioned. Still, it seems
obvious that such critiques are essential and ultimately serve a democ-
racy. (After all, the tradition goes back as far as the Ancient Greeks. The
apocryphal legend says that when a Syracusan tyrant asked Plato to
describe the Athenian constitution, Plato sent him the satirical plays of
Aristophane_s-complete with their biting satire of Ancient Greek
society-as documentation of Athens' liberty.)
28
Our European cohorts have less trouble with keeping full-time critics
on staff. Perhaps this is because their societies were never as
fundamentally populist as this one, and in most cases there is a basic (and
sometimes problematic) acceptance that social construction takes
precedence over individual rights. _ But maybe it's something else.
Perhaps a society simply needs time to mature before it can take the step
of questioning itself and its beliefs. Berlin ended his essay "Two
Concepts of Liberty" by quoting Joseph Schumpeter: "To realise the
relative validity of one's convictions and yet stand for them unflinchingly,
is what distinguishes a civilized man from a barbarian."
29
Contemporary
philosopher Richard Rorty, in Contingency, Irony and Solidarity,
27
Patrick Buchanan in a speech February 20, 1993, published in The World
Almanac and Book of Facts (Microsoft Bookshelf, 1993 Edition) (Microsoft Corp., c.
1987-1993).
28
"The Comic View," an introduction to Eight Great Comedies, ed. by Sylvan
Barnet, Morton Berman and William Burto (New York: New American Library,
1958), 13.
I
29
Berlin, 93.
94 NUNNS
describes such a person as an "ironist." These ironists are the intellectual
cornerstones of a liberal society, which he claims:
. .. has no purpose except to make life easier for poets and
revolutionaries while seeing to it that they make life harder for
others only by words, and not by deeds. It is a society whose
hero is the strong poet and the revolutionary because it recog-
nizes that it is what it is, has the morality it has, speaks the
language it does, not because it approximates the will of God or
the nature of man but because certain poets and revolutionaries
of the past spoke as they did.
30
It might take an extremely mature and confident society to I ive up to
these ironic expectations, and mature and confident are not exactly apt
descriptions of the United States at the end of the twentieth century. It
may simply be a matter of time-perhaps it takes longer than two
hundred and nineteen years. Or maybe it will never happen. This
society may never be able to I ive up to the expectations it has set for
itself.
In the meantime, the government seems determined to eviscerate the
National Endowment for the Arts, either through "privitization" or
indifference. And in a few years (it took less than twenty last time), after
this society has struggled a little more to define itself, some other subsidy
program will probably come around to take its place. For as much as
folks like Ron Athey, with their condemnations of our "racist, middle-
class, homophobic culture" may annoy us, we eventually find we miss
the mirrors they hold up.
30
Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony and Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1989), 60-61.
journal of American Drama and Theatre 8 (Fa/11996)
Parlor Combat
1
BRUCE MCCONACHIE
When I was invited to speak about the work of American theatre
scholars, it was suggested that I draw on my teaching as the basis for
some o(my comments. As many of you know, I have been involved in
the American Studies program for some time at William and Mary as well
as in the theatre department. So I thought it might be useful to ask a kind
of question that I have occasionally posed to my American Studies
students: Is there anything particularly "American" about American
scholarship in theatre history and criticism?
I hoped that by asking this question, I might be able to shed some
light on the divisions that are wracking most professional organizations
in our field. These controversies over our relations with American
professional theatre, the epistemological foundations of our knowledge,
and the future of theatre studies in the academy, to name just a few of our
prominent differences, continue to divide us. Our divisions are exacer-
bated, of course, by continuing bad news about the job market and
funding cuts. Sometimes conflicts can be productive, but not if they
remain at the level of namecalling and sloganeering. While I don't
expect that my comments will heal our divisions, I do hope they will give
us some perspective on our current dilemma.
Of course it would be fatuous for any American Studies scholar to
claim that the attributes she or he perceives in a particular phenomenon
are "uniquely" American. Nonetheless, there are characteristics-modes
of action, historical conflicts, and psycho-social concerns-that have
recurred in the cultures of the United States more frequently than in other
national cultures. To answer what might be "characteristically"
American about our current controversies, I turned to a book by an
Englishman, Rupert Wilkinson, entitled The Pursuit of American
Character.
2
Wilkinson examines various interpretations of what he terms
1
This article was originally presented as a "State of the Profession" address at the
American Society for Theatre Research in the fall of 1995. I have altered it slightly for
pub I ication here.
2
(New York: Harper and Row), 1988.
96 McCoNACHIE
the "American social character" that have appeared in print from the
1940s through the mid '80s. His aim is to tease out the commonalities
among these scholarly conclusions, especially those that cluster around
the tensions between individualism and community. Underlying these
interpretations, Wilkinson discerns several common fears that scholars
have emphasized as giving shape and direction to the lives of U.S.
citizens throughout much of their history. Of these, three fears are
particularly relevant to our professional controversies as theatre scholars:
The fear of being owned (including fears of dependence and of being
controlled and shaped by others); the fear of falling away (from past
virtue and promise); and the fear of falling apart (a fear of anarchy and
aimlessness).
My own take on Wilkinson is that his typical American fears provide
a suggestive starting point for an analysis of white American middle-class
life for the past hundred and fifty years, but have generally less to do with
the cultures of most 18th century Ameri<::ans or of black, hispanic, and
native dwellers in this land. Of course this shortcoming is largely
irrelevant if we wish to use Wilkinson to examine ourselves; like it or not,
the culture of theatre studies in the American academy remains predomi-
nately white and middle-class.
As Wilkinson recognizes, the fear of being owned is deeply
embedded in American historical experience. To counter this fear, some
Americans fought against British tyranny during the Revolution, against
slavery in the Civil War, against "the bosses" during industrial strikes,
and against sexism and racism throughout the modern era. As academ-
ics, our fear of being owned keeps us assertive about the few rights that
remain to us as faculty members and protective of our intellectual
property. One assumption animating this fear is that we already exercise
quite a-bit of control over our lives; we believe we have a lot of freedom
to lose. In this regard, we are quite unlike most Polish academics, for
example, whose historical experience has led them to believe that others
above them in the governmental hierarchy will continue to control their
professional lives, even now, after the fall of Communism.
Our fear of being owned often inflects and sometimes shapes our
scholarly disagreements, especially when they involve battles over
paradigms of knowledge. Like many other American academics, we
seem to have had a particularly difficult time adjusting to the fact that
how we construct our investigations and epistemologies both enables and
constrains what we can know. Some of us touting the benefits of
Lacanian theory or new historicism-and I include myself among the
latter group-have been too glib about the new insights opened up by
these perspectives; we have not wanted to recognize the limits set on our
independence by these forms of knowledge. Post-colonial scholars like
Parlor Combat 97
Homi Bhabha who have noted the limitation of Eurocentrism in these
paradigms have been right to complain.
3
On the other hand, traditional thinkers still wedded to empiricism
also assume the possibility of more scholarly independence than exists
in fact when they accuse their adversaries of being prisoners to an "ism."
No doubt, we've all heard the following overstatement in conversation
and occasionally read versions of it in print: "Of course I knew what her
(or his) conclusions were going to be because he's (or she's) a "
-and then you can fi II in the blank with the "ist" of your choice:
Marxist, feminist, deconstructivist, etc. All stereotyping contains enough
truth to be recognizable, and this slur is no exception. Given certain
definitions, modes of investigation, and narrative structures-all the
tropes and trappings of any "ism"-certain kinds of conclusions are more
likely than others. But I believe that this is a problem with all knowledge,
including empiricism, though many empiricists would deny it. American
scholars have a difficult time giving up on the idea of objective knowl-
edge because we want to believe-that the Truth (with a capitai"T"), like
the Individual, cannot be owned. In fact, our independence has always
been compromised; our paradigms, our constructions of knowledge, own
us as much as we own them. While it might be pleasant to recall what
the world looked like before the path of knowledge took its famous
"linguistic turn," we can't go home again.
This brings me to Wilkinson's second fear, the fear of falling away.
Politicians and pundits play on this fear quite a bit these days. Ameri-
cans, we are told, are in moral decline; we have lost the will tQ work
hard and to take responsibility for our own actions. "Will you tell me
how to prevent luxury from producing effeminacy, intoxication,
extravagance, v i e ~ and folly?" demanded john Adams in 1819.
4
Apparently, we've been falling away from a more pristine past for quite
a while. It began soon after 1630, when John Winthrop proclaimed the
Puritan settlement in the New World "a city on a hill" for the world to
emulate; if you start at utopia, history inevitably runs downhill. The
American fear of being owned proclaims our independence. The fear of
falling away decries excessive freedom and celebrates the vision of an
ordered community in the past.
As historians, we're right to be skeptical of rigid moralists and
nostalgic hand-wringers who evoke an image of a past golden age to
denigrate the present period of plastic and cyberspace. But visions of
3
See, for example, Bhabba's essays in The Location of Culture (London:
Routledge, 1994).
4
Quoted in Wilkinson, 80.
98 McCoNACHJE
historic wholeness are a part of our collective imagination and continue
to ghost our present actions. These ghosts whisper in our ears at
academic conferences, urging us to live up to past promises. Some of
them say, "Remember when knowledge was a fortress, built up carefully
from stones of evidence dragged into place by obedient Ph.D. students?
We can still complete the castle." Others command, "The American
theatre is in grave danger and the academy must save it! We've got to cut
out this theoretical foolishness and get back to the days when our
programs served the needs of the professional theatre." My own
particular ghost sounds like a political agitator from the sixties. He
(inevitably the voice is male) wheedles, "Hey man, remember when
theatre students and academics stood against the Establishment. Theatre
scholars unite! We can save the world." I have no doubt that these
ghosts and others like them will continue to haunt our gatherings.
Although we can' t banish them, our knowledge of their existence and
persuasiveness can keep them from dominating our conversations.
Regarding Wilkinson's final fear, there's substantial evidence that
Americans are frequently obsessed by a concern that their lives and
institutions are falling apart. Many other cultures tend to be more
tolerant of divorce, or civil strife, or individual isolation than that of the
American middle class. like the other fears, the fear of anarchy and
aimlessness is rooted in historical memory; coherent communities helped
to sustain life on the frontier and Americans fought a civil war over the
issue of national unity. As theatre academics, ~ l O S t of us live in depart-
ments that are fragmented by two distinctive, sometimes conflicting, but
equally important objectives: the goal of creating significant new
knowledge and the aim of educating students to produce exciting new
art. Lacking the kind of coherence in our programs that most of our
European counterparts in universities and conservatories take for granted,
it's no wonder that we're often fearful of our professional lives falling
apart.
The drive for unity, however, can stultify the flow'of new ideas and
the invention of new institutional structures to house them. In this
regard, I have been troubled by some of the more extreme attacks from
within theatre departments on the ideas and institutions of performance
studies. While I would agree with its critics that some of the theory and
much of the institutional base for this new interdiscipline remain weak,
I do believe that theatre historians and critics have much to learn from
scholars of performance studies and they from us. What strikes me about
our current disagreements, however, is the extent to which they reflect
American concerns about holding things together.
I have time for only one example. In the September 1995 issue of
Theatre Topics (5:2), Richard Hornby, in an article entitled "The Death
Parlor Combat 99
of Literature and History," attacked what he perceived as a "growing
tendency" toward the teaching of performance studies in theatre
departments. Hornby writes:
Performance theory today, when it deals with the theatre at all . . .
consists of semiotic analysis of theatrical presentation, sociological
analysis of the audience, anthropological analysis of exotic non-
western performance, or inflated discussion of avant-garde perfor-
mance here in the West. The results may be of interest to the
sociologist or anthropologist, but not to the American theatre
professional, nor to the American theatregoer (144).
There is much one might say about this passage. I shall restrict my
remarks to Hornby's assumption-a supposition that pervades his
article-that all scholarly writing on the theatre should be accessible and
interesting to theatre professionals. Frankly, I find this a startling and
chilling assumption. If taken to its logical conclusion, we ought never to
organize academic conferences or publish most of our articles because
so few theatre professionals will attend or read them. From Wilkinson's
point of view, Hornby's article is circle-the-wagons talk. Fearing that
theatre departments are losing coherence and direction, he calls for us to
restrict our community, banish dissenters, and repel exotic invaders. This
.logic may have had appeal on the Oregon Trail, but are we really so
fearful about our survival that we are willing to harness our intellectual
ambitions to the equally worthy, but very different task of educating
theatre professionals and theatregoers? Hornby's trail would lead theatre
departments to the Donner Pass.
Personally, I would welcome professionals and theatregoers into our
conferences and I'm glad that Hornby's recent book, The End of Acting,
implicitly invites them to join in our deliberations.
5
But they should
realize that our conversations concerning the advancement of knowledge
do not necessarily speak directly to their needs as creative artists. If we
are to work toward the purpose of encouraging cutting-edge scholarship,
our primary, though certainly not our exclusive audience must be other
scholars. And like scholars in all other fields, we must occasionally use
language that is difficult for the non-specialist to understand.
This brings me, finally, to the title of my talk, "Parlor Combat." Its
seemingly enigmatic subject will be apparent in the following famous
passage from Kenneth Burke's Philosophy of Literary Form, one of those
golden oldies from the '50s:
5
The End of Acting: A Radical View (New York: Applause Theatre Books, 1992).
100
MCCONACHIE
Imagine that you enter a parlor. You come late. When you arrive,
others have long preceded you, and they are engaged in a heated
discussion, a discussion too heated for them to pause and tell you
exactly what it is about. In fact, the discussion had already begun
long before any of them got there, so that no one present is qualified
to retrace for you all the steps that had gone before. You listen for a
while unti I you decide that you have caught the tenor of the
argument; then you put in your oar. Someone answers; you answer
him; another comes to your defense; another aligns himself against
you, to either the embarrassment or gratificat ion of your opponent,
depending upon the quality of your ally's assistance. However, the
discussion is interminable. The hour grows late, you must depart.
And you do depart, with the discussion still vigorously in progress.
6
Burke's domestic setting is rhetorically designed, in part, to al lay the
kinds of fears that Everyscholar, including Wi lkinson's American variants,
regularly experiences. In Burke's allegory, we are part ly shaped by past
history and present discourse, but not wholly owned by them; we can
still put in our " oar" to steer the discussion in ways we deem important.
Notice that there is no foundation for Burke's parlor conversation; there
is no ideal origin to return to, no utopian past to fall away from. Scholars
pick up the discussion, as they must, in media res. Final ly, Burke
counters the fear of falling apart by strategically placing his images of
academic combat in a parlor. There are attacks, defenses, allegiances,
and alliances in Burke's story, but there is no blood. The battles among
scholars are contained by the rules of parlor rhetori c, in which persua-
sion, not conquest, gains temporary victory. While no final agreement
among the combatants will ever occur, the form of rhetoric itself imposes
a kind of coherence to the ongoing dancing of attitudes, to adopt another
Burkean phrase.
I'd like to conclude with a brief report about a parlor battle that's
been going on for over a century on the subject of blackface minstrelsy.
The discussion first heated up in 1849 when Frederick Douglass accused
antebellum minstrels of racism. Later, Whitman, Twain, and even W.E.B.
Dubois countered that minstrelsy drew on the traditions of black folk
culture. Bridging the academy and popular culture, Carl Wittke and
Constance Rourke substantiated the folk culture position through
historical argumentation. Ralph Ellison led the revisionist charge in 1958
6
The Philosophy of Literary Form: Studies in Symbolic Act ion (Berkeley and Los
Angeles: University of Californi a Press, 1973), 110-1 1. I am indebted to Frank
Lentricchia's discussion of this passage from Burke in his Crit i cism and Social Change
(Chicago: Univ. of Chi cago Press, 1983), 159-63.
Parlor Combat 101
and Robert Toll came to his defense in '74, both using much the same
evidence as before to argue the effects of racist stereotyping. Drawing on
neo-Marxist and structuralist assumptions, historians Alexander Saxton
and David Roediger reinforced this revisionism by examining the social
construction of whiteness within minstrelsy's primary audience, the
American working class.
The disagreements over mi.nstrelsy continue today, with Eric Lott
using post-structuralist and Lacanian approaches to redraw the battlelines
of the previous debate. Lott makes a case for the ambivalence of
minstrelsy with regard to its construction of race and class, an ambiva-
lence crucial to its historical effects.
7
Many of us have dipped our
11
0ar"
into this discussion, taking sides with Lott or others, through monographs,
book reviews, conference panels, and e-mai I conversations. And
rhetoricians beyond the academy continue to enter the parlor. Last fall
in Colonial Williamsburg the politics of racial representation, including
the legacy of minstrelsy, was the subject of heated debate when actors
presented a 18th century slave auction in its colonial milieu. As in
Burke's allegory, the rhetorical conflicts continue and show no signs of
abating.
So what are the implications of this model discussion for our
scholarly disagreements? There are several, but I wi-ll finish by focusing
on only two. The first is that the best parlor battles invariably cross the
boundaries of disciplines and paradigms and usually leap the wall
separating the academic from the mundane. Thus, we cannot hope to
contain and limit scholarly conversations on any topic worthy of debate.
Despite the obvious importance of minstrelsy in theatre history and
performance studies, our academic organizations will not be at the center
of this discussion. Indeed, the modernist notion of center and margin is
no longer applicable to scholarly conversations, if it ever was. Because
Burke's parlor contains no center stage, we must continue to learn the
language and rhetorical moves of other disciplines if we wish to be
players in significant scholarly debates.
Make no mistake: theatre and performance scholars have not
generally been in the front lines of ongoing rhetorical battles, even those
that affect us directly. How many of us have been asked to write an op-
ed piece about the attacks on the NEA or the NEH? With "performance"
emerging as a crucial category for understanding history, psychology, and
culture, however, our interests are now a focus for several o t ~ r
disciplines. Thus Burke's larger point-the importance of persuasion in
7
Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1993).
102 McCoNACHIE
continuing to shape the network of conversations-is potentially
empowering for us all. Will we accept the challenge? Will our scholar-
ship become a place where we can more fully engage such ongoing,
interdisciplinary discussions as the relation between role playing and
identity, staging and political power, performance and multiculturalism?
To do so requires that we approach such parlor battles with knowledge-
able hope, not historical fears. We have, of course, already made some
mqdest interventions in these ongoing conflicts. But if we retreat from
this challenge, our scholarly fate will be decided rhetorically by others.
Since these are the stakes, returning to the provincialism of the past is not
really an option.
So I say to all of you, strap on your arguments and let the battles
continue! But remember: Be polite and keep your voices down-we're
in a parlor.
CONTRIBUTORS
BRIAN RICHARDSON is an Assistant Professor in the English
Department of the University of Maryland. He has published a
number of articles on dramatic theory and criticism in journals
such as Comparative Drama, Poetics Today, Modern Drama,
Philological Quarterly, and Essays in Literature. His book Unlikely
Stories: Causality and the Nature of Modern Narrative, will appear
in 1997.
SUSAN ANTHONY is a Ph.D. candidate in Theatre History and
Criticism at the University of Maryland, College Park.
D.S. NEFF is an Associate Professor of English at the University of
Alabama in Huntsville. He has published articles on nineteenth-
century British literature, modern drama, contemporary literature,
Anglo-Irish literature, and modern literary theory in Literature and
Medicine, Research Studies, Eire-Ireland, Modern Fiction Studies,
Victorian Poetry, Victorian Newsletter, journal of English and
Germanic Philology, and The Yale journal of Criticism.
CINDA GILLILAN is a doctoral student in Media Studies in the
School of journalism and Mass Communication at the University
of Colorado, Boulder. Her areas of interest include the repre-
sentation of the Vietnam war and its veterans and of Native
Americans, as well as television 'zine fans/fandom.
STEPHEN NUNNS is an M.F.A. candidate in Dramaturgy at
Brooklyn College of the City University of New York.
BRUCE McCONACHIE is a Professor of American Studies at the
College of William and Mary, the author of several books and
numerous articles, and a member of the Editorial Board of the
journal of American Drama and Theatre.
103
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