About the Play:
Dutchman has long been a favourite of acting teachers for Male Monologues and Female/Male Scenes.
The volume Dutchman and The Slave contains two
one-act dramas by LeRoi Jones (known for decades since as
Amiri Baraka). Centered squarely on the black-white conflict
of the 1960's, both Dutchman and The Slave are
literally shocking plays – in ideas, in language, in honest anger.
They illuminate as with a flash of lightning a deadly serious problem
– and they introduced an eloquent and exceptionally powerful voice
to the American theatre.
This Obie Award winning masterpiece is a timeless play about race and identity in America focused on the political and psychological struggle between African Americans and White Americans
Dutchman: This Obie Award winning masterpiece is a timeless play about race and
identity in America focused on the political and psychological struggle
between African Americans and White Americans. A lascivious blond tries every
vulgar way she knows to pick up and seduce a decent black youth in a
subway car. Failing, she resorts to humiliating him. This breaks the
facade of his decency, as he descends to her level for a spitfire
fight and decrees that murder of the whites by the blacks "would
make us all sane." She stabs him and, as other whites dispose of
his body, primps for her next black victim. Dutchman opened in New York City at the Cherry Lane Theatre
in Greenwich Village in 1964, to perhaps the most excited acclaim
ever accorded an off-Broadway production and shortly thereafter
received the prestigious Obie Award (for "best off-Broadway
play"). This is the first of LeRoi Jones' successes, and
the cause of his critical acclaim. (Cast: 1 female, 2 male)
The Slave continues to be the
subject of heated critical controversy. The Slave occurs in a
time of great conflagration, when the blacks have risen up wholesale
and begun bombing and burning the civilization of white America. Into
a professor's house comes a black man with a pistol. He had
previously been married to the professor's wife, and the two
mixed-race girls upstairs are his. It is his intention to kill both
the professor and his wife, and take the girls away with him. But he
only partly succeeds, for the wife and children actually die in their
own collapsing house. The speech of all three is comprised of no
holds barred words. The Slave opened in December 1964 off-Broadway at
the St. Mark's Church-in-the-Bowery Theatre. (Cast: 1 female, 2 male)
What people say:
"...the most amazing American
writer at that point. He did some stuff I don't think anyone else was
doing. Those were the real deal...." — Sam
Shepard,
Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright
"Dutchman is
designed to shock – its basic idea, its language and its murderous
rage." — The New York Times
"A man of shattering fury."
— New York Post
"A fierce and blazing talent."
— New York Herald Tribune
"Few 20th-century one-acts
carry the structural acuity and timeless force of Dutchman,
Amiri Baraka's corrosive 1964 two-hander,
written under the name LeRoi Jones and a classic
of its kind. Fewer still, short form or long, have quite so
specifically trenchant and timely an aspect for the current day."
— Backstage
About the Playwright:
Amiri Baraka (1934-2014) was a renowned African-American
poet and political activist whose politics strongly shaped his work.
He was also a noted playwright, screenwriter, novelist, and editor of
respected literary journals. Born Everett LeRoi Jones, he is
best known for his numerous poetry collections and his highly
acclaimed, explosive signature play Dutchman. His awards
include an Obie (the off-Broadway equivalent of a Tony); the American
Academy of Arts & Letters Award; a National Book Award, and the
James Weldon Johnson Medal for contributions to the arts. He also was
a Guggenheim Fellow.