Dutchman (1964)
by
Leroi Jones (Amiri Baraka)
The Great MacDaddy (1972)
By
Paul Carter Harrison
Feeling History :
The Inadequacy of Extant Forms for Black Expression
LULA And yea for America where he is free to vote for the mediocrity of his choice! Yea!
Talking Points
1) Citizenry and the
LULA And yea for both your parents who even though they differ about so crucial a matter as the body politic still forged a
union of love and sacrifice that was destined to flower at the birth of the noble Clay . . . what's your middle name?
Erasure of
CLAY Clay.
History: The
LULA A union of love and sacrifice that was destined to flower at the birth of the noble Clay Clay Williams. Yea! And most of all
Vexing Promise
yea yea for you, Clay Clay. The Black Baudelaire! Yes! [And with knifelike cynicism] My Christ. My Christ.
of Civil Rights
CLAY Thank you, ma'am.
2) Assimilation and
LULA May the people accept you as a ghost of the future. And love you, that you might not kill them when you can.
Self-Murder
CLAY What?
3) History
LULA You're a murderer, Clay, and you know it. [Her voice darkening with significance] You know goddamn well what I mean.
4) Christ
CLAY I do?
5) Progress as
LULA So we'll pretend the air is light and full of perfume.
Erasure: A ghost
CLAY Sniffing at her blouse] It is.
of the Future
LULA And we'll pretend the people cannot see you. That is, the citizens. And that you are free of your own history. And I am free
CLAY Yea!
-
of my history. We'll pretend that we are both anonymous beauties smashing along through the city's entrails.
[She yells as loud as she can] GROOVE!
Black
No Intermission
Scene 2
Scene is the same as before,
though now there are other seats
visible in the car. And throughout
the scene other people get on the
subway. There are maybe one or
two seated in the car as the scene
opens, though neither CLAY nor
LULA notices them. CLAY's tie is
open. LULA is hugging his arm.
Talking Points
1) What
happens
during the
blackout?
2) What is the
significance of
not noticing
the actors
enter:
especially in a
piece of
theatre with
Brechtian
Overtones
Brecht\Making Use of Epic Theatre
From his late twenties Brecht remained a life-long committed Marxist who, in developing the
combined theory and practice of his ‘’epic theatre’', to explore the theatre as a forum for political
ideas. and the creation of a critical aesthetics of dialectical materialism.
Brechtian theatre articulated popular themes and forms with avant-garde formal experimentation to
create a modernist realism that stood in sharp contrast both to its Psychological and socialist varieties
Epic theatre incorporates a mode of acting that utilizes what he calls gestus. The epic form describes
both a type of written drama and a methodological approach to the production of plays: "Its qualities
of clear description and reporting and its use of choruses and projections as a means of commentary
earned it the name 'epic'." The audience should always be aware that it is watching a play: "It is
most important that one of the main features of the ordinary theatre should be excluded from [epic
theatre]: the engendering of illusion, producing the key (and perhaps paradoxically named effect of
alientation).
In epic theatre requires actors to play characters believably without convincing either the audience or
themselves that they have "become" the characters. Actors frequently address the audience directly
out of character ("breaking the fourth wall") and play multiple roles. Brecht thought it was important
that the choices the characters made were explicit, and tried to develop a style of acting wherein it
was evident that the characters were choosing one action over another. For example, a character could
say, "I could have stayed at home, but instead I went to the shops."
Talking Points
1) In Blues for Mr. Charlie, we saw Baldwin use Brechtian techniques both to look at the
construction of race, and to position many of the nationalist themes and polemics about
non-violence, civil rights, and religion.
2) Here, once again, Brecht comes to the fore (with the couple’s self-absorption, the addition
of spectators) but with an added twist: the audience is aware not only that the actors have
not “become” the people they seems to be playing, but also that this playing has high racial
stakes vis-à-vis America’s vision of integration and assimilation
Assumed and Shared Cultural Knowledge and
Origins
Escaped Nigger or Dirty White Man
CLAY Wow. All these people, so suddenly. They must all come from the same place.
LULA Right. That they do.
CLAY Oh? You know about them too?
LULA Oh yeah. About them more than I know about you. Do they frighten you?
CLAY Frighten me? Why should they frighten me?
LULA 'Cause you're an escaped nigger.
CLAY Yeah?
LULA 'Cause you crawled through the wire and made tracks to my side.
CLAY Wire?
Talking Points
1) Origins and History
2) The Portrayal of Origins
3) The Appropriation of Origins
4) Borrowed Identity and Culture
5) White-Washing
6) Performance
LULA Don't they have wire around plantations?
CLAY You must be Jewish. All you can think about is wire. Plantations didn't have any wire. Plantations were big open whitewashed places like heaven, and everybody on 'em was grooved to be there. Just
strummin' and hummin' all day.
LULA Yes, yes.
CLAY And that's how the blues was born.
LULA Yes, yes. And that's how the blues was born. [Begins to make up a song that becomes quickly hysterical. As she sings she rises from her seat, still throwing things out of her bag into the aisle, beginning a
rhythmical shudder and twistlike wiggle, which she continues up and down the aisle, bumping into many of the standing people and tripping over the feet of those sitting. Each time she runs into a person she
lets out a very vicious piece of profanity, wiggling and stepping all the time] And that's how the blues was born. Yes. Yes. Son of a bitch, get out of the way. Yes. Quack. Yes. Yes. And that's how the blues was
born. Ten little niggers sitting on a limb, but none of them ever looked like him. [Points to CLAY, returns toward the seat, with her hands extended for him to rise and dance with her] And that's how blues was
born. Yes. Come on, Clay. Let's do the nasty. Rub bellies. Rub bellies.
CLAY [Waves his hands to refuse. He is embarrassed, but determined to get a kick out of the proceedings] Hey, what was in those apples? Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the fairest one of all? Snow White,
baby, and don't you forget it.
-
LULA [Grabbing for his hands, which he draws away] Come on, Clay. Let's rub bellies on the train. The nasty. The nasty. Do the gritty grind, like your ol' rag-head mammy. Grind till you lose your mind. Shake it,
shake it, shake it, shake it! OOOOweeee! Come on, Clay. Let's do the choo-choo train shuffle, the navel scratcher.
CLAY Hey, you coming on like the lady who smoked up her grass skirt.
LULA [Becoming annoyed that he will not dance, and becoming more animated as if to embarrass him still further] Come on, Clay . . . let's do the thing. Uhh! Uhh! Clay! Clay! You middle-class black bastard.
Forget your social-working mother for a few seconds and let's knock stomachs. Clay, you liver-lipped white man. You would-be Christian. You ain't no nigger, you're just a dirty white man. Get up, Clay. Dance
with me, Clay.
CLAY Lula! Sit down, now. Be cool.
Acting Black and Double Consciousness
You don’t know anything except what’s there for you to
see.
CLAY [Pushing her against the seat] I'm not telling you again, Tallulah Bankhead! Luxury. In your face and your fingers. You telling me what I ought to do.
[Sudden scream frightening the whole coach] Well, don't! Don't you tell me anything! If I'm a middle-class fake white man . . . let me be. And let me be in the way I want.
[Through his teeth] I'll rip your lousy breasts off! Let me be who I feel like being. Uncle Tom. Thomas. Whoever. It's none of your business. You don't know anything except
what's there for you to see. An act. Lies. Device. Not the pure heart, the pumping black heart. You don't ever know that. And I sit here, in this buttoned-up suit, to keep
myself from cutting all your throats. I mean wantonly. You great liberated whore! You fuck some black man, and right away you're an expert on black people. What a
lotta shit that is. The only thing you know is that you come if he bangs you hard enough. And that's all. The belly rub? You wanted to do the belly rub? Shit, you don't
even know how. You don't know how. That ol' dipty-dip shit you do, rolling your ass like an elephant. That's not my kind of belly rub. Belly rub is not Queens. Belly rub
is dark places, with big hats and overcoats held up with one arm. Belly rub hates you. Old bald-headed four-eyed ofays popping their fingers . . . and don't know yet
what they're doing. They say, "I love Bessie Smith." And don't even understand that Bessie Smith is saying, "Kiss my ass, kiss my black unruly ass." Before love,
suffering, desire, anything you can explain, she's saying, and very plainly, "Kiss my black ass." And if you don't know that, it's you that's doing the kissing. Charlie
Parker? Charlie Parker. All the hip white boys scream for Bird. And Bird saying, "Up your ass, feebleminded ofay! Up your ass." And they sit there talking about the
tortured genius of Charlie Parker. Bird would've played not a note of music if he just walked up to East Sixty-seventh Street and killed the first ten white people he saw.
Not a note! And I'm the great would-be poet. Yes. That's right! Poet. Some kind of bastard literature . . . all it needs is a simple knife thrust. Just let me bleed you, you
loud whore, and one poem vanished. A whole people of neurotics, struggling to keep from being sane. And the only thing that would cure the neurosis would be your
murder. Simple as that. I mean if I murdered you, then other white people would begin to understand me. You understand? No. I guess not. If Bessie Smith had killed
some white people she wouldn't have needed that music. She could have talked very straight and plain about the world. No metaphors. No grunts. No wiggles in the
dark of her soul. Just straight two and two are four. Money. Power. Luxury. Like that. All of them. Crazy niggers turning their backs on sanity. When all it needs is that
simple act. Murder. Just murder! Would make us all sane.
[Suddenly weary] Ahhh. Shit. But who needs it? I'd rather be a fool. Insane. Safe with my words, and no deaths, and clean, hard thoughts, urging me to new conquests. My
people's madness. Hah! That's a laugh. My people. They don't need me to claim them. They got legs and arms of their own. Personal insanities. Mirrors. They don't
need all those words. They don't need any defense. But listen, though, one more thing. And you tell this to your father, who's probably the kind of man who needs to
know at once. So he can plan ahead. Tell him not to preach so much rationalism and cold logic to these niggers. Let them alone. Let them sing curses at you in code
and see your filth as simple lack of style. Don't make the mistake, through some irresponsible surge of Christian charity, of talking too much about the advantages of
Western rationalism, or the great intellectual legacy of the white man, or maybe they'll begin to listen. And then, maybe one day, you'll find they actually do
understand exactly what you are talking about, all these fantasy people. All these blues people. And on that day, as sure as shit, when you really believe you can
"accept" them into your fold, as half-white trusties late of the subject peoples. With no more blues, except the very old ones, and not a watermelon in sight, the great
missionary heart will have triumphed, and all of those ex-coons will be stand-up Western men, with eyes for clean hard useful lives, sober, pious and sane, and they'll
murder you. They'll murder you, and have very rational explanations. Very much like your own. They'll cut your throats, and drag you out to the edge of your cities so
the flesh can fall away from your bones, in sanitary isolation.
Talking Points:
1) Intra-Group Knowledge in Cultural Production: Doubly Conscious Performing
2) Acting vs. Being Black and the Problem of Performing for Two Audiences
3) Artistic and Rational Revolution
4) History of Struggle and the History of Black Cultural Production
Absurdism, Suicide, Rebellion and Camus
Although the notion of the 'absurd' is pervasive in all of the literature of Abert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus is his most
extensive work on the subject. In it, Camus considers absurdity as a confrontation, an opposition, a conflict or a
"divorce" between two ideals. Specifically, he defines the human condition as absurd, as the confrontation between
man's desire for significance, meaning and clarity on the one hand – and the silent, cold universe on the other. He
continues that there are specific human experiences evoking notions of absurdity. Such a realization or encounter with
the absurd leaves the individual with a choice: suicide is a leap of faith or recognition. He concludes that recognition is
the only defensible option.
For Camus, suicide is a "confession" that life is not worth living; it is a choice implicitly declaring that life is "too much".
Suicide offers the most basic "way out" of absurdity: the immediate termination of the self and its place in the universe.
Lastly, a person can choose to embrace his or her own absurd condition. According to Camus, one's freedom – and the
opportunity to give life meaning – lies in the recognition of absurdity. If the absurd experience is truly the realization
that the universe is fundamentally devoid of absolutes, then we as individuals are truly free. "To live without appeal", [as
he puts it, is a philosophical move to define absolutes and universals subjectively, rather than objectively. The freedom
of humans is thus established in a human's natural ability and opportunity to create his own meaning and purpose; to
decide (or think) for him- or herself. The individual becomes the most precious unit of existence, as he or she represents
a set of unique ideals which can be characterized as an entire universe in its own right. In acknowledging the absurdity
of seeking any inherent meaning, but continuing this search regardless, one can be happy, gradually developing his or
her own meaning from the search alone.
One of Camus' primary arguments in The Rebel concerns the motivation for rebellion and revolution. While the two acts
- which can be interpreted from Camus' writing as states of being - are radically different in most respects, they both
stem from a basic human rejection of normative justice. If human beings become disenchanted with contemporary
applications of justice, Camus suggests that they rebel. This rebellion, then, is the product of a basic contradiction
between the human mind's unceasing quest for clarification and the apparently meaningless nature of the world.
Described by Camus as "absurd", this latter perception must be examined with what Camus terms "lucidity." Camus
concludes that the absurd sensibility contradicts itself because when it claims to believe in nothing, it believes in its own
protest and the value of the protester's life. Therefore, this sensibility is logically a "point of departure" that irresistibly
"exceeds itself." In the inborn impulse to rebel, on the other hand, we can deduce values that enable us to determine
that murder and oppression are illegitimate and conclude with "hope for a new creation."
Assimilation and Survival:
A Cry for What Kind of Revolt-The Shuffle
LULA [Her voice takes on a different, more businesslike quality] I've heard enough.
CLAY [Reaching for his books] I bet you have. I guess I better collect my stuff and get off this train. Looks like we won't be acting
out that little pageant you outlined before.
LULA No. We won't. You're right about that, at least.
[She turns to look quickly around the rest of the car] All right!
[The others respond]
CLAY [Bending across the girl to retrieve his belongings] Sorry, baby, I don't think we could make it.
[As he is bending over her, the girl brings up a small knife and plunges it into CLAY's chest. Twice. He slumps across her knees, his
mouth working stupidly]
LULA Sorry is right.
[Turning to the others in the car who have already gotten up from their seats] Sorry is the rightest thing you've said. Get this man
off me! Hurry, now!
[ The others come and drag CLAY's body down the aisle] Open the door and throw his body out. They throw him off]
And all of you get off at the next stop. LULA busies herself straightening her things. Getting everything in order. She takes out a
notebook and makes a quick scribbling note. Drops it in her bag. The train apparently stops and all the others get off, leaving her
alone in the coach.
Very soon a young Negro of about twenty comes into the coach, with a couple of books under his arm. He sits a few seats in back
of LULA. When he is seated she turns and gives him a long slow look. He looks up from his book and drops the book on his lap.
Then an old Negro conductor comes into the car, doing a sort of restrained soft shoe, and half mumbling the words of some song.
He looks at the young man, briefly, with a quick greeting]
CONDUCTOR Hey, brother!
YOUNG NEGRO Hey
[The conductor continues down the aisle with his little dance and the mumbled song. LULA turns to stare at him and follows his
movements down the aisle. The conductor tips his hat when he reaches her seat, and continues out the car]
Curtain
The Tasks of Black Arts Literature:
Larry Neale
1) Reacting to felt history
2) Rediscovering an art where form and
function coincide
3) Addressing the specific needs of Black
people
4) By becoming, like music, an integral part of
the community’s lifestyle.
5) By becoming, like music, representative of
the collective psyche, achieving the same
sense of ritual.
Double Consciousness, Aesthetics, And
Ritual
LEIONAH We gonna rise up this mornin' We gonna stay up all
day. Ain't no more sleepin' our lives away. We gonna rise up
this mornin' We gonna stay up all day. We ain't payin' out no
more dues to-day. We gonna rise up this mornin' We gonna
stay up all day. Ain't gonna let nobody stand in our way. We
gonna rise up this mornin' We gonna stay up all day.
Brutha/sista gonna find their way home someday.
Every effort is made by the CHORUS/COMMUNITY to get the
audience/community to join them in the celebration. At the
high point in the singing, the CHORUS/COMMUNITY, LEIONAH
pulling a satisfied
MACDADDY off last, exit out the door upstage-right, with
MACDADDY closing the door. Everything dims out with the
exception of the SCAG PHOTOGRAPHER's camera which is
focused on the audience: if the audience is still singing, the
light/special on the camera gradually fades out; if not, the
MUSICIANS stop playing and camera light/special remains
focused on the audience until they decide to exit the house.
Talking Points
1) Brechtian
Elements
2) A New Role for
alienation in the
failure/success
of ritual
3) Modern day
Ritual
4) I/We- Functional
Theater
Paul Carter Harrison (1936-)
1)
2)
3)
1968-1970- Professor at Howard University
1970-1972- While teaching at the State University of California, Sacramento
(1970-1972), Harrison conceived and directed Melvin Van Peebles' "Ain't
Supposed To Die a Natural Death" prior to its Broadway production, and wrote
his play The Great MacDaddy which was produced by the Negro Enseble
Company in 1973, and won an Obie Award.
“The Drama of Nommo” is a book he wrote, which is a collection of essays that
identified African retentions in the aesthetic of African American culture and has
helped many directors in the Black Theatre practice.
Bibliography
• The Drama of Nommo and Totem Voices: Plays From the Black World Repertory
(1972
• Kuntu Drama: Plays of the African Continuum (1974)
• Black Light: The African American Hero (1993)
• Classic Plays from the Negro Ensemble Company (1995)
• Black Theatre: Ritual Performance in the African Diaspora (2002
The Negro Ensemble
Douglass Turner
Ward
Robert Hooks
1) Prior to the 1960s, there were virtually no outlets for the wealth of black theatrical talent in America. Playwrights writing
realistically about the black experience could not get their work produced, and even the most successful performers, such as
Hattie McDaniel and Butterfly McQueen, were confined to playing roles as servants. It was disenfranchised artists such as these
who set out to create a theater concentrating primarily on themes of black life. In 1965, Playwright Douglas Turner Ward,
producer/actor Robert Hooks, and theater manager Gerald Krone came together to make these dreams a reality with the Negro
Ensemble Company. The main catalyst for this project was the 1959 production of "A Raisin in the Sun."
2) Written by Lorraine Hansberry, of "A Raisin in the Sun" was a gritty, realistic view of black family life. The long-running play
gave many black theater people the opportunity to meet and work together. Robert Hooks and Douglas Turner Ward were
castmates in the road company. Together they dreamed of starting a theater company run by and for black people. While acting
in Leroi Jones' play "The Dutchman", Hooks began spending nights teaching to local black youth. In a public performance
primarily for parents and neighbors, the kids put on a one-act play by Ward. A newspaper critic who had attended the
performance recommended that Ward's plays be produced commercially.
3) While Hooks raised money, Ward wrote plays. The pair recruited a theater manager, Gerald Krone, and the three men
produced an evening of black-oriented, satiric one act plays. One of these short plays, "Day of Absence", was a reverse minstrel
show, with black actors in whiteface performing the roles of whites in a small Southern town on a day when all the blacks have
mysteriously disappeared. The plays, performed at the St. Marks Play House in Greenwich Village, were a major success. They
ran for 504 performances and won Ward an Obie Award for acting and a Drama Desk Award for writing.
4) Impressed with his work, the NEW YORK TIMES invited Ward to write an article on the condition of black artists in American
theater. Ward's piece in the Times became a manifesto for the establishment of a resident black theater company. With money
from the Ford Foundation and a home at the St. Marks Playhouse, the Negro Ensemble Company formed officially in 1967.
Though critically acclaimed and presenting some of the most important theatrical work of its time, the NEC ran into a number
of economic troubles. With production costs rising and an original grant from the Ford Foundation gone, the group no longer
had enough money for many of its projects. Even sellout audiences in the St. Marks Theater could not generate enough
revenue to meet the budget. In the 1972-73 season the resident company was disbanded, staff was cut back, training programs
canceled, and salaries deferred. The decision was made to produce only one new play a year.
Primal Rhythm
Harlem, Africa, Heroes, Tricksters, Theatrical
Space
PRIMAL RHYTHM
Los Angeles, California. No curtain. The room is covered with a pliable plastic material, including exits, to create
a total environment. Upstage, raised level, MUSICIANS are vaguely seen behind material. They are playing a
Twenties jazz riff as audience/ participators enter the house.
The Time is the Twenties, during Prohibition; the space is a funeral parlor speakeasy: upstage right is a door; left
of the door, two candelabra stands; further left, an empty coffin. Downstage left is a large wine cask and an
ornamental gold tray with longstemmed glasses upon a small table. Down right, an old-fashioned box-camera on
tripod. Plastic flowers laden around the area.
With house lights still on, MACDADDY enters through the door upstage-right, signals for the others to follow as
he ambles over to the wine cask to pour a glass of wine. A gathering of black people (CHORUS/ COMMUNITY),
stylishly dressed, enter as if having returned from a burial; they speak to a few people among the audience/
participators about the passing of Big Mac as the SCAG PHOTOGRAPHER, who has entered downstage right,
dressed in duster and cap, his face painted like a skull -- a white-faced death mask -- adjusts the lens of the
camera.
House lights begin to fade out, as well as the music: lights up in a sepia tone on the CHORUS/ COMMUNITY
who are now posed in a gay still-life photographic attitude; the SCAG PHOTOGRAPHER's head under the
camera's black cloth as he raises a powder-flash instrument. MACDADDY is the only one animated, sipping from
a glass as he observes the scene. SCAG PHOTOGRAPHER's flash instrument flashes sending up a cloud of
smoke, breaking the frozen attitude -- lights changing and music playing instantaneously -- as the
CHORUS/COMMUNITY commences to dance a vigorous Charleston, the steps, however, indicating an African
influence. A party is in progress: the occasion is a wake for Big MacDaddy, who has just been buried, leaving his
fortunes to his son who is now the Great MacDaddy, great lover, great patriarch, great hustler.
Talking Points
1) Sepia Toned Community
2) Why the 20’s
3) Reverse Black Face?/
Blaxploitation
4) African American
Expression/African
Retensions
Amos Tutuola (1920-1997) and The Palm Wine Drinkard (1952):
Negritude and BAM as Contemporary and Complementary Projects
History and Unitary Myth
Tutuola’s Writing
The Palm-Wine Drinkard, which was published by Faber in London in 1952,
was Tutuola’s debut. It is the tale of a lover of palm-wine who journeys
into the land of the Dead to bring back his favourite “tapster”, or winemaker, who has died in a fall. In this story Tutuola creates a unique
narrative from traditional elements of Yoruba mythology. His next
book, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (1952), is similar in theme: a
traditional quest narrative, it tells the story of a boy who is lost in the
“Bush of Ghosts”--a parallel world of spirits and magic--who is trying to
return to his family. Other books by Tutuola include Simbi and the Satyr
of the Dark Jungle (1955), The Brave African Huntress (1958), Feather
Woman of the Jungle (1962), Ajaiyi and his Inherited Poverty (1968),
and The Witch Herbalist of the Remote Town (1981).
Tutuola’s Literary Reputation
The Palm-Wine Drinkard was greeted with acclaim on its publication. Dylan
Thomas reviewed it, saying the book was “brief, thronged, grisly and
bewitching”, adding that “nothing is too prodigious or too trivial to put
down in this tall, devilish story” Bernth Lindfors tells us that English
and American critics loved the book “partly because it was so
delightfully odd and unexpected,” but “partly because it was just what
they would have expected to emerge from Africa--an uncouth,
barbarous monster of a tale which had all the vitality and naiveté of
childish literature” To educated readers in Nigeria the book was an
affront: its ungrammatical English “did not reflect the level of learning
and cultivation many of them had achieved”, and many felt that
Tutuola had plagiarised Yoruba myths for his best material. In Lindfors’s
fascinating study Folklore in Nigerian Literature two versions of a
Yoruba tale, published in English in 1929, are compared with Tutuola’s
interpretation of the same myth in a section of The Palm-Wine
Drinkard. Lindfors’s comparison clearly shows Tutuola’s version to be
both “richer in detail and more elaborate in dramatic design” that the
two traditional versions
Larry Neale
A Black Theater: Re-Ritualizing the Stage
DEACON JONES
(sermonizing) Ain't never been a man, on this land, who didn't have to come by The Man, at least once. Who
didn't have to pay by hook or crook, for his benevolence. And he that don't know 'bout sacrifice, I say sacrifice, I
mean sacrifice, can only know the back-hand of The Man's patience.
MACDADDY Well, we'll save the bones for Deacon Jones! How's that?
YOUNG MAN (exuberantly) Hey yawl, I'm makin' a toast to my man MacDaddy, my main man, my ace boon coon, my horse if
he never wins a race, my nigga if he never gets bigger . . .
YOUNG WOMAN
(interjects) The jelly in my roll, honey!
YOUNG MAN
(to the gathering's delight) . . . MacDaddy with pimps as caddies, blame all the young 'hoes for his new game . . .
Big Bear hugger, Momma plugger . . . the maker of crumb snatchers, the smasher of crummy crackers . . .
Talking Points
carved the world out of a wooden nickel and called it The Bucket of Blood . . . my main stem under a lady's hem
and a gangster's brim, MacDaddy! Everyone drinks to the toast: the festive moment is interrupted by an urgent rhythmical
rapping at the door. An anxious hush comes over the room. MACDADDY suggest everyone be cool as he approaches the door and a
WOMAN collects all the glasses and returns tray to table. MACDADDY taps a rhythmical signal on the door;
1) History as Unitary Myth: The Great
there is a feeble response. He repeats the gesture; again, the response. Cautiously, he opens the door: in
MacDaddy as Modern-Day Ritual: The
sprawls WINE, the keeper of the illegal still and the possessor of the precious Palm Wine formula that has
Play is a Ritual of “Coming into
produced MACDADDY's greatness. WINE appears to be badly beaten and delirious as he collapses in the arms
of MACDADDY and a few MEN.
Manhood” that centers on a re-WINE Turn me loose . . . turn me loose.
discovery of self that is only possible
MACDADDY
via a journey through a distinctly
(befuddled; embarrassed) Bring him down here! Hurry! Make room for him!
theatrical history.
YOUNG WOMAN
2) As MacDaddy journeys back in time,
(as other guests stare anxiously) Who's that old dude?
YOUNG MAN That's Wine! He runs the still. It don't look too good.
he will “come into himself” via a
WINE Turn me loose . . .
series of encounters that speak to:
MACDADDY
the history of Black Theatre; the role
(bending over WINE and holding up his head) It's alright, Wine, it's just me.
it has played and can play in
WINE
fashioning self-hood; the previous
(practically prostrate) Yeah . . . yeah . . . young Mac . . .
MACDADDY Great Mac! . . . What happened?
inadequacies and successes of Black
WINE The Man . . . he done come down on Wine . . .
theater and artistic production in the
MACDADDY What man?
Black Community
WINE Thee Man . . . you know? . . . like man-in-the-moon-shine? . . . Thee Man. And I'm a dead man, Mac
3)
The need for new wine as a need for a
new Theater
Living Folklore
"Stack-a-Lee" and several other variants, is a
popular blues fork songbased on the murder
of William "Billy" Lyons by Stagger Lee
Shelton. "Stag O Lee" songs may have
predated even the 1895 incident[ and Lee
Shelton may have gotten his nickname from
earlier folk songs. The first published version
of the song was by folklorist John Lomax in
1910.The song was well known in African
American communities along the lower
Mississippi
SIGNIFYIN' BABY
(dancing about frenetically) Hoo-popsie-doo, how do you do! What you
see is what you got! Oooooo!
LEIONAH
(rubbing flat stomach as she rises) Ahhhh, Mac, ain't he cute? Go on,
Mac, say somethin' nice to him.
SIGNIFYIN' BABY If you ain't got nothin' nice to say, don't say nothin' at
all. Ooooo!
MUSICIANS, SCAG, and LEIONAH all making impressions which heighten
the story rhythmically. SCAGOLEE, quite frenetic in his pacing;
MACDADDY subdued.
MACDADDY- Now, I know a bad niggah like you didn’t go for that.
STAGOLEE- You see, it wasn't easy talkin' johnson into that kind of
action, the dude standin' over me and shit. But we gets it together, like
Scagolee always do, and johnson is hard as Chinese 'rithmetic!
The Signifying Monkey
The Signifyin' Monkey told the lion one day
"There's a bad motherfucker comin' down your way
He talks about your momma and your sister Lou
He talks about how good yo' gran'ma screw
He talk about your uncle and your sissy brother Joe
Say he think you eats pussy, but he wasn't fo' sho'"
The lion took off like a mighty breeze,
Knockin' coconuts down an' giraffes to their knees.
He came upon the elephant an'said "Hey motherfucker I heard
some shit about you,
An' all the bad things you s'posed to do"
The Elephant looked at the lion out the corner of his eyes
An said "Please Mr. Lion, go pick on someone your size."
The lion got up an' made a fancy pass,
An the Elephant knocked him square on his ass.
The Lion roared an' swung up from the ground
An' The elephant knocked his big ass right back down.
Well, the lion come back more dead than alive
An' that's when the monkey really started to jive.
He said "I thought you was called the Jungle King,
But I just found out you ain't a goddamn thing.
My ol' lady told me before you left
I could prob'ly kick your ass all by myself."
The monkey started laughin' an' jumpin up an' down,
An' his foot missed the limb, and his ass hit the ground.
Like a strike of lightn'in an' a ball of heat
The lion was on the monkey with all four feet.
Monkey said "Please Mr. Lion, let my nuts off the sand
An' I'll stand up and fight you like a nach'el man."
The lion jumped back all ready to fight
And the monkey yelled "Bye, Motherfucker!" and ran dead out