Topdog/Underdog (review)
2002; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 54; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/tj.2002.0038
ISSN1086-332X
Autores Tópico(s)Cultural Studies and Interdisciplinary Research
ResumoIn recent decades an alternative American drama has thrown wide the doors of traditional psychological realism to let in an expansive vision of American history, geography, and speech. Suzan-Lori Parks is perhaps the leader—certainly the exemplar—of that drama. The large themes (and memorable titles) of such plays as The Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World, The America Play, and Venus have placed Parks securely within both the repertoire and the curricula of challenging contemporary theatre, where she has come to represent the hitherto untapped poetic potential of the American stage. Her characteristic vision—that of a totally unsentimental eye viewing a dauntingly wide vista—puts her in the tradition of Mark Twain and William Faulkner, while her faith in the power of poetry to unearth historical truths buried beneath sedimented layers of racial prejudice and other lies recalls the exuberant politics of Walt Whitman. As for the dramaturgy she seems so effortlessly to have gifted to the contemporary theatre, it shares with visionaries like Robert Wilson and Reza Abdoh an understanding of the stage as an entire universe rather than merely a room.
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