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Dutchman

  • LeRoi Jones
  • Short Play, Drama
  • 2M, 1F
  • ISBN: 9780688210847

This is the first of Jones' (aka Amiri Baraka's) successes, and the cause of his critical acclaim. A lascivious blonde 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 black "would make us all sane." She stabs him and, as other whites dispose of his body, primps for her next Black victim.

More information

Description

  • Short Play
  • Drama
  • 75 minutes

  • Target Audience: Adult
  • Set Requirements: Interior Set
  • Cautions: Strong Language

  • Performance Group:
  • Large Stage, Community Theatre, Professional Theatre, Shoestring Budget, Blackbox / Second Stage /Fringe Groups, College Theatre / Student

  • Accolades:
  • Winner! Obie Award for Best American Play (1964)
Dutchman is an emotionally charged and highly symbolic version of the Adam and Eve story, wherein a naive bourgeois black man is murdered by an insane and calculating white seductress, who is coldly preparing for her next victim as the curtain comes down. The emotionally taut, intellectual verbal fencing between Clay (the black Adam) and Lula (a white Eve) spirals irrevocably to the symbolic act of violence that will apparently repeat itself over and over again.

Jones/Baraka's play is one of mythical proportions, a ritual drama that has a sociological purpose: to galvanize his audience into revolutionary action.

Published in tandem with The Slave.
REVIEWS:

"A fierce and blazing talent."

 N.Y. Herald Tribune

"...a pivotal play not only at a particular juncture in 20th-century American culture but also in Mr. Baraka's increasingly politicized career."

 The New York Times

"The playwright's Black Nationalist leanings show through in Dutchman's incendiary takes on 1960s race relations. This is a subject that never gets old, as evidenced by the audiences' vocal reactions to the play's denouement."

 NYTheatre.com

Premiere Production: Dutchman premiered at the Cherry Lane Theatre in Greenwich Village, New York in March 1964.

Characters

  • Casting: 2M, 1F
  • Casting Attributes: Multicultural casting, Room for Extras, Strong Role for Leading Woman (Star Vehicle), Strong Role for Leading Man (Star Vehicle)

  • LULA - an alluring white woman
    CLAY - a polished young black man
    SUBWAY PASSENGERS

    • Available Material

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    Dutchman Script This is optional. Order Now

    Dutchman is an emotionally charged and highly symbolic version of the Adam and Eve story, wherein a naive bourgeois black man is murdered by an insane and calculating white seductress, who is coldly preparing for her next victim as the curtain comes down. The emotionally taut, intellectual verbal fencing between Clay (the black Adam) and Lula (a white Eve) spirals irrevocably to the symbolic act of violence that will apparently repeat itself over and over again.

    Jones/Baraka's play is one of mythical proportions, a ritual drama that has a sociological purpose: to galvanize his audience into revolutionary action.

    Published in tandem with The Slave.

    		$24.95

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