. Jayanthi
Assistant Professor of English
Sri S. Ramasamy Naidu Memorial College, Sattur
Email id: jayanthibalaaa@gmail.com
Mobile No: 9790121144
The Dramatic Technique –
The Medium that Suits the Matter in Ntozake Shange
African American literature exists as its own entity creating new styles of storytelling and unique voices in isolation. The American culture is revitalized by Jazz and hip hop, two artistic examples, that were developed in isolation. African American oral culture is rich in poetry, including spirituals, African Americans gospel music, blues and rap. These characteristics and themes resist Western literary theory to analyze African American literature. Thus a study of the form of the African American writers is important to acknowledge the presence of a cultural bound pattern. C. Hughes Holman defines form in A Handbook to Literature as “the pattern or structure of organization which is employed to give expression of content” (231). The present paper is an attempt to study the dramatic techniques in the theatrical pieces of Ntozake Shange which have been indigenously developed, based on the African culture, to suit the theme she chooses to delineate.
Ntozake Shange is an outstanding black woman playwright, characterized by a vision, distinctively feminine and different, from that of many black male dramatists of the period. She takes the lead from Hansberry and seems preoccupied with broadening the American theatre to include African rituals. Her theatre pieces generally do not conform to traditional dramatic structure and it is difficult to detect a noticeable progression of action or character. Addressing the issue of dramatic structure in Shange’s pieces, Sandra L. Richards says in her article “Conflicting Impulses in the Plays of Shange” that her plays are a series of poetic monologues interrupted at times by conventional dialogue. (75) As an African-American woman feminist, an artist, she has shown on the American stage that black females are worthy of heroic stature and literary exploration. She creates an effective poetic drama thus proving self-worth and self-realization in a sexist, racist and capitalist society.
Ntozake Shange, born Paulette Williams, was the eldest child in a professional middle class black family. Her father, Paul T. Williams was a surgeon and her mother Eloise Williams was a psychiatric social worker and educator. They provided her with intellectual stimulation and love. She enjoyed a childhood of relative security surrounded by the arts. She gives voice to the ordinary experiences of black women in frank, simple, and vivid language unique in itself. She tells a colored girls’ story in her own speech patterns and brings to life the experiences of being black and a woman.
Shange feels that the suffering of the women and black people goes unnoticed in America. Her objective is to highlight their discrimination on the basis of race, gender and class, using a poetic medium, suitable to her ideas. The form symbolizes her “artistic and political goal of redefining her own identity and the identity of oppressed peoples.” (Lester 15). This makes a study of the form in the plays of Ntozake Shange essential.
American theater has been influenced by various models from around the world. The European and non-European ones, the Japanese Noh and Kubuki plays, Chinese Chinghis drama, Indian Sanskrit drama, and traditional African drama, are some such models which have been incorporated into the American theatre. Kimberly Benston concurs that structural form is less rigid and black playwrights, have enriched the American theater with their African traditions.
The collective consciousness of the exiled blacks is anchored in Africa. This memory is transmitted from generation to generation and black Americans are forced to construct a cultural form made up of different behaviours and customs which is not African but African-American developed in response to the requirements of a new environment. The plays and theories of Paul Carter Harrison have an important place in the debate on blackness and Africanness. Y. S. Sharadha in her book Black Women’s Writing: Quest for Identity in the Plays of Lorraine Hansberry, and Ntozake Shange quotes that Harrison
…sees expressions of African experience in popular culture through song, sacred or profane, dance, and drum music symbolized by that eminently African instrument. These are the components of black sensibility and cultural heritage which the artist must know. The role of the theatre is to revalidate the spirituality of black America, to revive the collective race memory by retaining remembrance of slavery, and to reinstate an African vision of the world. Harrison refuses western theatre because it restricts free expression of black creativity. (Sharadha 19)
Thus a theatre is an instrument which reflects and analyses, to rediscover and reinvent the cultural heritage. African-American drama is thus constructed to destroy the foreign code imposed by the dominant ideology and to develop its own more relevant system. The preference is for an art form which is free from Western tradition and renewed by contact with black people. Ed Bullins in “Manifesto” remarks that the theatre is a monument built from black awareness and it is a sanctuary for the recreation of the black spirit. (60)
Shange uses an unconventional American form rather she adapts a traditional structural form to express black culture and history. She rejects Standard English in favor of black vernacular creating her own rules of spelling, punctuation, capitalizations, word usage, and even syntax. Robin Lakoff in Language and Woman’s Place offers an excellent account of how “standard” (20) English reflects the subjugation and oppression of females. She maintains that “linguistic and social change go hand in hand” (20). Similarly Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of dialogism and consciousness is that each social group speaks in its own “social dialect” (292) expressing shared values, perspectives, ideology and norms. These social dialects become the “languages” (292) of heteroglossia. For Bakhtin language is an expression of social identity and so subjectivity is constituted as a social entity through the role of the word as the medium of consciousness. This consciousness is manifested in the form of the choreopoem, a dramatic technique which is interdisciplinary in nature and non-Eurocentric in its texture and expression of African-American culture. The language of Shange develops its own linguistic signs of expression. In fact, it is through such language that the black man captures private yet communal cultural rituals.
Shange finds the American theatrical styles “overwhelmingly shallow/stilted & imitative.” (FCG ix) where as her interest is in “the poetry of a moment” (FCG ix) and “the emotional & aesthetic impact of a character or a line.” (FCG ix) In her search for a suitable dramatic technique for the Afro-American theatre, Shange invokes the musicals which are an integral component of black life through her genre choreopoem which is a combination of poetry, prose, dance and music. She thus creates an Afro-American language which expresses the self-conscious feelings of the community in its essential truth.
Shange does not introduce the Choreopoem to challenge the existing European forms of art but as a form which allows her characters to celebrate themselves. It is a form through which she is able to declare war on patriarchy’s universally oppressive system. It is a mode of empowerment of women to recall and participate in a cultural war of aesthetics. Shange’s “choreopoem” is her most significant contribution to the stage. Defined simply, the choreopoem is a theatrical expression that combines poetry, prose, song, dance, and music outlining a distinctly African-American heritage to arouse an emotional response in the audience.
Shange’s affinity towards traditional names is seen in her label “choreopoem”. The genre suits the subject matter of dramatic writing and allows the resources of her African-American heritage to be fully integrated into a unified theater piece. Shange’s use of this form is complex and innovative. As C.W.E. Bigsby views, the choreopoem is an extension of the poetry performed by Sonia Sanchez, Nikki Giovanni, resulting in the symbiosis between audience and the performer. They form a narrative account with music and dance.
Shange uses the stream of conscious and dream technique to expose a black girl’s dreams, visions, fears, and fantasies that lie in the inner recesses of her mind in boogie woogie landscapes. It is a device which frees her from the artificial portrayal of the human mind. It explores the unconscious mind of the young woman Layla and brings out her dreams and memories of growing up in America. For Layla, “she never thought people places or ideas were anything/ but black and white” (boogie woogie landscapes 114)
Shange makes use of the poetic monologue as a dramatic technique. Sandra L. Richards says, “By constructing most of her plays as a series of poetic monologues occasionally interrupted by conventional dialogue, she takes advantage of the telegraphic, elusive quality of poetry, to encourage audiences to listen with close critical attention.” (75) Monologue comes from Greek word ‘monos’ means alone and ‘logos’ means speech which expresses the speaker’s collection of thoughts and ideas aloud. There are two types of monologues. One is the Interior Monologue and the other is called the Dramatic Monologue. Interior Monologue is also called as the stream of consciousness technique. In this type of monologue the character speaks out his thoughts for the audience to understand his experiences. In the Dramatic Monologue the character speaks to the silent listener. Shange uses this technique to express the characters’ point of view to convince someone of something. Sometimes the silence of the character reveals more interesting revelations than what he does say.
The monologue is a suitable medium to represent the reminiscences of the characters’ suppressed feelings and disappointments. Shange’s spell #7 is termed not a play but as unconnected monologues. Eli’s monologue on territorial claim states,
you are welcome
to my kingdom my city my self
but yr presence mst not disturb these inhabitants
leave nothing out of place/ push no dust under my rugs
leave no crack in my wine glasses
no finger prints
clean up after yrself in the bathroom
there are no maids here no days off
for healing no insurance policies
for dislocation of the psyche
…. i sustain no intrusions/ no double- entendre romance
no soliciting of sadness in my life
are those who love me well. (Spell # 7 12-13)
affirms that the blacks have the power “to reconfigure their own individual and collective psychic landscapes.” (Lester 1995: 93) Maxine’s monologue in spell #7 appreciates black racial identity continuing Natalie’s celebration of blackness as freedom to choose and think independently. It attacks whites as the only victims of polio, muscular dystrophy, mental illness, and multiple sclerosis and at the same time examines “adolescent female’s confusion about the physical dangers of her own gender.” (Lester 1995: 104)
The minstrelsy is yet another dramatic technique employed by Shange. It was an American form of entertainment developed in the 19th century presenting with a strange, fascinating and awful phenomenon. Minstrel shows continued to be popular well into the 1950s, and high schools, fraternities and local theater groups would often perform minstrel shows in black face. It became unpopular as African-Americans asserted more political power in the 1950s. However, Shange makes use of this traditionally male form in spell #7 to voice her opinion against the formulaic roles allotted to the black artists, and the disillusionment of the black in the white patriarchal world which does not give importance to their sentiments. She creates visual reminders highlighting the themes of black representation and self-deception. Karen Cronacher in his article “Unmasking the Minstrel Mask’s Black Magic in Ntozake Shange’s spell #7,” examines the social and political history of American Minstrelsy. He offers the feminist appropriation of the male form by Shange who addresses the absence of a subject position for the African-American women. Cronacher says she reclaims and rewrites the legacy of minstrelsy writing herself back into a history from which she was excluded because of her sex and race (185).
The play-within-a-play is another technique used as a means of discoursing truth, and is “expressive of its society’s deep cynicism about life” (Hornby 45). Black women writers portray the estrangement or uneasiness of the oppressed through the play-within-a-play. Childress successfully shows that the society is out-of-order because it does not function for African-American. In Trouble in Mind, the play-within-a-play Chaos in Belleville serves as the symbol of blacks’ struggle in America. Shange improvises on the dramatic technique and brings out a presentation in spell #7 where the black artists vent out their inadequacies and stereotyped roles given by whites on the American theatre. They use the play-within-a-play technique to bring out everything that is against the blacks, which allows them space to prove their talents and originality.
Shange through her medium of expression changes the face of the theatrical performance and opens a new pathway for the oppressed and subjugated. The paper shows that every creative writer has his or her own vision, to convey her message to the readers. This is what is generally called the poetic vision. Depending upon the nature of the message, a writer is forced to choose his or her language or technique. The message of African-American feminists is found mostly to be strong and forceful. Hence, the medium needs to be equally strong and forceful. This is what Shange has attempted in the choice of her technique and one finds that the medium has effectively matched the message.
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