![]() In a similarly Marxist vein and with Brecht’s late plays as his case study, Williams identified the emergence of a new tragic structure: “the recovery of history as a dimension for tragedy.” He writes, “we should try to see what it means to drama when in recovering a sense of history and of the future a writer recovers the means of an action that is both complex and dynamic.” Playwright Tony Kushner, along with composer Jeanine Tesori, have recovered just such a “complex and dynamic” action in Caroline, or Change. Critical moment-the status quo threatens to be preserved.” Catastrophe, in this sense, is a situation in time-a too-lateness that comes again and again. Walter Benjamin revised this term as one of his “basic historical concepts.” For him, catastrophe is the continuing action of failing to recognize history in the present and thus of maintaining conditions of suffering: “Catastrophe-to have missed the opportunity. In the tragic structure defined by Gustav Freytag, catastrophe refers to the section after the scene of total suffering has taken place it is the final turning point in the tragic hero’s journey. ![]() We might call it an extended catastrophe. This is not a static contradiction located somewhere back in the past but an ongoing process and conditioning experience. “We are not looking for a new universal meaning of tragedy,” writes Raymond Williams in Modern Tragedy, “we are looking for the structure of tragedy in our own culture.” The structure of tragedy in contemporary American culture is shaped, still, by the constitutional (and ontological) contradiction between promises of freedom and pursuit of happiness on the one hand, and the legacy of slavery and poverty on the other. The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways the point is to change it. – Fred Moten, “Blackness and Nonperformance” We are sent in history, history comes for us. Change is the anticipation, the unanticipated that anticipates us. There is a foresight that is given in and as the unforeseen. – Tony Kushner, “Production: ‘Caroline, or Change’” It’s a tragedy, I think, in terms of Caroline’s journey. McKenna stopped suddenly, biting back the words as he realized that he was revealing too much, allowing his rampaging emotions to get the better of him.The Journal of American Drama and Theatre And I would break every law of God and man if-" "I'm your equal," he said harshly, "though my blood is red instead of blue, though I was condemned by my very birth never to have you. He's as different from you as ice from fire." He leaned over her, his body forming a hard, living cage around her. In the eyes of the world, Sandridge is your equal- but you and I know better. You need a man who will match your will, own you, occupy every part of your body, and every corner of your soul. "You're lying to yourself, if you think that you'll ever be satisfied with the kind of bloodless arrangement your parents had. He should be willing to do anything short of murder- hell, I wouldn't even stop at that- to keep other men away from you." Disgust thickened his voice. "My God, he should be trying to tear my throat out, instead of letting you go somewhere alone with me. "No, it doesn't," he said with sudden anger. "Adam-" She stopped and cleared her throat. ![]() "And yet you're here with me," he murmured. She loved Adam dearly- just not in the way he meant. Perhaps the future of the world then was to women? Why not? He hand't in years met a man that he hadn't to talk down to - as you talk down to a child, as he had talked down to General Campion or to Mr. The two types of mind: remorseless enemy, sure screen, dagger. If you wanted something kept alive you'd go to Valentine: she's find something to do for it. ![]() If you wanted something killed you'd go to Sylvia Tietjens in sure faith that she would kill it: emotion, hope, ideal kill it quick and sure. But if she was wanted anywhere, there she'd be! Of good stock, of course: on both sides! But positively, she and Sylvia were the only two human beings he had met for years whom he could respect: the one for sheer efficiency in killing the other for having the constructive desire and knowing how to set about it. Upon my soul!' Tietjens said to himself, 'that girl down there is the only intelligent living soul I've met for years.' A little pronounced in manner sometimes faulty in reasoning naturally, but quite intelligent, with a touch of wrong accent now and then. ![]()
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