Dutchman: A classic drama
© Walter Benefield
I hesitate to call this a review not having seen the play but only reading the play. Instead, I consider this a personal commentary on a classic drama.
Amiri Baraka is a poet, playwright, and founder of BARTS, Black Repertory Theatre School and pioneer of the Black Arts and Black Nationalist Movements. The “Dutchman” by Leroi Jones (also known as Amiri Imamu Baraka) opened Off-Broadway in New York City on 24 March 1964 and received the Obie award, it remains his signature play.
The play opens in a moving subway car in which a young Negro man, Clay is seated. As he travels to a party, he meets an attractive white woman, Lula. The two talk about what at first seems like abstract flirtatious chitchat, during the train ride. However, the conversation reveals the temptress nature of Lula.
“Lula. Eating apples together is always the first step. Or walking up inhabited Seventh Avenue in the twenties on weekends.”
The apple should have been the first clue of Lula’s intentions, the whole forbidden fruit idea and all. The exchange also dealt with the then as now controversial topic of race relations. Lula’s generalization and stereotyping of race relations comes early in the play.
“Lula. I told you I didn’t know anything about you... you’re a well-known type.”
Lula dictates and directs the flow of activity and conversation throughout the first half of the play. Only after Clay expresses a vague sexual interest in Lula does she fall mute and cynical.
“Lula. Everything you say is wrong [mock smile] That’s what makes you so attractive. Ha. In that funnybook jacket with all the buttons.”
Lula goes on a barrage accusing clay of being unconcerned with people and history. In one exchange, Lula ask Clay who he thought he was in college. Clay the poet says he thought of himself as Baudelaire referring to Charles Baudelaire, French poet and critic, known for his dark poetry and refusal to censor his poetic theme and symbolism. This admission by Clay the character is but one autobiographical similarity to Amiri Baraka, the playwright.
As a poet, playwright and activist Amiri Baraka has been described as “seeking to educate white society to the feelings and situations of the collective Black man.” Born Leroi Everett Jones, an Air Force veteran, Jones first marriage to a white woman failed. He then remarried and changed his name to Amiri Baraka. Once a pioneer of the Black Nationalist movement turned Marxist, Baraka has long been a complex figure in literature and activism.
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