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Whose “Histree”? Saint Mines

Whose “Histree”? Saint Mines ART & PERFORMANCE NOTES The Builders Association, stage view of Elements of Oz. Photo: Gennadi Novash. Courtesy Peak Performances at Montclair State University. Whose “Histree”? Saint Mines Shane Breaux The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World aka The Negro Book of the Dead, a play by Suzan-Lori Parks, directed by Lileana BlainCruz, Signature Theatre, New York, October 28–December 18, 2016. here were so many signs, images, and even jokes running throughout this devastating, near-perfect production of one of Suzan-Lori Parks’s earliest plays that it lingered in my mind long after I saw the performance. The play itself covers familiar ground for Parks (the cyclical nature of history, language, racial representation), but unlike her more recent narrative-driven plays (such as Father Comes Home from the Wars and The Red Letter Plays, which are also being revived by the Signature Theatre next season), Death of the Last Black Man is more like a jazz ensemble riffing upon a multitude of misconceived cultural signifiers about black people throughout history. Instead of passing motifs among various musical instruments, the play generates and repeats stereotypes that themselves function as motifs, passing them among the characters through Parks’s repetitions http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art MIT Press

Whose “Histree”? Saint Mines

PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art , Volume 39 (2) – May 1, 2017

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Publisher
MIT Press
Copyright
© 2017 Performing Arts Journal, Inc.
Subject
Art & Performance Notes
ISSN
1520-281X
eISSN
1537-9477
DOI
10.1162/PAJJ_a_00364
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

ART & PERFORMANCE NOTES The Builders Association, stage view of Elements of Oz. Photo: Gennadi Novash. Courtesy Peak Performances at Montclair State University. Whose “Histree”? Saint Mines Shane Breaux The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World aka The Negro Book of the Dead, a play by Suzan-Lori Parks, directed by Lileana BlainCruz, Signature Theatre, New York, October 28–December 18, 2016. here were so many signs, images, and even jokes running throughout this devastating, near-perfect production of one of Suzan-Lori Parks’s earliest plays that it lingered in my mind long after I saw the performance. The play itself covers familiar ground for Parks (the cyclical nature of history, language, racial representation), but unlike her more recent narrative-driven plays (such as Father Comes Home from the Wars and The Red Letter Plays, which are also being revived by the Signature Theatre next season), Death of the Last Black Man is more like a jazz ensemble riffing upon a multitude of misconceived cultural signifiers about black people throughout history. Instead of passing motifs among various musical instruments, the play generates and repeats stereotypes that themselves function as motifs, passing them among the characters through Parks’s repetitions

Journal

PAJ: A Journal of Performance and ArtMIT Press

Published: May 1, 2017

There are no references for this article.