The Dance and the Railroad (Masterplots II: Drama, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: David Henry Hwang
- First Published: 1983
- Type of Plot: History
- Time of Work: 1867
- Setting: California’s Sierra Nevada range
- Principal Characters: Lone, Ma
- Genres: Social realism, Satire, Drama, Comedy, History play
- Subjects: West, U.S., Singing or singers, Migrant labor, Chinese Americans, Railroads, Strikes or lockouts, Opera, operas, or operettas
- Locales: California
The Play
The Dance and the Railroad is based on a historical incident in which Chinese railway workers went on strike to protest unfair conditions while helping construct the transcontinental railroad. In five numbered scenes the play depicts the evolving relationship of two young Chinese workers through the last seven days of the strike.
In scene 1, eighteen-year-old Ma arrives on the mountaintop to warn twenty-year-old Lone that other Chinese workers (90 percent of the Central Pacific Railroad’s builders were Chinese) disapprove of his antisocial behavior in...
[The entire page is 2310 words long]
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