A Rat’s Mass (Masterplots II: African American Literature Series)
At a glance:
- Author: Adrienne Kennedy
- First Published: 1968
- Type of Work: Play
- Type of Plot: Surrealistic
- Time of Work: Unspecified
- Setting: The rat’s house
- Principal Characters: Brother Rat, Sister Rat, Rosemary, Jesus, Joseph, Mary, Two Wise Men, A Shepherd
- Genres: Drama
- Subjects: African Americans
- Locales: United States
The Play
A Rat’s Mass is a one-act play that poetically combines a wealth of linguistic and theatrical images. The brevity of the piece intensifies its already jarring style of presentation, which features characters who are part human and part animal, superficially nonsensical dialogue, and highly charged spectacle and sound effects. The style of this play is surrealistic, expressionistic, and absurdist; the plot of the play should not, therefore, be regarded as a credible or realistic story, nor should readers attempt to make literal sense of the dialogue or visual...
[The entire page is 2614 words long]
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