[In the following excerpt, Brown demonstrates Baraka's poignant use of dramatic form and his careful integration of plot, character, and setting. Brown also comments on Baraka 's manipulation of such traditional forms as the morality play to criticize conventional social structures, values, and beliefs.]

The Early Plays

"The Baptism," first produced in 1964, is a useful introduction to Baraka's drama because it includes features that dominate the earlier plays and others mat foreshadow subsequent developments in Baraka's dramatic art. Set in a church, the play is actually a modern morality drama about a young boy who is accused by an old woman of masturbating while pretending to pray. As the action unfolds it centers on a growing contest for the soul—and body—of the boy. The contest pits the old woman and the minister of the church against a homosexual who is contemptuous of his opponents' hypocrisy toward sex and who expresses a frank need for love and for an honest sexuality. The minister and the old woman are revolting not simply because they are puritanical but because their puritanism is a thin disguise for sexual desires (for the boy in this case) that they are unable to express frankly. As the contest becomes violent they strike the homosexual to the ground and in turn they are cut down by the boy who now claims to be the Son of God. At this point the play ends abruptly: the boy is carried off by a motorcyclist who is supposed to be a "messenger" of the boy's father.

As a morality play centered on a moral struggle between love and puritanism "The Baptism" exploits an old dramatic tradition with special ironic effects. The usual conflict between good and evil in the morality play tradition of Christian culture appears here with significant modifications. The forces of evil are now associated with the Christian Church itself; love and charity are embodied by the homosexual, a conventional figure of moral and sexual "perversion." And given the ambiguous figure of the boy himself (child figure and Christ archetype) then the moral struggle takes on an ironically twofold meaning: it is traditional insofar as it involves a contest for the soul of the human individual; and it is antitraditional in that Christianity is no longer an unquestioned symbol of goodness but is actually associated with evil. Indeed the most crucial outcome of the play's moral conflict is the degree to which Christianity emerges as an inherently corrupting tradition which makes it impossible for the individual to experience love and sexuality to the fullest, except on nonconformist or rebellious terms. Social traditions in the play are inherently destructive because they sanction a pervasive lovelessness and a neurotic fear of sex and feeling. The church is the main target in this regard because it is the institution which embodies these traditions.

The morality design of the play is, therefore, basically ironic in conception. Baraka recalls the old morality traditions of early Christian drama in order to attack those traditions and the Christian ethic that they espoused. And insofar as "The Baptism" subverts Christian morality and art, it anticipates the use of the morality play format in Baraka's black nationalist, anti-Western drama. For in those later plays, as we shall see, political conflicts take on the form of moral contests in which a Western dramatic tradition (the morality play) becomes a device for rejecting the West itself. Moreover, this subversive, antitraditionalist use of tradition is reflected in the play's title. The ritual of baptism is no longer an initiation into the established conventions of religious belief and social morality. It has now become a ritual of exposure and subversion, one directed against the conventions themselves.

Similarly the ritual of religious sacrifice acquires a new significance in the play. The minister and the old woman insist mat the boy must be "sacrificed" in order to atone for his sexual "sin." But their demand is really a hypocritical evasion. The choice of the boy as sacrificial victim allows them to evade the consequences of their destructive attitudes towards sexuality. It enables them to divert attention from the repressed sexual longings that are so manifest in their "moral" rhetoric—especially in the old woman's suggestively detailed account of the boy's sin: "You spilled your seed while pretending to talk to God. I saw you. That quick short stroke. And it was so soft before, and you made it grow in your hand. I watched it stiffen, and your lips move and those short hard moves with it straining in your fingers for flesh. … Your wet stickly hand. I watched you smell it."

In effect the planned sacrifice allows them to avoid the sinfulness of their own hypocrisy and the emotional destructiveness of their puritanism by treating "sinfulness" as a problem that can be solved through the ritual sacrifice—of another. Indeed the very idea of ritual, whether of baptism or sacrifice, is associated in the play with elaborate systems of hypocrisy and self-evasion. Hence Baraka's adaptation of such rituals for the form of his play amounts to the ironic use of ritual as a form of protest and rebellion—against established rituals (systems) and their associated social values. And here too "The Baptism" anticipates Baraka's black nationalist drama where the idea of ritual and the forms of established ritual are associated with the culture that is being rejected by the play.

Both as morality play and as ritual drama "The Baptism" is distinguished by a marked emphasis on the idea of role playing. The characters have no names as such. They are presented as types (old woman, minister, homosexual, boy and messenger); and as such they are social roles reflecting the cultural values that are central to the play's themes. In this instance each character's personality reflects a theatrical self-consciousness about her or his role: the minister is the sanctimonious voice of Christianity; the old woman energetically acts out her identity as the symbol of female chastity; the homosexual deliberately exaggerates his role as a "queen" in order to emphasize his calculated contempt for social convention; and the boy moves self-consciously from being the familiar symbol of childhood innocence to being a Christ-child.

On the whole this pointed presentation of characters as roles has the effect of emphasizing the degree to which the conventions and values attacked in the play have encouraged individuals to assume roles mat reflect social norms instead of giving free play to honest feeling. In this sense the stereotypical nature of such roles is a form of social realism, for it underscores the limiting and deforming effects of established traditions on the human personality. This, too, explains the significance of self-conscious role playing in the other plays. In each instance the issue of roles reflects the dramatist's careful integration of his theme with his sense of dramatic art: the role playing of dramatic theater is also a symptom of social reality.

Altogether, then, "The Baptism " is an impressive example of Baraka's early ability to synthesize dramatic form and theme. And this synthesis is linked with the play's major theme—the failure of love in contemporary society. The very issue of forms, roles, and rituals is crucial in the play because they have become empty shells in the absence of any real feeling. Consequently moral statements and declarations of love are invariably hypocritical, particularly when they are made by self-consciously traditional figures. The role of the homosexual is therefore particularly ironic in this regard: the alleged pervert emerges as the healthiest of the lot because he frankly expresses his commitment to love and because he refuses to accept the puritan antithesis between flesh and spirit. He is the subversive outsider, pitted against the minister who is the loveless, and unlovable, apostle of Christian "love" and "charity." The homosexual's candor about love and sex (he does not disguise his erotic interest in the boy) amounts to a virtue. On the other hand the minister and the old woman attempt to disguise their love for the boy with the rhetoric of puritan morality. In so doing they corrupt their sexual response to the boy. Their puritanism has transformed it into mere prurience. As in Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note puritan hypocrisy has turned love into an evil thing. This kind of transformation is also the burden of the later, black nationalist plays where white racism and black self-hatred are linked to the general fear of love in society. It also dominates the theme of an early work like "The Toilet," where, as in "The Baptism," the general failure of love is thrown into sharp relief by the role of the homosexual as subversive outsider.

Originally produced in 1964, "The Toilet" is set in an urban high school toilet. The plot is rudimentary. Ray Foots leads a group of boys in crude horseplay which rapidly culminates in violence. The victim of the violence is Karolis, a sensitive boy who is accused of having written a love letter to Foots. Karolis surprises Foots by refusing to deny the accusation and by insisting on fighting him. Discomfited by Karolis's honesty and belligerence Foots tries to avoid the fight on the ground that Karolis has already been badly beaten by members of the gang. But Karolis persists, beats Foots, who has to be rescued by the other boys, and is battered into unconsciousness by the gang. Karolis is left lying on the toilet floor, but after a brief interval Foots sneaks back in tears to cradle Karolis's head in his arms.

The toilet setting remains throughout the play as its dominant symbol. Its appearance and smells suggest the ugliness and fifth that Baraka attributes to his characters' social and moral milieu. In turn this vision of America as toilet defines the personalities of the characters themselves. The choice of toilet as setting shrewdly duplicates the usual adolescent preference for the toilet as the stage for a certain kind of brutish bravado or for covert rebelliousness. In individual terms the filth and stench represent the unsavory personalities of Foots and his gang. Finally the privacy of the toilet lends itself to the theme of repression—the repression of love—which runs throughout the play.

The moral corruption that is suggested by the toilet setting is associated here with a kind of perverted masculinity. Foots and his gang represent a cult of manhood which takes the form of mere brutishness. This brutishness is reflected in the inane but violent dialogue and by an intense, neurotic need to dominate others in verbal jousting or in improvised forms of boxing and basketball. In turn this corrupted maleness is attributed to the failure of love in Foots's world. As in "The Baptism" the theme of moral and emotional corruption is heightened by a sense of irony. In this instance the irony is centered on the name "Love" borne by a member of Foots's gang. And as in "The Baptism" this irony is intensified by the fact that it is the alleged pervert, the homosexual, who emerges as the most humane of these young males going through the traditional rites of passage into manhood.

Karolis's humanism and heroism consist of the fact that he has the kind of courage which enables him to express his love in the incriminating letter and to affirm that love in the face of hostility. Ironically, the sleazy privacy of the toilet has become the setting for a certain kind of public declaration or self-revelation, one that strikes at the guilty secrecy with which society perceives love and with which Foots eventually responds to love. By a similar token the conventionally "masculine" hero, Foots, emerges as an antihero: he is contemptible in his fearful need to deny and punish Karolis's love, and is pathetic, at best, in that final moment of his belated, and secret, demonstration of love.

Finally, that secrecy ends the play on a note of unequivocal realism. It confirms the continuation of these prevailing social codes which encourage a guilty secrecy about sex and emotional experience. The toilet setting therefore remains crucially significant to the very end. It defines the filthiness that results from the denial of feeling in Foots and his kind. Foots's declaration of love at the end is actually corrupted by the social values which dictate secrecy; and the toilet symbolizes the persistent corruptions which result from those values. The play's setting is therefore a dynamic force in the action of the play and in the experience of the characters. And on this basis it reflects a rather impressive grasp of theater as the total integration of setting, action and character.

"Dutchman," first produced and published in 1964, also reflects a rather self-conscious use of setting. Here the setting is a subway, "heaped," according to the playwright, "ih modern myth." The subway is less intimately involved in the personalities and action of the play than is the toilet in "The Toilet." In "Dutchman" the setting owes its significance to the manner in which it evokes mythic materials that are, in turn, interwoven with the play's themes and action. The winner of the Obie award for the best off-Broadway production of 1964, "Dutchman" has perhaps been the most widely discussed of Baraka's plays; and this popularity is attributable, in part, to the interest of critics in the role of myth in the play.

In examining "Dutchman" as mythic drama it is important to take seriously Baraka's description of the setting as one that is "heaped" in myths. Any approach that singles out one mythic theme will miss the degree to which the play's structure depends in part on the interweaving of several myths. The underground setting recalls the holds of the slave ships, and this image is reinforced by the title itself: the first African slaves were reportedly brought to the New World by Dutch slave traders. The image of slavery is further reinforced by the possibility that the underground setting refers to the famous "underground railway" which assisted runaway slaves on their way from the South to the North. The Dutch reference may also be linked with the legend of the Flying Dutchman—the story of a ship doomed to sail the seas forever without hope of gaining land. This ship is also supposed to be a slave-trading vessel. In turn the theme of retribution in the legend of the Flying Dutchman links the idea of a curse with the history of slavery. Slavery insured the loss of American innocence quite early in American history. That is, it undermined the American's claim to some special kind of functional idealism. And here the complex formation of images and myths include biblical myth, for like the descendants of Adam and Eve after the biblical fall, contemporary Americans must cope with the consequences of a prior curse—in this instance the curse of slavery.

Finally, Adam and Eve have their counterparts in the play. The black Clay (Adam) and the white Lula (Eve) are both linked by America's fearful fascination with the sexual juxtaposition of the black man and the white woman. Clay is the black American Adam, tempted by the forbidden fruit of Lula's white sexuality. On her side, Lula's sexual fascination with his blackness is interwoven with her racial condescension toward him. The play's plot revolves around the ethnosexual implications of Baraka's handling of myths. As a white American Lula is both the forbidden sexual fruit and the Flying Dutchman, compelled by the curse of racism and historical slavery, to engage in a series of repetitive actions that reflect the recurrent guilt, fascination, and hatred with which whites view blacks in the society. Hence she boards the subway train, engages Clay in conversation (on race and sex), then stabs him to death when his initial attraction changes to scornful resentment at her racial condescension. And after Clay's body has been removed she prepares to engage another young black man who has just boarded the train.

The total effect of the play's mythic structure is twofold. It creates the impression of continuity in the issues with which the myths are associated—racial oppression, destructive sexual attitudes, and an emotionally paralyzing puritanism. But the structure also heightens our awareness of the characters as social types. Notwithstanding Baraka's well-known disclaimer [in Home: Social Essays, 1966] Lula and Clay are not simply unique individuals. They are clearly archetypal figures representing social traditions (racial and sexual) and exemplifying the behavior that results from those traditions. Lula, for example, is at pains to emphasize that she is a type; and she feels old because as a type she represents generations of attitudes. She also perceives Clay as a type whose personality seems quite open to her because he belongs to a well-known pattern.

Lula and Clay are both types in this sense. And at the beginning of the play they are clearly presented, on the basis of their interaction, as racial and sexual stereotypes—Lula the white goddess and white liberal, and Clay the naively middle-class black stud. This stereotypical dimension is a calculated aspect rather than mere defect of the play. It arises from the perception and behavior of the characters who have chosen to limit their humanity within the confines of racial and sexual stereotypes that have been molded by social conventions. They are deliberately acting out predetermined roles instead of attempting to comprehend and communicate with each other's humanity. The built-in element of theater operates at a conscious level in the play. Hence Lula elaborates upon her self-description as a type by remarking that she is an actress, and Clay suggests that their encounter has proceeded as if it had been written as a script. As in "The Baptism" role playing is not simply a theatrical device; it is also deliberately chosen pattern of social behavior. The protagonists' choice of stereotypical roles is a symptom of their limitations; and in turn, the roles which they choose are intrinsic to the dramatic structure of the play itself.

Moreover they are presented and judged on their acceptance of these roles, and on their ability to look beyond the pretence in their own roles and in the roles of the other. Lula is very conscious of her role as the white goddess of America's racial mythology and chooses to revel in the destructiveness of that role. By a similar token she is incapable of dealing with Clay when he ceases to be an Uncle Tom and a black stud. Her white indifference to the humanity of blacks and to the essence of their culture is epitomized by her shallow interpretation of the blues as mere "belly-rub" music. On his side Clay fails initially, insofar as he accepts Lula's stereotypical attitudes and insofar as he caters to those attitudes by being the black stud and Uncle Tom. This failure proves fatal in the long run because it allows Lula to establish the kind of interaction that leads to his death: having subordinated himself to her sexual fantasies and her liberal condescension, he inevitably drives her to destructive anger by asserting his humanity.

However, Clay's failure is not complete. He gains a limited triumph in that very assertion of humanity which makes his death inevitable. At first he shifts from the bland, selfeffacing acquiescence of the Uncle Tom to the covert hostility which allows him to agree, sarcastically, when Lula assumes that black history and black music evolved out of big happy plantations in the slave-holding South. This covert hostility is soon replaced by open resentment. He castigates Lula's one-dimensional image of blacks and mocks her inability to realize that in many instances the blacks who seem to conform with this image are really rejecting her by subversively acting out her fantasies. They are playing roles based on "lies."

Clay's own interpretation of the blues reflects his own growth from mere role playing to a complex rebel: the blues are not mere "belly-rub" music but the expression of complex experiences ranging from joy and sorrow to despair and rage. As Clay interprets the blues he himself grows into a complex humanity and away from the racial and sexual perspectives of Lula and her "type." In the process we discover in his character the same kind of rebelliousness that he attributes to the blues tradition. Lula destroys Clay the rebel because his rebellion threatens her by destroying the stereotypes and myths that are essential to her own sexual and racial roles.

Yet Clay also fails in the end because, although his rebellious perspectives are substantial enough, his identity as a rebel is incomplete. Even as he expounds on the power and integrity of black music, Clay unfavorably compares himself with the musician as ethnic artist. Clay himself is a poet whose art lacks, in his opinion, the ethnic integrity of black, grass-roots forms like the blues: as a derivative of Western literature his own writings are a "kind of bastard literature," and his poetry is an escape from direct rebellious action. His words as poet have become a contemptible substitute for the act: "Safe with my words, and no deaths, and clean, hard thoughts, urging me to new conquests."

Clay's bitter self-analysis is based on two familiar and recurrent themes in Baraka's work. As a black writer and intellectual Clay is caught up in a cultural conflict which paralyzes him, limiting his capacity for rebellious action, despite his intellectual awareness of the need for rebellion. On the one hand he is drawn to Lula's ethnocentric white culture, but on the other hand he responds to the black ethnicity represented by the blues. His death, therefore, represents the self-destructive consequences of this kind of moral and intellectual paralysis. Second, Clay's ineffectuality as rebel stems in part from the fact that his poetic art is self-contained rather than actively committed to social action. His is literary art for art's sake. He suffers from a fascination with words for their own sake. As Clay himself admits, blacks "don't need all those words." On this basis it is easy to see the close connections between the theme of rebellion in "Dutchman" and the advocacy of change in the more explicitly revolutionary plays of a later period. Given Clay's limitations, the issues of rebellion and change are curtailed in this play. Here the question is not one of advocating change as such. This is to come in the later plays. In "Dutchman" we are offered an analysis of those things which make rebellion and change little more than imagined possibilities in the lives of Clay and his "type," but which will become urgent options when the idea of rebellion combines word and act.

Despite its setting—a revolutionary race war—"The Slave" is closer to "Dutchman" than to the later revolutionary plays in that here, too, we have a work that analyzes the potential rebel. The subject of analysis in this case is Walker Vessels, the leader of the blacks in the race war. The action centers on his encounter with his former wife, Grace Easley, and her present husband, Bradford (both white), when he returns to Grace's home at the height of the fighting. It is a violent encounter that is marked by racial recriminations on both sides, and the sounds of the race war outside provide the background for this personal conflict. The confrontation ends with the house collapsing under shell fire. Grace dies just after realizing that her two children by Walker are dead, either as the result of Walker's war or directly by his hands.

It is easy enough to see the play, on its literal level, simply as another black militant fantasy of racial revenge. But such an approach does not really do justice to the more complex and interesting features of the work. Here, as in "Dutchman," the play's conflicts center on the tensions within the black protagonist. Although the play's action emphasizes the desirability of radical change, it is actually more significant as an extended analysis of those attitudes which stimulate or retard the capacity for radical ethnic change within the black psyche. In this regard we should view Grace and Bradford not simply as representatives of the white world around Walker but also as embodiments of his white, Western perspectives, those perspectives which inhibit his racial pride by encouraging self-hatred. As a poet, for example, Walker feels that his art has been compromised by a certain dependency on the Western tradition. Hence the white Easley is expected to recognize Walker's poetry and literary tastes because they both share the same intellectuality. Walker hates Easley as the white enemy outside, but he loathes and fears him as the symbol of the "whiteness" within himself.

Grace is comparable with Bradford Easley in this respect. She is the image of that white femininity that has historically attracted a certain kind of self-hating black male. Thus Walker's previous marriage to her represents a self-destructive obsession. It is an obsession that has formed the racial triangle of black man, white woman, and white man—even in Shakespeare. As Walker muses aloud to his two antagonists, "Remember when I used to play a second-rate Othello? … You remember that, don't you, Professor NoDick? You remember when I used to walk around wondering what that fair sister was thinking? … I was Othello … Grace there was Desdemona … and you were Iago."

In short, the black imitation of whites is represented by the Iago-Easley figure of teachery—teachery to one's racial identity. And the self-destruction that is inherent in that treachery is embodied by the half-man (Professor NoDick) whose alleged impotence represents Walker's crippled humanity as a black. In reviling Grace and man-handling Easley during their confrontation Walker tries to exorcise his crippling white self-perception. The contrast in the play between the strong, masterful black Walker and the weak white Easley has little to do with Baraka's alleged "endorsement of the stereotype of Negro sexuality" [Black Music, 1968]. It represents, instead, an internal conflict—within Walker—between an assertive racial integrity and the stunted awareness that results from the denial of one's black identity.

Easley, then, personifies the cultural values and racial attitudes that compromise Walker's role as revolutionary. This point is implicit in the title. Having progressed from the status of a slave in the prologue (where he addresses the audience in the guise of a field slave), Walker is going through a transitional stage in which he now recognizes his continuing intellectual serfdom as it is incarnated in Easley, his cultural alter ego. The "race war" of the plot is, therefore, less important as a literal happening than it is significant as an allegorical background for the conflicts within Walker. Indeed the manner in which Baraka presents Walker at the beginning and conclusion of the play emphasizes the allegorical nature of the race war. The physical violence and the emotional confrontations in the play are actually a projection of Walker's subjective experience as a split personality. And in keeping with that subjective context, these events assume a dreamlike form if they are viewed in relation to the words of Walker Vessels when he appears in the prologue as an old field slave: "We know, even before these shapes are realized, that these worlds, these depths or heights we fly to smoothly, as in a dream, or slighter, when we stare dumbly into space, leaning our eyes just behind a last quick moving bird, then sometimes the place and twist of what we are will push and sting, and what the crust of our stance has become will ring in our ears and shatter that piece of our eyes that is never closed."

Walker is actually preparing his audience for a "dream," a self-revealing vision that will disturb and awaken. And since this is to be a form of self-revelation then it will shatter that apathy ("stupid longing not to know") which characterizes the slave mentality. The shattering of this apathy can create "killers" (real revolutionaries) or "foot-dragging celebrities," who exploit their "militant" image for personal gain. Applied to the events that follow the prologue Walker's remarks imply that the race war incidents and the confrontation with Grace and Bradford Easley are the elements of a vision that reveals Walker's divided ethnic consciousness to himself and to the audience. That consciousness includes a capacity for revolution, for the radical reshaping of his ethnic perception.

In this connection, Walker's physical relationship with the main action of the play strongly suggests that the latter is a kind of dream sequence: he is an old man in the prologue, and at the end of the introductory speech he "assumes the position he will have when the play starts." If this physical transformation (from old field slave to Walker Vessels) suggests that there is a "fading in" to the main-action dream sequence, then the physical change at the end of the play is equally suggestive: as Walker the rebel leader stumbles out, he becomes "the old man at the beginning of the play"—signifying the "fading out" of the dream.

All of this brings up the question of Walker's actual identity. He himself points to his ambiguity in the prologue: "I am much older than I look … or maybe much younger. Whatever I am or seem … to you, then let that rest. But figure, still, that you might not be right." He is warning against a literal approach to his character, for he is really an archetype of the black experience. He is therefore both older and younger than he looks because he incorporates the past and the present; and his dream opens up future possibilities. The "old" field-slave personality is the key to this archetypal role. That role is ambiguous. In one sense his servile status symbolizes the subjection to white images and cultural values. But in another sense his identity as a field slave points up rebellious potential. In this latter regard he recalls Malcolm X's interpretation of the field slave's image in black history. Unlike the "house Negro" who loved the white slave-master, the "field Negroes" hated the master and were always eager to rebel or run away from slavery.

Malcolm X's field Negro and Baraka's field slave are the same archetype. He is characterized by a predisposition toward rebellion. And as such an archetype Walker represents both past and present ("older" and "younger") militancy. To return to the words of the prologue Walker's ideas involve the rediscovery of a long history of black militancy and resistance: "Old, old blues people moaning in their sleep, singing, man, oh, nigger, nigger, you still here, as hard as nails, and takin' no shit from nobody." Walker's consciousness of black dreams of rebellion and his interest in the blues as a tradition of resistance confirm his own rebellious predisposition. And in turn that predis-position lends itself to dreams of revolution—the kind of dream that constitutes the main action of the play.

Walker's capacity to dream of revolution in specific terms and his growing sense of commitment take him beyond Clay's rather muddled impulses in "Dutchman." But in general Walker is comparable with Clay in that he too suffers from a destructive split-consciousness. As in Clay's case this division stems from the unresolved tensions between his identity as a militant black and his continuing involvement with (white) cultural norms that inhibit his militant potential. And like Clay, Walker is hamstrung by a frustrating dichotomy between word and action. Hence his failure as a poet is not only caused by a self-hating imitation of white models. His poetry has also failed because it exists apart from his dreams of revolutionary change. The (literary) word and (revolutionary) action remain separate in his character. Hence whether it is considered as a literal event or, more interestingly as Walker's fantasy, the race war remains an inchoate happening rather than a concrete action informed by a shaping revolutionary imagination.

Black Revolutionary Drama

Baraka's involvement in the black nationalist movement stimulates a significant shift in his drama. In his black revolutionary plays theater is no longer a process of reen-acting or analyzing tensions, or conflicts, between the revolutionary idea or word and the political act. It attempts, instead, to be an example of the dramatic art as political action. That is, theater itself is a political activity by virtue of the fact that the play has become a form of political advocacy. But although the theater of political advocacy would seem to fulfill Baraka's ideological ideals—as black aesthetician and later as scientific socialist—the plays of this period seldom meet the criteria which he himself admires in Maoist aesthetics. Many of the plays are ideologically "correct," from Baraka's black nationalist viewpoint, but they seldom approximate that "highest possible perfection of artistic form" which Baraka is later to demand of political art.

A basic problem, one that is seldom resolved in this period, is that Baraka finds it difficult to use drama for sociopolitical purposes while maintaining convincing dramatic forms. Consequently, too, many of the plays are little more than the kind of bombast that appears in the preface to his Four Black Revolutionary Plays: "We are building publishing houses, and newspapers, and armies, and factories / we will change the world before your eyes."

A. Short Pieces

Many of the plays of this period are little more than agit prop. As we have already noted, several of these remain unpublished; and on the basis of these shorter pieces it appears that Baraka is not often interested in the play's dramatic design. At other times potentially interesting dramatic forms (street theater and ritual drama, for example) lack thematic substance. Some works are mainly polemics against white racism. "Home on the Range" (1968), for example, depicts members of a white suburban family through the eyes of a black burglar. They appear as a collection of dim-wits who talk gibberish. "The Death of Malcolm X" (1969) dramatizes the events leading up to Malcolm X's assassination as a white conspiracy involving brainwashed blacks. But the more interesting plays are less concerned with white society as such and are more involved with examining the black experience itself from a black nationalist point of view.

"Experimental Death Unit #1" (1965) belongs to this latter group. It depicts a street scene during an apparent black revolt. A patrol of black soldiers encounters a black prostitute and her two white customers and kills all three. The symbolism is obvious enough. Prostitution represents the broader historical experience in which blacks barter their humanity in order to be accepted or merely tolerated by white society (Four Black Revolutionary Plays).

The title of "Arm Yourself or Harm Yourself (1967) sums up the simple message: blacks who hesitate to arm themselves against violent whites (particularly the police) are choosing suicide. The suicidal nature of nonviolence is, therefore, emphasized by the death of three brothers at the hands of the police—as they stand on the street debating the merits of armed militancy versus nonviolence.

Police (1968) is partly based on pantomime. It centers on the dilemma of a black police officer whose job places him in the role of killing blacks on behalf of whites. He is hated by those whites, and he is despised by the blacks who eventually drive him to suicide during a riot. The police officer's life symbolizes the split loyalties which afflict many blacks. His death becomes the black community's symbolic ritual of expunging self-hatred and racial treachery. Significantly, the self-hatred that destroys the police officer is associated with older blacks. The young blacks are the revolutionaries. They drive the police officer to suicide, and at the end of the play they promise to return in order to take care of "some heavy business." The events of the play spark the promise of fundamental changes that are associated with a new (young) consciousness.

Black youth also spearhead the revolution in Junkies Are Full of SHHH… (1971). Here Damu and Chuma set out to rid the community (Newark) of drug pushers. In the process they kill the whites who control the drug traffic, and Bigtime, the principal black drug pusher. The play concludes with Bigtime's body being pulled out to be displayed on the street as a message to the community.

These plays are all linked by the fact that they are street theater. Their setting is primarily or exclusively the streets of black neighborhoods. Their themes are rooted in the "street" experience (prostitution, police actions, rioting, and drug traffic). And they are obviously aimed at those people whose lives are influenced by these street experiences. Moreover, as the rather grisly ending of Junkies demonstrates, street theater of this kind treats the street as a kind of medium, a communications device that may be used destructively (by junkies) or constructively (by young revolutionaries spreading their message). Consequently, the very idea of street theater exploits the familiar image of the street itself as a living dramatic environment, an environment that offers its audience a variety of messages. The play's setting defines its scope and action.

In addition to the theater of the street, Baraka also produced a number of other short pieces which are really based on ritualistic pantomime, dance, and chant. These are the plays of the later black nationalist period in which the emphasis is on the celebration of blackness rather than on exorcising white racism or black self-hatred. In this vein Bloodrites (1971) is a ritual dance. It features groups of blacks dancing around (white) devil figures and chanting black power slogans in Swahili. The devils wither away in exhaustion while the blacks gain increasing strength from their dance and chants. Black Power Chant (1972) is precisely what its title signifies: a group of dancers chant black power slogans as they move about on the stage. Ba-Ra-Ka, too, is based on song, dance, and political slogans.

On the basis of theme these plays are undistinguished. They never move beyond the obvious. The really interesting feature of such plays lies in their design and impact as spectacle. Dance (act) and chant (word) are integrated within highly stylized forms of ritual. And despite the intellectual thinness of these works they represent Baraka's continuing interest in ritual as drama, an interest that has obviously grown from the satiric subversiveness of "The Baptism" to the use of ritual as a legitimate medium in its own right. Here it is the medium of celebration, drawing upon the rhetoric of black power slogans, as well as the rhythms of black dance and music. In the process this kind of theater is intrinsically bound up with the experience that it celebrates: it is a an expression of black power—a symptom of the movement rather than simply an enactment of it.

B. The Longer Plays

Despite their obvious flaws Baraka's short plays are generally more interesting than most of his black nationalist dramas. These shorter works provide some direct clues to Baraka's dramatic imagination in terms of street theater, ritual drama, and theater as a committed art form. And as such they offer the audience a relatively more stimulating experience of theater than much of what Baraka has produced since the first major plays. The longer black nationalist pieces, however, reflect no significant innovations in Baraka's dramatic writing, although their themes are more ambitious than those of the shorter works.

Black Mass (1966), a science fantasy in the Frankenstein tradition, is typical of the limited achievement of the longer plays. As the title indicates, this is another example of Baraka's ritual drama. In this case the ritual is based on the religious myth, "Yacub's History," in the Nation of Islam (previously known as the Black Muslims). Here the idea and function of ritual are closer to the satiric themes of "The Baptism" than they are to the themes of celebration in the short black nationalist plays. The title is there-fore ironic: it confirms the evil connotations of black mass (black magic) and black identity in white, Christian culture; but at the same time it defines evil on an antiChristian, antiwhite basis. Hence the evil in the play is really caused by a black scientist, Jacoub, who creates the first white being, a creature that quickly turns out to be a monster. The beast corrupts and destroys blacks—including Jacoub himself—by tainting them with its whiteness.

The beast represents Jacoub's moral bankruptcy and his racial self-betrayal. In creating the beast Jacoub panders to what the black nationalist perceives as a sterile need to create for the sake of creation. Jacoub does not envisage his creation in any functional sense. And on this basis his scientific talent belongs to that tradition of a narrow, self-serving rationalism which Baraka repeatedly attacks in his writings. But Jacoub's scientific narrowness is not only suspect on this moral basis. It is also reprehensible be-cause it reflects his racial self-hatred. Creating for the sake of creating, whether in art or in science, is a "white" Western value system, and in catering to such a value system Jacoub betrays his racial and cultural tradition—a functional tradition, as defined in black nationalist terms. Thus the cries of the white beast ("White! … White! … Me … Me …" reflect Jacoub's self-destructiveness. Although the cries express the racist's megalomania in one sense, they also express that racial self-deprecation which has historically eroded black pride and cultural values. As Jacoub's fellow scientists warn him, his undertaking negates human feeling and decency and represents "the emptiness of godlessness," because it involves the betrayal of his ethnic and moral integrity.

The moral and ethnic implications of Jacoub's personality are also linked with Baraka's perception of time and history. Jacoub's invention involves the "discovery" of time; but, as his colleagues protest, time is merely a demon that turns human beings into "running animals." Jacoub's obsession with time is therefore suspect because it implies the subordination of the human personality to the rigid categories (exemplified here by time) of a narrow, rationalistic view of experience. And in ethnic terms this obsession is another symptom of Jacoub's racial self-hatred: his rationalism is clearly identical to that scientifically defined concept of time and history which Baraka repeatedly attributes to white, Western culture, and which associates "progress" and the very idea of human "development" with clock time.

Finally, the play contrasts Jacoub's rationalism with a more integrated and complex perception of science—science as complete knowledge encompassing reason, spirit and feeling, rather than as a narrow technology dedicated to the creation of systems for their own sake. The "compassionless abstractions" that Jacoub's colleagues deplore in him are therefore "anti-life" because they represent the "substitution of thought" for feeling. At this point Baraka's familiar redefinition of magic, especially black magic ("black mass"), is crucial. The "true" scientists (Jacoub's colleagues) are magicians in that here, as in the Black Magic poems, magic represents knowledge as an integrated and creative process. On the other hand, Jacoub's fragmented approach to science as an enclosed system is destructive. His is a limited kind of knowledge in that it is divorced from humanistic concerns and moral values. This kind of science is a perverted and destructive kind of "magic," and Baraka ironically invests it with all the negative connotations with which white, technological cultures have responded to nonwhite traditions of "science." That is, he is now treating Jacoub's "white" science as evil magic, as a form of "witchcraft" or "superstition." The very idea of black magic therefore emerges from the play as an ironically ambiguous concept. It connotes (a) the black nationalist ideal of a creatively integrated approach to knowledge and experience, and (b) the evil magic which Western culture and blacks like Jacoub develop from a limited approach to science—at the same time that they reject the nonwhite ideal of knowledge as mere "superstition" and "black magic."

On the whole the themes of Black Mass are full of complex possibilities. But the play is badly flawed. Quite apart from the theatrically unconvincing plot and the self-defeating shrillness, Baraka fails to exploit fully the idea of ritual that his title so deliberately invokes. The play's ambitious complex of themes therefore remain unlinked with the kind of formal, ritualistic design that is promised by the work's title and religious background.

"Great Goodness of Life," subtitled "A Coon Show," is one of Baraka's better black nationalist plays. While Black Mass harks back, unsuccessfully, to the satiric use of ritual form in "The Baptism," "Great Goodness of Life" continues Baraka's earlier interest in the theater's role playing as a symptom of social roles. The idea of the "coon show" is therefore bound up with the play's presentation of racial types. Blacks and whites are satirically presented as stereotypes which they have imposed upon themselves as well as upon others. The racial role playing of society is actually an extended coon show in which white racism fosters a sense of superiority by attributing the subhuman coon role to blacks. And in their turn blacks reinforce their inferior status by playing this attributed role. The coon in this show is Court Royal; and the setting, a courtroom, heightens the impression of a "show" or piece of theater by virtue of the dramatic nature of judicial proceedings.

Court Royal has been accused by the white court of having harbored a murderer. He knows nothing about the crime with which he is charged, but as a racially timid and conservative black he is easily intimidated into accepting the court's final edict: he must expiate his "crime" by shooting the murderer, and as a result his soul will be "washed white as snow." Court Royal complies with the edict, then celebrates his freedom and "white" soul without once reacting to the fact that the young "murderer" claims him as father in the moment of death. As the play ends Court Royal suddenly assumes a lively pose and announces to Louise (off-stage) that he is going to the bowling alley for a while.

That closing vignette contrasts with the opening scene which is set outside an old log cabin, presumably in a rural setting that is far removed from the urban environment of a bowling alley. The shifts in time and place are comparable with similar changes in "The Slave." The juxtaposition of past and present, black rural roots and black urban present, dramatizes the continuity and the pervasiveness of the destructive attitudes represented by the coon show. And as in "Dutchman" these continuities are reflected in the play's deliberate emphasis on social types and role playing: by their very nature the stereotypes of the coon show underscore the enduring nature of the racial attitudes that they embody.

In his other major black nationalist play Baraka returns once again to a dramatic form that he first utilizes in his early drama. "Madheart" (1966) is subtitled "A Morality Play," and it therefore recalls the morality play tradition upon which "The Baptism" draws. In "Madheart" the "moral" conflicts of the morality drama are defined in terms of black nationalism. They center on an ethnosexual battle for the black male's soul, or more precisely, for his sexual allegiance. At the same time these conflicts involve a struggle for the racial integrity of the black everywoman who is torn between the old desire to imitate white models of femininity and the new black insistence on racial pride and black beauty.

The ethical and ethnic struggles of the play's themes are developed within an unconvincingly melodramatic plot. Black Man and Black Woman vanquish the seductive arrogance of the (white) Devil Lady. Then they undertake, in the spirit of black unity, to "take care" of the sick ones—Mother and Sister—who are still fascinated with white standards of sexual beauty. On the whole the moral tensions of the play are linked with the black male's consciousness and personality. He feels compelled to destroy the "whiteness" of Sister's self-hating images of white femininity, not only for her own sake, but for his own: he needs to eradicate from within himself his destructive obsession with the white woman as a supposedly superior being. He is both repelled by and fascinated with the white woman (Devil Lady) for these reasons. And this fascination-abhorrence is emphasized by the scene in which he destroys Devil Lady. The manner of the execution is both a form of revenge and a kind of self-betrayal: he thrusts arrows, a spear and a stake into her genitals, thereby tainting the act of execution with the suggestive connotations of rape.

In this connection it is significant that Devil Lady is presented as a masked figure. The white mask suggests not only a white presence as such but a white image imposed upon and accepted as a sexual norm by black men and women. And in this latter sense the "execution" of Devil Lady is really an act of self-cleansing by the black man and his ally, Black Woman. In turn this cleansing has implications that go beyond the immediate sexual issue. The Devil Lady image represents white culture at large as it is interpreted from a black nationalist viewpoint—a culture in which moral and social values, as well as goods, are marketed through the media by the exploitation of the (white) woman's sexual image. In the inelegant language of Baraka's Devil Lady, "My pussy rules the world through newspapers. My pussy radiates the great heat."

The sexual issues that Baraka explores here are not essentially innovative insofar as they are related to the black experience. But in linking mese issues with the broader social context as well as with the racial theme, he offers a potentially complex and interesting view-point of his subject. Despite that potential, however, "Madheart" is unconvincing at best and more often than not is offensive and bombastic. The main problem stems from the dramatist's sexual perceptions, especially his perception of female sexuality and female roles in society. On one level, for example, it is possible to justify the manner in which Black Man executes Devil Lady by indicating that this reflects his lingering fascination with the white woman's sexuality even in the very moment at which he attempts to expunge the myth of white (sexual) superiority from his consciousness. But on another level, it is difficult to es-cape the conclusion that this kind of crude genital violence reflects a deeper, disturbing response to female sexuality as such, irrespective of race. It is the kind of re sponse in which the ideal woman is the subjugated woman and in which the most attractive form of female sexuality is one that is accessible, for whatever reason, to a neurotically masculine need to engage in repetitive rites of phallic domination.

In effect the rather shrill themes of ethnic regeneration amount to little more than a thinly disguised rehashing of certain male preconceptions that Baraka, black nationalism notwithstanding, shares with nonblack men. Black Man's disposal of Devil Lady bears all the hallmarks of old, universal traditions of masculine dominance. So does Black Man's relationship with Black Woman. From a certain point of view that relationship is no more satisfac-tory than the ethnosexual order of things that it is supposed to replace. Both the "new" black man and the "new" black woman have disposed of their sexual and racial self-loathing in order to reaffirm all the traditional values of masculine superiority and feminine submissiveness. He therefore demonstrates his need for her by slapping her, and his new sense of "manhood" depends upon her sub-mission to him and to her defined role as mother: '"I want you, woman, as a woman. Go down' (He slaps her again.) 'Go down, submit, … love … and to man, now, forever."' She assures him of this newly found "strength" by submitting to his strength—and his sperm: "I am your woman, and you are the strongest of God. Fill me with your seed."

The sexual ideal that Baraka espouses here is also advocated in his political essays. Indeed Kawaida Studies reflects his personal confusion and distress at the possibility that the conventions of female subordination may be replaced by new sexual roles based on equality. The black woman, he insists, is the black man's "divine complement." As for sexual equality, "We do not believe in 'equality' of men and women. We cannot understand what devils and the devilishly influenced mean when they say equality for women. We could never be equals … nature has not provided thus." And according to this natural scheme of things the black woman must inspire her man and teach the children. Curiously enough it does not strike Baraka the black nationalist that a political ideology which demands equality for blacks while denying equality to women is self-contradictory. And this contradiction severely limits the scope and depth of "Madheart."

On the whole Black Mass, "Great Goodness of Life," and "Madheart" are centered primarily on attacks upon white society and white attitudes among blacks. And Baraka develops these attacks in a generally less interesting way than the manner in which he handles themes of ethnic growth and celebration in the other major plays of his black nationalist period—"Jello" and "Slave Ship." "Jello" was written in the middle 1960s and was originally scheduled to be published with the other works that eventually appeared in Four Black Revolutionary Plays in 1969. But the publisher balked and the play finally appeared separately in 1970. It is a satiric parody of "The Jack Benny Show," featuring all the main characters of the original television show—Jack Benny, his black valet Rochester, Dennis, Mary, and the announcer Don Wilson.

In "Jello" Rochester is no longer the surly but basically compliant servant. He is now a black militant who stages his own rebellion by refusing to work for Benny. He quits his job after robbing Benny and the others. The effectiveness of the play depends in part on its close parody of the original show. Baraka captures the style and personalities of the Jack Benny program. Indeed the play self-consciously underscores this similarity: hence Rochester is able to "rebel" with relative ease because for much of the proceedings his antagonists assume that his actions are all part of "The Jack Benny Show" itself, that the entire incident is just a joke.

In turn this leads to another aspect of the play's effectiveness. The well-developed scenes in which Rochester's victims believe that this is all in fun have a twofold effect. They dramatize the degree to which "reality" and "fantasy" are blurred in Rochester's world. White fantasies about blacks are part of a social reality in which the "good" black is the docile Uncle Tom (the old Rochester) and in which the idea of black militancy is something of a joke. And, ironically, such fantasies make it difficult for whites to recognize the validity of militant claims when blacks do break away from the docile stereotype. Moreover, the banal fantasies of television, including programs like "The Jack Benny Show," are mirrors of that general insipidity which Baraka consistently attributes to American culture at large. In this regard "Jello" is comparable with "Home on the Range," where the gibberish of the white suburban family is presented as an echo of television. Finally, the realism of the play allows the audience to perceive convincing links between Rochester, the new militant, and Rochester, the old Uncle Tom. Despite his compliance the original Rochester is sufficiently saucy in his relationship with Jack Benny to suggest a certain predisposition toward rebelliousness. And Baraka's militant really brings out into the open the rebelliousness that seems to lurk under the surface of the Uncle Tom image.

As in "The Slave" the militant's violence implies a previous, long-standing potential for revolt. Unlike "The Slave," however, "Jello" is a literal statement in the sense that Rochester is no mere dreamer of revolutions, as Walker Vessel's is. Rochester's actions are not invested with those ambiguities which confirm the suspicion, in "The Slave," that the race war is an imaginary event taking place in Walker's fantasies. Indeed in "Jello" there is a sustained emphasis on the contrast between (white) fantasies and (black) action. Consequently Rochester is an unreal or imaginary rebel only when he is perceived through eyes that can see him only as Benny's lackey, as the comically irreverent but fundamentally docile Uncle Tom. Thus while the play gradually strips away Benny's white liberalism to expose the racism with which he views Rochester, it simultaneously forces whites to awaken slowly from their racial fantasies and to see Rochester's personality and actions as they really are. In effect the play seeks to confront whites with what is really happening, notwithstanding deeply rooted needs to ignore or distort the realities behind black militancy.

Despite Rochester's personal success in forcing the recognition of his actions and new attitudes, "Jello" as a whole avoids that facile wish-fulfillment which too often mars Baraka's black nationalist writings. Thus although Rochester escapes with the stolen money and compels his victims to recognize him as he is, his triumph is counter-balanced by the continuity of the social order against which he is rebelling. Thus before he is knocked out and robbed by Rochester, Jack Benny's announcer (Don Wilson) assures the television audience that "The Jack Benny Show" will return as usual the following week. The announcement amounts to an assurance of continuity—the persistence of white fantasies even after the revelation of black attitudes. Indeed the play as a whole is a wry tribute to the power of the media, especially television, in reinforcing and perpetuating entrenched viewpoints in white America: Rochester's individual rebellion, like the actual revolts of the 1960s, has become a television "event," recognizable as an actual experience with disturbing implications for the white audience but easily transformed into an entertaining spectacle that leaves old fantasies untouched after the initial moment of disturbance. Hence the play as a whole balances the celebration of a black revolutionary idealism against the persistence of certain social attitudes in white America. But, paradoxically, the intransigence of white attitudes actually heightens the importance of Rochester's rebellion by underscoring the need for black modes of perception that arise from a new black awareness in-stead of depending upon the old, and continuing, white indifference. This blend of revolutionary idealism and social realism is rare in Baraka's black nationalist writings, and it is largely responsible for the success of "Jello" as a complex drama and entertaining theater.

"Slave Ship," (1967), "a historical pageant," is one of Baraka's more successful experiments in ritual drama. The plot is minimal. It consists of images, dances, and pantomime together with sporadic dialogue; all is designed to dramatize the physical and psychic experiences of slavery from the holds of the slave ships to contemporary American society. The play's real strength lies in the audiovisual impact of its materials. Much of the action takes place in darkness or half-light. This suggests the hold of a slave ship, and the relative lack of lighting accentuates the variety of sounds upon which Baraka builds his themes and his dramatic effect—African drums, humming of the slaves, cries of children and their mothers, shouts of slave drivers, and cracking sounds of the slaver master's whip.

The succession of audiovisual forms is integral to the pattern of ritual upon which Baraka bases his historical pageant. The sights and sounds of the slave ship remain throughout, but they alternate from time to time with other forms which depict successive stages of black American history—the plantation of the slaveholder, the nonviolent civil rights movement, and the black nationalist movement. History itself becomes a succession of rituals, particularly the ritual of suffering which gives way after repeated cycles to the new rituals of racial assertion and cultural awakening. The music which dominates the play is integral to the ritualistic pageantry of history. At first the main sounds are those of the African drum, accentuating the fresh African memories of the new slaves. Then as the plot moves toward the contemporary period the sounds of the African drum are gradually integrated with the musical forms that evolved in black American history since slavery. And this musical progression culminates in the blues and jazz idioms both as forms of protest and as the celebration of black nationalism. By a similar token the humming of the slaves in the holds of the slave ships gradually gives way to the sounds of protest and eventual triumph.

But throughout all of this the audience is always in touch with the persistent sounds and sights of the slave ship itself, for this is the setting that remains for the duration of the play, and the subsequent historical epochs are actually superimposed upon it in sequence. The historical pageant is, therefore, both progressive in direction (moving from slavery to the black nationalism of the 1970s) and circular (reinforcing a sense of the moral and social continuities of the society: the slavery of the past exerts a powerful influence on the circumstances of the present). Moreover, the persistence of the slave ship images has the effect of defining history itself as movements (progressive and cyclical) through time. Similarly the ritualistic forms of the play (dance, chant, and pantomime) are each a microcosm of the historical process: each synthesizes the materials inherited from a previous generation with the experiences of the contemporary period. And by extension this kind of synthesis characterizes the play as a whole. As a pageant that combines past and present experiences, traditional forms and new materials, it reenacts the historical process as Baraka defines it.

Socialist Drama

"Slave Ship" predates Baraka's major socialist dramas by several years. But the play's historical themes, and historically defined structure, make it a direct forerunner of The Motion of History and S-l. And this remains true despite the fact that "Slave Ship" is not committed to socialist ideology. The perception of history in all three plays is intrinsic to Baraka's emphasis on the theater as a teaching device. In black nationalist drama like "Slave Ship" the reenactment of history fulfills a major assumption of black nationalism: the full understanding of black history is crucial to a vital sense of black identity because the crippling of black pride in the past has been partly the result of white distortions of black history. Moreover, the very process of reenactment becomes a form of celebration, the celebration of that black ethnicity which emerges from the exploration of the past.

On the whole this approach to the play as teaching device and as celebration is similar to the fundamental premise of Baraka's socialist drama, although in the latter there is a far more explicit self-consciousness about the teaching role. The norms of "scientific socialism" reflect a certain commitment to education: the inevitability of the socialist revolution is partly the consequence of politically enlightening the masses. Art, especially dramatic art, facilitates the revolutionizing process by depicting the past and its im-pact on the present. While the black nationalist's historical sense enhances the discovery and celebration of a distinctive black culture, the historical perspectives of scientific socialism encourage the social awareness that will hasten revolution across racial lines. As Baraka himself describes The Motion of History and S-1, "both plays are vehicles for a simple message, viz., the only solution to our problems … is revolution! And that revolution is inevitable. The Motion of History brings it back through the years, focusing principally on the conscious separation created between black and white workers who are both exploited by the same enemy."

Both plays also reflect a continuing weakness in Baraka's committed art. In this socialist phase, as in the black nationalist period, he suffers from a tendency to indulge in ideological wish-fulfillment at the expense of social realities. Hence the earlier habit of exaggerating the depth and breadth of black nationalism in America has been replaced by unconvincing images of one great socialist rebellion in all the countries of the world (The Motion of History) and by the highly unlikely spectacle of the American labor union movement as an anticapitalist, prorevolutionary force. Of course these "weaknesses" are less troublesome if we are inclined to accept the underlying purpose of such plays: they are concerned less with strict social realism as such, and more with the advocacy of social change.

The realities that invite "scientific" analysis in these plays are the facts of history, the kind of historical data that forms the plot of The Motion of History. The play is actually a series of historical vignettes. The first act depicts scenes from the early civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s in order to attack the futility and self-destructiveness of nonviolent protest. Thereafter the play interweaves the ethnic and labor union movements of the twentieth century with past rebellions. The earliest slave uprisings, the abolitionist movement, and the political conflicts of the Reconstruction period are all dramatized as responses to a repressive caste system that is based on class and economics rather than race. Racial conflicts that do occur are portrayed as the outcome of a deliberate policy, by the ruling elite, of stimulating racial divisiveness in order to prevent solidarity among the working classes.

Like "Slave Ship," The Motion of History dramatizes the "motion" of history on two levels. The multiple historical episodes which form most of the play emphasize the cyclical nature of American history by presenting exploitation and rebellion as continuing features of the society. But the play's conclusion emphasizes a progressive movement toward the kind of radical change that will dispense with the traditional cycles of continuing repression and abortive rebellion. And by emphasizing history as a progressive force, the play's theme and structure dramatize the "inevitability" of socialist revolution as the culminating result of that progression.

S-1 is less heavily dependent on historical data than is The Motion of History. There are a limited number of scenes that depict examples of judicial and political repression in America's past. But on the whole the plot centers on a mythical incident that is historically significant because it is an extension of the old repressiveness and because it hastens the historical inevitability of revolutionary reaction among the masses. The thin plot centers on the passage of a law (S-l) that severely limits political activities and freedom of expression. Revolutionary groups organize resistance to the passage of the law, and after it comes into effect they plan widespread defiance of it. The play concludes on an optimistic note: the revolutionaries celebrate their unity and purpose. The play's real strength, and one of its few merits as theater, lies in Baraka's ability to integrate his dramatic form with the conflicts that constitute his political scenes.

In this regard S-l achieves a limited success of the kind that The Motion of History never approaches. Thus Baraka is able to eke out some sense of the dramatic from the series of confrontations on which the play's plot is based.

The judicial debates on the merits of the new law, in the Supreme Court, are enhanced by the inherently dramatic setting of the courtroom; and this setting is again exploited to effect in the trial of Red (one of the revolutionary leaders) on charges of treason. In a similar vein Congress provides the setting for another series of confrontations—the debates between "liberals" and "conservatives" about the law and the current social unrest. The dramatic experience centers here on the interaction of ideas. This is the theater of ideological positions rather than one of character and situation, and in this respect S-1 is the culmination of a trend that has been developing in Baraka's dramatic writings since his earlier black nationalist plays.

This kind of drama does have its built-in limitations, of course. The characters are rudimentary types conceived in very broad terms, so broad indeed that the revolutionary figures of S-1 are indistinguishable not only from each other but from their counterparts in The Motion of History. Scenes in which ideological conflicts are presented are severely underdeveloped, largely because the extreme sketchiness of the characterization limits the possibilities of the very confrontations that are supposed to dramatize the clash of ideas. And as a result of all this the audience is left with a theater of rhetoric in which potentially interesting situations and personalities are inundated with a flood of repetitive statements from all sides of the political landscape. Ironically enough Baraka's lack of emotional control in his ideological statements and his increasing indifference to characterization have resulted in a thin, one-dimensional drama that contravenes his own ideal of dramatic art as one that fuses word, act, and idea. Instead what he has produced is largely a loosely connected series of scenes filled with the shopworn clichés of reactionaries and revolutionaries alike. At its worst this method exemplifies the predominance of ideological word over dramatic art, the very kind of imbalance that Baraka himself abhors in theory. Curiously enough, at this stage of his career as dramatist his theory of effective drama is less compatible with the kind of plays that he prefers to write, and it is more appropriate to the early plays which he does not choose to mention in his introduction to The Motion of History and Other Plays.