[Clurman finds "Slave Ship " a masterpiece of living theater.]

From what I had read about ["Slave Ship"] after its first performance at the Brooklyn Academy of Music I expected it "to scare me to death." Nothing of the sort happened. I was fascinated by the play—full of raucous sound but very few words—as a theatrical phenomenon.

It begins with a picture of the sufferings inflicted on Africans being shipped in the filthy holds of boats to be sold as slaves in America. It proceeds to equally horrendous scenes in the slave markets of the South. It then turns to the consequences of Nat Turner's rebellion. Following this we witness the false place of religious prayer meetings among the blacks and their later determination to rise against oppression.

None of this is "new" except for the excellence of Gilbert Moses' direction, guided by the arrangement of Eugene Lee's construction of the playing areas. These are on several levels: the ship's deck and hold (later used for the auction of slaves) and various other platforms placed all about us and from which players speak, music is played, semi-choral movement and song are projected. The audience is caught in the overall ferment, made aware of an enormous ground swell which is at once obscure and throbbing with gigantic energy. One realizes the possibility of a frenzied and overpowering outbreak.

This does not signify "kill all whites!"; it implies a situation from which great devastation may ensue. What affected me most, however, was not any ideological pronouncement or triumph of stagecraft; the outstanding factor was the quality of the cast. Some of the players have enough stage experience to do justice to individual roles in other than mass dramas, but here all the actors move together, adjust to one another with a seemingly spontaneous coordination and unity which can be achieved only when a common inspiration of blood and brain, heart and flesh inform the whole. This therefore, apart from any other consideration, is theatre.

Such groups as the Living Theatre aim at similar attainments, but the results for the most part are forced, unsightly and sympathetic only by an extra stretch of will. The very sophisticated and artful Grotowski ensemble arrives at something like this coherence in "wildness." The "Slave Ship" company is in the purest sense of the term tribal, hence unassumingly impressive.

CRITICAL COMMENTARY