[In the following excerpt, Brecht explores the images in Baraka's play, "Slave Ship."]

The production [of "Slave Ship"] is spectacle, the play being imagist & exhortatory. It does not develop: it shows. Its style is somewhat epic—what little interaction exists is either demonstrative (commiseration, rape) or semi-ritual-istic, having the form of recall (Christians vs. Africans: the child-ignoring preacher vs. the member of the tribe pressing the child on his attention)—& the rhythm is the uneven, leisurely one of telling, not the drive of process. The music underscores this epic rhythm, but also builds up the emotional intensities. (The play does not afford much scope for Archie Shepp's marvelous lyricism.) These intensities attach to the affects to whose representation the acting is devoted: suffering & affection, degradation & dignity. The acting style is idealizing naturalism—more or less the same as "socialist realism" or Broadway (minus Jewish irony). Its sentimentality & bathos strike me as the most "European" thing about the production's form. But I think they naturally result from the effort required by Jones' Africanism: an effort to recover & express a basic humanity (male & female), which is conceived of as by nature simple. This old-fashioned European notion of savages ironically & even tragically engenders artificial culture-products of a complex sort: stereotypes of sincere insincerity. Reductionism can never furnish the basic, & in any event the basic is never simple, if for no other reason than that human existence is inappropriate to human essence.

Though historical in content, the play is not historical drama. It evokes history metaphorically: as information about the essence of a present state. It exposes the audience to the action of successive images of a human condition. Each image identifies a dimension of this condition present but subsidiary in the other images. Image no. 1 (about twenty minutes) identifies its genesis, no. 2 its nature, no. 3—the last—its immanent overcoming. The condition is that of the audience: slavery. Being, like all human conditions, one of alienation, its dramatic form is a dialectic of identity: deprivation of identity, alienation, retrieval of identity—a struggle in mind. It resolves into a feast with the audience over which the theatre officiates, revealing itself as active participant in the life imaged. The theatrical evocation of a still actual history turns out to be an act of (political-artistic) participation in a communal life comprising the theatre & the audience.

The play conceives of identity as communal natural identity, which it in turn defines as cultural identity animated by sexual identity through the generation of pride by love.

Slavery is identified by the first image as forcible removal from home; by the second, as destruction of family, pride, & culture; by the third, as un-Christian revolt.

In the first image, the slaves are brought aboard one by one. In the hold (which is under the stage, we have to bend to see), they are segregated by sex. The white man rapes a black woman: the blacks restrain sex among themselves. Wives manage to join husbands, chastely. There is love, suffering, song. The agitated suffering provides the keynote while the guard on deck listens, rapes, laughs, sleeps: a powerfully nervous rhythm, orchestrated by Shepp. I do not think Gil Moses has directed this well. Yet its valuable aspect, in the context of contemporary European theatre (e.g., the Living Theatre), is that it's not abstract. Just as Jones reminds us of concrete love, so he reminds us of real suffering, tangible unfreedom, physical attempts at liberation—instead of obliterating natural life with psychological reflections or metaphysical analyses.

The second image theatrically, though not analytically, correlates the destruction of the family (a mock marriage, selling man & wife apart, etc.) with cultural alienation, which is portrayed by the two classic species (cf. Frazier, Keil) of the cultural house-nigger, the self-abasing clown who has turned his existence into its own denial (the tolerable bad nigger) & the gibbering preacher (the good nigger) who in a foreign tongue (scat) preaches the message which denies his essence. The plantation Tom (Garret Morris: a virtuoso performance, but perhaps less profound than Tim Pelt's portrayal of the preacher) betrays a conspiracy for a pork chop; the Reverend (could Jones have King in mind?) obstinately disregards a wounded baby pressed on his attention, stepping over it as he preaches. Both are shown as maniacs; they have lost their minds. Nostalgic racial memories of the homeland evoke the destroyed identity: male & female pride in their respective chores of home- & war-making, expressed in integral culture: dance, song, prayer.

The third image is of revolt, but the play shows the Afro-American in revolt from the first crossing of the gangplank. From the beginning until now, not acceptance or inertia, but superior brute force abetted by treason have kept him down. This is a historically incorrect idealization (cf. Du Bois & Genovese vs. Aptheker) which is valid, within the framework of Jones' conception of identity, as revelation of the repressive power that generated inertia & acceptance, & also valid insofar as Jones is using history as symbol for present condition. They resist being loaded into the hold; in the hold they work at ridding themselves of their shackles; in America they sullenly plan assassinations. The point is not merely to give heart, but that no new cultural identity emerged from the alienation into slavery.

Identity is tied to communality. The community is shown as integral, especially in the hold: many spontaneous gestures of concern for & succor of others; a perennial unreasoned orientation toward collective suffering & collective revolt, & by nature religion—itself a collective self-awareness relative to revered familial forces (and implicitly contrasted to the Christian alienation of man from nature).

The family is shown as the living cell of community, its love the community's energy. Acting & directing stress male supremacy. The woman stands silently behind her man. (But finally all take arms.) Seeing the destruction of the family as major evil & as root-danger to identity is a personal thing with Jones (cf. his beautiful account of his youth) & part of a trend (cf. the Black Muslim). This male suprematism seems to fit better into the revolt against decadent European civilization than does the idolization of the small family. But for Jones it's a matter of what's natural & therefore good & black. The play upholds the "petty-bourgeois" values of heterosexual love, monogamy, male leadership, parental child-rearing, as sources of communal strength—& as nourishing place of that pride, which for Jones is the core of personal identity & the source of cultural being.

The final revolt is a genocidal call to arms to the young Afro-American audience—a call for the killing of the white man. But the only enemy killed is a black man. This may be significant. Not only because of the alleged killings of Malcolm X by Black Muslims & of Black Panthers by Karenga's men, but because it suggests that Jones' stress on cultural community identity may ultimately override his advocacy of social revolt. There is a symbolic overthrow of Uncle Sam. The play joins the present with clenched fists, hymns, new flags. It not only joins the present, it joins actuality—unlike Paradise Now, & in the opposite sense from that recently fashionable "audience participation" which invites the audience to join the play. This audience, having enjoyed the play, joins in, walks out dancing.