Japanese Theatre and Fences Flashcards
A Brief Biographical Sketch on Miller:
1915: Born in New York
1929: The Crash ruins his family
1938: Graduates from U. of Michigan
1947: All My Sons
1949: (Feb. 10) Death of a Salesman
(Feb. 27) “Tragedy” in the NYT
1953: The Crucible
1956: HUAC
1961: The Misfits
1983: Directs Salesman in Beijing
2005: Dies in Connecticut at 89 on Feb. 10, the anniversary of Salesman’s
Premiere. Same year as Wilson.
Caveat lector:
The use of a universalized “man” and masculine pronouns strikes us as exclusionary:
“From Orestes to Hamlet, Medea to Macbeth, the underlying struggle is that of the individual attempting to gain his ‘rightful’ position in society.”
Yet, Miller is democratizing, Americanizing tragedy.
Overturning Aristotle’s Idea of the Tragic Hero:
“If the exaltation of a tragic action were truly a property of the high-bred character alone, it is inconceivable that the mass of mankind should cherish tragedy above all other forms, let alone be capable of understanding it”—Arthur Miller.
“I think the tragic feeling is evoked in us when we are in the presence of a character who is ready to lay down his life, if need be, to secure one thing—his sense of personal dignity”—Arthur Miller
Medea’s Motives Become Clearer in Miller’s Definition of Tragedy
“The fateful wound from which the inevitable events spiral is the wound of indignity and its dominant force is indignation.”
Hamartia, or the tragic flaw need not be a “weakness,” and could be simply an “inherent unwillingness to remain passive in the face of what he conceives to be a challenge to his dignity, his image of his rightful status.”
Society itself might carry the flaw.
Dramatic and Theatrical Realism:
Acting and set design appear like “real life.”
Does not use theatrical conventions like asides, a chorus, other theatrical effects.
Psychological motivations for character behavior often taken into account.
Allows us to consider human experience in particular social contexts.
Some Historical Context for Fences: Baseball
Segregated Sports: African Americans not allowed to play in Major League Baseball from 1900 to 1945.
First “Negro League” founded in 1920. The painting on the right is of Josh Gibson, referred to in Fences, known as the “Black Babe Ruth.”
A Brief Biographical Sketch on Wilson:
1945: Born In Pittsburgh
1960: Dropped out of high school and spent his days educating himself in a public library.
1968: Co-founded the Black Horizon Theatre and wrote his first play.
1982: Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
1985: Fences (Pulitzer Prize and Tony)
1990: The Piano Lesson (Pulitzer Prize)
Moves to Seattle
2005: His last play, Radio Golf. He dies, age 60, in Seattle.
Wilson’s “Pittsburgh Cycle” or the “Century Cycle
1900s: Gem of the Ocean (2003)
1910s: Joe Turner’s Come and Gone (1986)
*1920s: Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (1984) 1930s: The Piano Lesson (1987) 1940s: Seven Guitars (1995) 1950s: Fences (1985) 1960s: Two Trains Running (1990) 1970s: Jitney (1982) 1980s: King Hedley II (1999) 1990s: Radio Golf (2005)
More Historical Contextualization for Fences: The First Great Migration: 1915-1930
6 Million African Americans migrate from the U.S. South between 1915-1970:
“They came from places called the Carolinas and the Virginias, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee. They came strong and eager, searching…”
—August Wilson, setting the scene for Fences.
The Encoding of Trauma?
The science of epigenetics (Greek for “above the gene”) hypothesizes that we can pass on more than DNA in our genes; suggesting that genes can carry memories of trauma experienced by our ancestors and can influence our reaction to trauma and stress.
Other geneticists have found flaws in the original study, and the science is far from settled.
Fences gives us three exact dates: 1918—1957—1965
1918: The End of WWI
1919: The Red Summer of Lynching
1919: Reestablished in 1915 with the aid of D.W. Griffith’s film Birth of a Nation, the Ku Klux Klan is openly operating in 27 states.
1920: Boll weevil decimates cotton.
White Terrorism: Lynching
“From 1882-1968, 4,743 lynchings occurred in the United States. Of these people that were lynched 3,446 were black. The blacks lynched accounted for 72.7% of the people lynched”
—from the NAACP’s website.
Miller’s “Tragedy and the Common Man”:
“There is a misconception of tragedy…It is the idea that tragedy is of necessity allied to pessimism…This impression is so firmly fixed that I almost hesitate to claim that in truth tragedy implies more optimism in its author than does comedy, and that its final result ought to be the reinforcement of the onlooker’s brightest opinions of the human animal”
—Arthur Miller, “Tragedy and the Common Man”
Words that appear in the Vocabulary Lists. These will usually be reiterated in bold throughout the lectures:
What is the Skēnē?
What is Hamartia?
The Timelines you do not need to memorize; however, you should know any dates that are significant for a play’s action:
What significance does 1965 have for August Wilson in Fences?
Skene- scene
Vocabulary
Noh- : From Middle Chinese, nong能, “Skill,”“Talent”
Kyōgen
Kabuki
Bunraku
Shingeki
Yūgen
Ukiyo-e
