SLEEP DEPRIVATION CHAMBER:
By Adam P. Kennedy and Adrienne Kennedy
Theatre Communications Group, 72 pages, $10.95 paper
An angry cop slams Teddy Alexander to the ground and kicks him again and again. Teddy is innocent and black; the cop is white. This is a familiar image, and it is easy to feel outrage. But Teddy and his family just feel confused. They are middle-class playwrights, professors, college students and activists. They have spent their careers studying and trying to better the lives of African-Americans. But they have looked at American racism from a comfortable Virginia suburb and the campuses of elite colleges.
“Sleep Deprivation Chamber,” an autobiographical play written by a mother and son, reads like a troubled nightmare. We see the brutal beating and the court case that follows through a haze of confusing dreams and memories. This cerebral family uses words to try to understand this violent intrusion. They seek clarity in books, plays and court transcripts. But the family is simply lost. The splintered chaos of the play forces us to join the family in facing what may be the ultimate truth of American racism: It cannot be understood.
BALLAD OF YACHIYO
By Philip Kan Gotanda
Theatre Communications Group, 84 pages, $10.95 paper
Yachiyo was 16 and in love when she became pregnant and killed herself by swallowing ant poison in a Hawaiian field in 1919. Her family kept her life and death a secret until the 1990s, when her younger brother told his grown son about her. The son, Philip Kan Gotanda, is a celebrated Japanese-American playwright who spent years writing the story of his long-dead aunt.
Like “Sleep Deprivation Chamber,” “Ballad of Yachiyo” is a dreamscape where vague memories tell a troubling family tale. Here we learn about the ancient rituals and modern ambitions of Japanese immigrants to Hawaii. We see this world through the eyes of a confused 16-year-old girl who does not understand the all-too-serious adults who surround her. She learns to perform the tea ceremony and to act as a refined lady, but raw love is the only force that matters; she will follow it anywhere. In her romantic adolescent fantasies there is no place for heartbreak and shame. No place for them until she becomes pregnant and realizes she will destroy her family’s honor.
THE BEST AMERICAN SHORT PLAYS: 1995-1996
Edited by Howard Stein and Glenn Young
Applause, 240 pages, $15.95 paper
These short plays–10 to 37 pages long–are easy and fun to digest; a pleasant introduction to 12 playwrights who aren’t superstars but offer mostly solid work. Polish-born Janusz Glowacki’s “Home Section” is an absurdist take on immigrants who try so hard to be American that they lose their humanity. Three house painters discuss life in a country they clearly don’t understand but hope, desperately, to be a part of. All the while, they tease and then ignore a dead body hanging in the middle of the room. In David Ives’ “Degas, C’est Moi,” a young man decides he will be painter Edgar Degas for a day. With a manic pace, the play whisks us along for a day of joyful denial of harsh life in New York City.
MODERN ARABIC DRAMA: An Anthology
Edited by Salma Khadra Jayyusi and Roger Allen
Indiana University Press, 416 pages, $22.50
This essential collection captures the range of exciting new plays from the Arab world. All are worth reading, but one stands above. Sa’dallah Wannus is Syria’s greatest living playwright. His lyrical and biting allegory “The King Is the King” tells of a bored and cruel monarch who makes a commoner king for a day. To the real ruler’s horror, no one can tell the difference. Courtiers, ministers and citizens pay reverence to the royal robes and do not care who is wearing them.
SIMPLY DISCONNECTED
By Simon Gray
Faber and Faber, 50 pages, $10.95
Simon Hench seems to have perfected the art of easy withdrawal from all worldly cares. Scores of visitors bang in to his living room demanding love and attention. His brother, his oldest friend, his long-lost son–all want him to show that he cares for them. Simon doesn’t even remember their names. He isn’t cruel, he’s just detached. By the play’s end, though, we realize that Simon is aloof because he is overwhelmed by social change. Raised in the ’50s, he became a man in the ’60s and, in the ’90s, he no longer understands how people relate to one another.
