A Dream Play (1907), is a drama by August Strindberg. A precursor
to both expressionism and surrealism, this play has been successfully revived
many times. Strindberg was in the process of breaking from his earlier
naturalist approach when he wrote this dream tale of the daughter of the
goddess Indra descending to Earth to meet a variety of symbolic characters.
Forerunner of Modern
Drama: The play is
considered a forerunner of expressionism and the theater of the absurd.
It employs dream symbolism to translate Strindberg’s mystical visions
into the language of drama. Highly abstracted characters appear and disappear
in stylized settings; scenes and images change unexpectedly; and profound fears
and ghastly fantasies materialize. By breaking with the realistic traditions of
drama in his later career, Strindberg opened up new possibilities, prefiguring
such major dramatic movements of the twentieth century as expressionism and
exerting a powerful influence on dramatists such as Samuel Beckett, Eugene
O’Neill, and Eugene Ionesco.
Derek Walcott’s Dream
Play: Dream on Monkey Mountain
Makak (Chris McFarlane) prepares to destroy his vision (Juette Carty) in 'Dream on Monkey Mountain'. |
The Dream on Monkey
Mountain (1967)
belongs to the twentieth-century genre called dream plays, connected with works
by playwrights such as Strindberg as well as by Synge and Soyinka. The play's
main character is Makak (French patois for "Ape"), a black
charcoal-burner who comes to town, gets drunk, and is taken into custody by
Corporal Lestrade, a mulatto guard who is the maintainer of law and order
during the later years of the colonial power. In a dream scene of a mock trial
that was probably inspired by Kafka and Hesse, Lestrade accuses Makak of being
intoxicated and damaging the premises of a local salesman. However, in another
vivid dream sequence, Makak is crowned king in the romantic Africa of his
roots, surrounded by his wives, his warriors, and the masks of pagan gods.
In a second mock trial, a number of great Western characters (e.g.,
Plato, Ptolemy, Dante, Cecil Rhodes, Florence Nightingale) are accused of
neglecting other races and sentenced to death by the African tribes. Lestrade
has now given up his confession to the Western world, shouldered his black
inheritance, and sworn allegiance to Makak. The poor charcoal-burner is
acquitted from the charges, and able to withdraw to his West Indian world with
a deepened sense of identity.
The dream visions in this play seem to belong both to Makak and to
the collective atmosphere of the plot. Ironic effects appear throughout the
events. At the same time as Makak's romantic dream of Africa is presented, he
cherishes a fantasy of a white protectress who takes care of him. But, as
suggested by Lestrade, he gives up this dream, brutally beheading the woman
with an African sword. This is a sacrifice that expresses a sound reaction against
a fantasy life alienated from reality. Makak's character also bears symbolic
similarities with Christ: in prison, he is followed by two robbers, and from
Good Friday he is able to look forward to the moment of resurrection on Easter
Sunday. The prison can be understood as a symbol both of life itself and of
colonial rule. In a sophisticated way, this play expresses central components
of Walcott's attitude to the political, racial, and psychological problems in
his post-colonial world.
In Dream on Monkey Mountain,
Walcott makes a great effort to interpret the nature of Caribbean identity.
Colonialism has been important in damaging the human soul and humiliating the
inhabitants of this part of the world. But there is no point trying to build
castles in the air, as when Makak dreams of his African roots. At the end, in
the epilogue, this simple-hearted visionary proletarian is acquitted, while
Western civilization with its great characters is sentenced to death.
Regardless of this, hate and revenge are negligible - in fact, negative -
factors to the writer Walcott.
Source(s)
1. Gale’s Contextual Encyclopedia &
2. NobelPrize.org
Image thanks to -
Jamaica-gleamer.com
dorcosbyatkinson.wordpress.com
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Brilliant.
ReplyDeleteCongrats, helped me a lot!!