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"Mouths on fîre with songs:"
Negotiating Multi-ethnic Identities on the Contemporary North American Stage
VOLUME 2
Caroline DE WAGTER Thèse présentée en vue de l'obtention du grade académique de Docteur en Langues et lettres, sous la direction de Monsieur Marc MAUFORT
Année académique 2009-2010
"Mouths on fîre with songs:"
Negotiating Multi-ethnic Identities on the Contemporary North American Stage
VOLUME 2
Caroline DE WAGTER Thèse présentée en vue de l'obtention du
grade académique de Docteur en Langues et lettres, sous la direction de Monsieur Marc MAUFORT
Année académique 2009-2010
Chapter III
Cultural Memory in North American Drama
From the deep and near South the sons and daughters of newly freed African slaves wander into the city. Isolated, eut off from memory, having forgotten the names of the gods and only guessing at their faces, they arrived dazed and stunned, their hearts kicking in their chest with a song worth singing.
—Joe Turner's Corne and Gone 203
Memory is an action: essentially it is the action of teUing a story.
—Pierre Janet, qtd in Spitzer x
In this "post-canonical âge," as Christophe Den Tandt argues, "the transmission of cultural memory and the définition of cultural landmarks in a tewnty-first-century context involve the existence of a plurality [...] of interlocking networks of institutions, centers of powers, sites of traditions and practices" ("Pluralism and Cultural Memory" 21). Indeed, while previous discussions of cultural memory were concemed above ail with
"identifying the 'sites of memory' that act as placeholders for the memories of particular groups," in récent years, Astrid Erll and Aim Rigney postulate, "attention discussion has been shifting to the cultural processes by which memories are shared in the first place"
(111). In their essay, "Literature and the Production of Cultural Memory," Erll and Rigney explain that "cultural memory" has emerged as a usefiil "umbrella term" to describe the complex ways in which societies remember their past through a variety of média (111). Stories, both oral and written, images, muséums, and monuments ail work together in creating and sustaining "sites of memory" (Erll and Rigney 123). As discussed in this chapter, ranging from a metaphorical character (August Wilson's Aunt Ester), ghostly apparitions (Anand's deceased parents in Viswanathan's House of Sacred Cows,
Yasako's late mother in Houston's Kokoro), to the land itself (Kamloops in Tomson Highway's Ernestine, Negro Creek in Djanet Sears' Adventures a Black Girl, Kansas's countryside in Diane Glancy's Jump Kiss), thèse intriguing "sites of memory" challenge us "to develop mapping stratégies" (Den Tandt 21) that reflect the complex évolution of the dramatic North Amrerican literary landscape at the dawn of the twenty-first century.
The topic of cultural memory has surfaced in various contexts, more particularly in debates about the Holocaust. In the aftermath of Shoshana Felman and Doris Laub's work, much discussion has focused on the need for traumatic memories to be legitimized and narratively integrated in order to lose their hold over the subject who suffered the past traumatized event. As Léo Spitzer argues in Acts of Cultural Memory: Cultural Recall in the Présent, "[t]raumatic events in the past have a persistent présence, which explains why that présence is usually discussed in terms of memory—as traumatic memory" (viii).
Interestingly, "Cultural memorization," Spitzer continues, constitutes an "activity occurring in the présent, in which the past is continuously modified and re-inscribed even as it continues to shape the future" (vii). Neither remnant, document, nor relie, the
"mémorial présence of the past" Spitzer daims, ranges "from conscious recall to unreflected re-emergence, from nostalgie longing for what is lost to polemical use of the past to reshape the présent" (vii). As Spitzer interestingly argues, "cultural recall is not merely something of which you happen to be a bearer but something that you actually perform, even if, in many instances, such acts are not consciously and wilfiilly contrived"
(vii; emphasis mine). This idea is particularly inspiring in the context of theater and performance. Indeed, performing memory/history/trauma on the stage necessarily occurs in the présent as audience members are watching a real show. In thèse performances, cultural memory takes on multiple forms and serves numerous purposes as it links the past to the présent and future.
In this third chapter, I wish to explore this process of linking the past to the présent, of re-inscribing legacy and cultural memory within the fabric of the présent. How does the performance of cultural memory re-shape history in the présent? How does cultural memory potentially modify past moments which nonetheless impinge on the présent?
How does the interaction between past and présent become the product of collective agency? And fmally is remembering one's history part of the healing process or rather does it increase pain and isolation?
To explore thèse questions, I have subdivided this chapter into three parts. The first section revolves around cultural memory and history. I continue my exploration of the dramaturgy of Afirican American August Wilson started in the previous chapter. This time, I compare August Wilson's last play. Radio Golf, with First Nations (Crée) Canadian author Tomson Highway's play, Ernestine Shuswap Gets Her Trout. Relying on Harry Elam's notion of "(w)righting history" as well as on Pierre Nora's concept of ''lieux de mémoire," I contend that thèse writers re-create cultural memory as they "make history" within the larger context of their respective nation.
The second part of this chapter focuses on the rôle played by ghosts and its relationship to cultural memory. From Kang's Noran Bang: The Yellow Room analyzed in Chapter I, to Tomson Highway's The Rez Sisters and Dry Lips Oughta Move to
Kapuskasing, Daniel David Moses' Almighty Voice and His Wife, to August Wilson's The Piano Lesson, to David Henry Hwang's Golden Child, to cite but a few examples, this common feature of contemporary multi-ethnic plays deserves exploration. Taking Lois Parkinson Zamora's article "Ghosts in U.S. and Latin American Fiction" as a starting point, I examine Velina Hasu Houston's Kokoro and Padma Viswanathan's House of Sacred Cows in an attempt to assess the multiple meanings attached to the (in)visible présence of ghosts and their multiple relationships with cultural memory.
278
I
In the last part, I seek to examine how Afri-Canadian Djanet Sears and Cherokee American Diane Glancy perform cultural memory in relation to the land. To this end, Stuart Hall's insights on cultural memory offer an idéal angle of approach. Set in Holland Township, Ontario, Sears' s The Adventures of a Black Girl in Search of God
concentrâtes on a joumey of death and reconciliation in a river called Negro Creek. On the other hand, Glancy's Jump Kiss offers a provocative séries of poems and dialogues through which the author negotiates multi-layered issues of Native identity and urban relocation. From a formai perspective, thèse works' structures flow through disjointed memories in multiple scenes/plates. Moreover, the landscapes of thèse plays echo the characters' struggle to come to terms with their past and cultural héritage.
My cross-national and cross-ethnic perspective demonstrates that comparative methodology can indeed be fruitfully applied to the case studies selected in this chapter.
Set in multiple locations—from the Hill District in Pittsburgh, to Saskatoon, Canada, to Ontario, Canada, or the American Midwest—thèse works (w)right history in Harry Elam's sensé of the term. Some plays imply the résurrection of ghosts or a questioning of the relationship to one's land. Addressing the issue of cultural memory through joumeys of loss and healing, thèse plays "tell a story" (Janet) and challenge ail those "eut off from memory" to remember that their hearts are "kicking [...] with a song worth singing"
(Wilson's Joe Tumer 203).
I. (W)righting History: Cultural Memory in August Wilson's
Radio Golf and Tomson Highway's Ernestine Shuswap Gets Her Trout
[M]oments of history are plucked out of the flow of history, then retumed to it—no longer quite alive but not yet entirely dead, like shells left on the shore when the sea of living memory has receded.
—Pierre Nora 7
Aunt Ester: "What are they singing?"
Citizen: "They singing remember me"
—August Wilson, Gem of the Océan 66
(W)righting history, as Harry Elam explains in his book, The Past as Présent in the Dramaturgy of August Wilson, implies "writing, righting, right, and rites" (xv). Moreover, Elam expands, "(w)righting underscores the etymology and the denotations of the word playwright. Just as a wheelwr/g/2? makes wheels, a playwng/î/ functions not simply as
writer but as a play maker" (xvi). Because "playwriting is a sélective and collective act of création," "(w)righting history implies that Wilson [...] is making history" (Jbid). While Elam specifically applies this concept to the dramaturgical project of Afirican American August Wilson, I wish to explore how this inspiring notion of (w)righting history might also be useftil to analyze other playwrights from différent ethnicities in the U.S.A. and Canada. In addition, I am interested in examining the relationship between history and cultural memory through the médium of theater. What happens when historical events are performed on the stage? How does the process of "(w)righting history" médiate the past and how does it reinforce or heal traumatizing past/present expériences? How does
"(w)righting history" necessarily critique the process of historical construction in relation to cultural memory? How can literature, and more particularly drama, "(w)right" a history
that has ignored or erased the expériences of first inhabitants of the land, former slaves, immigrants from various countries, people of color in gênerai, women, low^er classes, etc.?
As a site of collective formation, history can become an erasing force but also a point of anchor from where to revise the weight of the past. Theoretically, history
provides an interprétation of past events by an objective observer. In practice, however, it is impossible to access "actual" history except as filtered through subjective and often self-serving interpreters. Indeed, historians necessarily select and re-arrange events from their own particular perspective. The so-called objectivity of history has thus been questioned by both postmodem and postcolonial theoreticians in a désire to question categorizations and to challenge long-held conceptions about "Truth" or "History." The postmodem rejection of "any single master narratives, conferring a diversity of not competing but complementary identities" (Southgate, 167), thus concurs with "canonical counter-discourse," a theory and practice adopted by postcolonial critics "to describe the complex ways in which challenges to a dominant or established discourse [...] might be mounted from the periphery" (Ashcroft et al, Key Concepts 56). In this sensé, postmodem and postcolonial théories both assert that there is no such thing as a single privileged perspective from which to view the world or from which to draw any conclusion about it.
As discussed in détail in the theoretical introduction, postmodemism mainly seeks to dismantle the mies of genre, authority, and value. Postcolonialism's agenda is more specifically political: it aims at challenging the hégémonie boundaries and the
déterminants that create unequal relations of power based on binary oppositions such as
"us and them," "Black and White," "colonized and colonizer" "Slave and master." As "an engagement with and contestation of colonialism's discourses, power stmctures, and social hiérarchies" (Gilbert and Tompkins, Post-colonial Drama 2), postcolonialism thus
displays even more affinities with a vision of history as a site of re-evaluation and empowerment. In one of his first interviews, playwright August Wilson argued that "the importance of history to me is simply to fmd out who you are and where you've been. It becomes doubly important if someone else has been writing your history" (Powers, 52).
Indeed, in constructing American or Canadian or European history, historians have generally highlighted white maie middle-class values, thereby marginalizing and silencing women and/or ethnie minorities, and/or First nations inhabitants.
In his introduction to Rethinking the French Past: Realms of Memory (vol. I),
French scholar Pierre Nora provides a provocative framework from where to re-think
"history" and "memory." His multi-volume study of Lieux de mémoire argues that the cohésion of "France" as both an object and a locus of national identity is preserved in a range of mémorial forms devised especially by state institutions and encountered as places of memory in people's individual daily and public rituals. Nora laments what he sees as a décline of a national, collective, identity-forming, memory in the âge of globalization. As he explains, far from being synonymous, memory and history are opposed in many ways:
Memory is life, always embodied in living societies and as such in permanent évolution, subject to the dialectic of remembering and forgetting, unconscious of the distortions to which it is subject, vulnérable in various ways to appropriation and manipulation, and capable of lying dormant for long periods only to be suddenly reawakened. History, on the other hand, is the reconstruction, always problematic and incomplète, of what is no longer. Memory is always a phenomenon of the présent, a bond tying us to the etemal présent; history is a représentation of the past. Memory, being a phenomenon of émotion and magie, accommodâtes only those facts that suit it. [...] History, being an intellectual, nonreligious activity, calls for analysis and critical discourse. [...] Memory is by nature multiple yet spécifie; collective and plural yet individual. By contrast, history belongs to everyone and to no one and therefore has a uni versai vocation. (3)'^''
Reminiscent of Stuart Hall's discussion of "cultural identity" in "Cultural Identity and
This passage is a translation by Arthur Goldhammer from the original introduction by Pierre Nora
"Entre Mémoire et Histoire" published in Les Lieux de Mémoire, (xix)
Diaspora," "memory," as defined by Nora, is thus likewise "in permanent évolution,"
"always in process" (233-46). Tied to the présent, memory émerges from spécifie communities. In tum, memory becomes this community's cementing force. Attributing the "démolition" of memory to the "terrorism of historicized memory" as promoted by the académie discipline of History (14), Nora wams that without commemorative vigilance the "conquering force of history" (2) eradicates and gradually uproots the
"bastions of our identities" (7). Thèse "protected enclaves," the "préserves of memory,"
constitute what Nora calls ''lieux de mémoire" (7). Emerging in two stages—moments of history that are plucked out of the flow of history and then retumed to it—thèse ''lieux de mémoire" would not exist if they were not threatened. Paradoxically then, "if history did not seize upon memories in order to distort and transform them, to mold them or tum them into stone, they would not tum into 'lieux de mémoire' (Nora 7). Drawing our attention to the notion of mpture in the génération of collected memory, Nora also emphasizes that moments of social stress or fracture ignite desires to coUect memories that can be shared in the présent. Opening up the past at thèse crucial junctures, the playwrights discussed in this chapter articulate the past not as "'the way it really was' (Ranke, qtd in Benjamin 225)" but "seize hold of a memory as it flashes up at a moment of danger" (Ibid.). Such actions not only relate to contemporary postmodera and
postcolonial discourses, they also create an empowering narrative of "lieux de mémoire"
where cultural memories can be reclaimed in the présent along with a sensé of identity.
As psychiatrist Dori Laub claims while describing his expérience with the
Holocaust survivor testimony: "survivors did not only need to survive so that they could tell their stories; they also needed to tell their stories in order to survive" (61). Through the process of writing, authors such as Japanese American Philip Kan Gotanda in his play
Sisters Matsumoto^^^ addresses the historical trauma of WWII affecting 20,000 Japanese Canadians and 120,000 Japanese Americans. In Sisters Matsumoto, the main protagonists.
Grâce, Chiz and Rose, narrate their memories and expériences as they retum to their family farm in Stockton, Califomia, after living in an intemment camp during World War II. Echoing Anton Chekhov's The Three Sisters, Gotanda's literary reconstruction of past traumatizing events portrays characters who revisit painful memories. They weave several story Unes, past and présent, mixing expérience and recollection, history and memory throughout.
From a différent angle, Marie Cléments's play, Burning Vis ion also addresses the trauma of WWII. Constructed as a prophétie vision that unfolds over four songs sung by a Dene Medicine Man in the last 1800's, the play traces the évolution of uranium from its origins in the Sahtu Dene earth through water, over land and into fire, in the shape of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. Written from the point of view of Métis playwright Marie Cléments, this work establishes a parallel between the fate of Japanese and First Nations peoples through the apocalyptic prédiction of the Médecine Man.
From yet another perspective, African American playwright Suzan-Lori Parks also addresses the burning scars left open by the horrors of slavery and its traumatizing expérience. The introductory essays in the anthology The America Play and Other Works precisely highlight the crucial relationship between playwriting and history. In her famous
Sisters Matsumoto had its world première as a co-production between the Berkeley Repertory Théâtre, the San José Repertory Théâtre, and the Asian American Théâtre Company in 1998-99, with Director Sharon Ott, set design by Kate Edmunds, lighting design by Nancy Schertler, costumes by Lydia Tanji, and music by Dan Kuramato. (Gotanda, No More Cherry Blossoms 4)
Burning Vision was produced by Rumble Théâtre in association with urban ink productions in April 2002. A national tour of Burning Vision took place in the Spring of 2003 and included the prestigious Festival des Amériques in Montréal and The Magnetic North Festival in Ottawa. Moreover, Burning Vision was nominated for the 2004 Govemor General's Award, short listed for The George Ryga Award, and awarded the 2004 Canada Japan Literary Award for excellence in Literary Arts.
(http://www.marieclements.ca/production.asp7production)
quote, Parks explains that a play and theater in gênerai is "a way of creating and rewriting history through the médium of literature" ("Possession" 4). "[B]ecause so much of African-American history has been unrecorded, dismembered, washed out," she claims that "theater, for me, is the perfect place to 'make' history-that is, because (Ibid. 4-5).
Through playwriting, Parks un-/dis-/re-member cultural memory even though, as she claims, ils "bones cannot be found" (5). In "Eléments of Style," Parks provides a guide for "readers, scholars, directors and performers [to] dive into an examination" of her plays. For her, "content détermines form and form détermines content" (7). As exemplified in her plays—The America Play, Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World, Topdog/Underdog—the form (her poetic language, the way the words are printed on the page, Parks's numerous personal conventions) becomes an intégral part of the story. Her expérimental non-linear drama explodes the traditional dramatic structure in search for new shapes, calling for and resisting new interprétations. For instance, The America Play^^^ focuses on the ironically named Foundling Father, Abraham Lincoln, in
search for the bones of the "great hole of history." Parks's pattem of répétition and revision, intégral to the jazz aesthetic, créâtes an incrémental refrain, imposes a weight and a rhythm, and posits several climaxes throughout her plays. Entire passages are repeated as characters (and audience members) refigure the words and expérience the situation anew. In this sensé, Parks's innovative playwriting re-invents dramatic literature by imagining new structures and rhythms (borrowed from jazz music in gênerai).
Most importantly for this chapter, Gotanda, Cléments, and Parks—who are but a few examples of an increasing body of playwrights on the contemporary North American
The America Play was first produced by New York Shakespeare Festival (George C. Wolfe Producer) and Yale Repertory Théâtre (Stan Wojevodski, Jr. Artistic Director) at the Joseph Papp Public Théâtre in New York City in March 1994.
scène—tell us potentially healing stories of trauma which inevitably impact on the présent. Like the playwrights cited above, I wish to show in the fîrst part of this chapter that African American August Wilson and First Nations playwright Tomson Highway
"(w)right history." Even though thèse authors corne from différent ethnie héritage—
African and Crée, respectively—Wilson and Highway re-collect cultural memories from moments of historical fracture. Writing in différent national context, the U.S. on the one hand and Canada on the other, thèse playwrights' traumatic historiés (re)create lieux de mémoire''' endowing them with the magie of theater and retuming them to us to be performed in an etemal présent.
***
One of the most intriguing characters in Wilson's historical cycle, Aunt Ester carnes
"memories [that] go way back:" l'm carrying them for a lot of folk. Ail the old-timey folk. l'm carrying their memories and l'm carrying my own. [....] l'm getting old. Going on three hundred years now" {Gem 1.4 43). Importantly, her date of birth in 1619
coincides with the begirming of slavery in British North America, when, as historian Peter Kolchin explains, a Dutch ship brought twenty enslaved Africans to the Virginia colony at Jamestown (3). Nearly 240 years passed until the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S.
Constitution officially ended slavery in 1865. As Kolchin argues, about 12 générations of African Americans survived and lived in America as enslaved people-direct descendants of the nearly 500,000 enslaved Africans imported into North America by European
traders (3).'^* In other words, in 1904—the timeframe where Gem of the Océan is set—
Aunt Ester has been "feeding the memories" of more tban 15 générations of Africans and their descendants on the American continent to overcome absence and erasure by actively maintaining a living African American cultural memory in the présent.
Setting each play at critical junctures of each décade of the twentieth century, August Wilson demonstrates that the historiés of so many générations of African Americans have an impact, as Harry Elam claims, "on the psychological trauma, the social dis-ease eating at the fabric of black American lives in the présent" (5). In this section, I explore how Wilson's cycle of plays in gênerai, and Radio Golf more particularly, "(w)right history" in Elam's sensé of the term. Besides raising people's consciousness to the importance of one's legacy—a form of cultural memory—Wilson's dramaturgy as a whole also exemplifies how "blood memor[ies]" (Wilson, qtd in Bigsby 211) indeed call for "the need to reconnect yourself {Ibid. 205). Relying on the theater as a powerfiil tool for change, Wilson demonstrates that even though African Americans have been uprooted from Africa, its "agrarian land-based society" {Ibid. 212) and ancestral culture some 370 years ago, in spite of the great migration from the rural South to the industrial North of the U.S.A. at the beginning of the last century, there is "a culture among black Americans that is uniquely theirs and which is capable of offering sustenance" {Ibid. 205).
Ironically, Kolchin skilfully argues, "[a]lthough Americans like to think that the United States was 'conceived in liberty,' the reality is somewhat différent" (3). Indeed, "almost from the beginning, America was heavily dépendent on coerced labor, and by the early eighteenth century, slavery, légal in ail of British America, was the dominant labor System of the Southern colonies" {Ibid.). In addition,
"most of the Founding Fathers were large-scale slave owners, including George Washington, 'father of his country,' Patrick Henry, author of the stirring cry 'Give me liberty or give me death,' and Thomas Jefferson, who proclaimed in the Déclaration of Independence that 'ail men are created equal'" (Ibid.).
For more détails on the origin and history of slavery in America, see, among others, Peter Kolchin's American Slavery and Sears Edmund Morgan's Amencan Slavery, American Freedom.
The last play of Wilson's century cycle, Radio Golf was premiered on April 22, 2005, at the Yale Repertory Théâtre (James Bundy, Artistic Director) in New Heaven, Connecticut. Unlike his nine other plays, which were performed at numerous régional theaters before they hit Broadway, Radio Golf only had two régional performances at Yale in the spring and at the Mark Taper in Los Angeles in September 2005. As Wilson wrestled with the cancer that eventually took him away in October of that same year, many critics wondered how much revising Wilson had the chance to do after the play's opening at Yale. In spring, Variety critic Frank Rizzo declared that "the work as it stands now seems extraordinary unformed, unfocused and overly complicated, with an
overabundance of thèmes crammed into a brisk (for Wilson) 140 minutes" (59). A year later, Variety critic Mike Giuliano stated that "although Radio Golf isn't as polished as one could imagine it with fiirther revising, it's still a more tightly written play than the sprawling récent installments in the late playwright's sociological saga" (40). As Helmer Kenny Léon explains in the Variety issue of October 2005, in the aftermath of Wilson's death, "Wilson had done significant work on Radio Golf while it was at the Taper,"
incorporating "major script changes during the final week of the run" and making of it, in David Esbjomson's opinion, "one of his best pièces" (qtd in Gordon Cox 89). And indeed, while the play may have opened to mixed reviews in the spring of 2005, Radio Golf had a successful run in January 2006 in S e a t t l e ' a n d later on in New York in May 2007 and eventually won the 2007 New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play o f 2 0 0 7 .
1 am very fortunate to have been able to attend the Seattle production of Radio Golf at the Seattle Repertory Théâtre, on January 25, 2006. The play was directed by Kenny Léon with set design by David Gallo, costume design by Susan Hilferty, lighting design by Donald Holder, sound design by Dominic Cody Kramers, original music was composed and arranged by Kathryn Bostic, production stage manager was Narda E. Aicom and the dramaturg Todd Kreidler. My understanding of the play is indebted to this expérience.
Located in the office of Bedford Hills Redevelopment in the Hill District of Pittsburgh in 1997, Radio Golf addresses the issue of cultural memory in the symbolic form of a redevelopment project involving the destruction of Aunt Ester's house on 1839 Wylie Avenue. The catalysist for the dramatic action of the play, the pending destruction of Aunt Ester's home coïncides with a dilemma présent in ail Wilson's plays: building on cultural legacy or tearing it down for the sake of progress. Central to this play, Aunt Ester's house metaphorically represents "a sanctuary" (56) in Black Mary's words in Gem of the Océan. Located in the heart of the Hill District, a site which as Margaret Booker claims, constitutes the cycle's "overriding 'lieu de mémoire^'''' (184), Aimt Ester's house w^ith its red-painted door literally stands for the Hill District's heart. Created by the intersection between memory and history, Pierre Nora explains, ''lieux de mémoire" are at once "natural and artificial, simple and ambiguous, concrète and abstract, they are lieux—
places, sites, causes—in three sensés: material, symbolic, and fiinctional" (14). More parti cularly, I want to argue, Aunt Ester's house corresponds to a "lieu de mémoire" par excellence, being material and symbolic, "compounded of life and death, of the temporal and the etemal" (Nora 15). While Aunt Ester's house stands for the ftindamental purpose of a "lieu de mémoire" i.e. "to stop time, to inhibit forgetting, to fix a state of things, to immortalize death, and to materialize the immaterial," Aunt Ester's "sanctuary" also thrives because of its "capacity for change," its "ability to resurrect old meanings and générale new ones along with new and unforeseeable cormections" (Nora 15). For African Americans, Elam argues, "whose social reality is conditioned by performance and for whom cultural expressivity has always been central, the 'synchronie remains of the présent' in sites of history and memory can prove pivotai" {Past as Présent 21). In Radio Golf the Hill District in gênerai, and Aunt Ester's home in particular, precisely
represent such transformative spaces where history and memory meet, héritage and progress collide.''*^
As the play's title Radio Go//"indicates, Wilson draws from the rules of golf and its étiquette to reflect on his characters' values towards life in gênerai, and cultural memory in particular. The play's five protagonists—Harmond Wilks, his wife Marne Wilks, his business partner and collège roommate, Roosevelt Hicks, his estranged cousin Elder Joseph Barlow, and the self-employed contracter and neighbourhood handyman. Sterling Johnson—présent contrasting attitudes towards the game of golf As Margaret Booker argues, thèse diverse beliefs are used by Wilson to "explore the dilemma of
entrepreneurial self-interest versus community welfare" (186). Indeed, while Harmond and Roosevelt are avid golfers, who believe that golf provided them with the necessary set of tools to succeed in life, the three other non-golfers view golf and its equipment as
"stuff easily replaceable in case of theft (Mame) or as useless in the grassless neighborhood of the Hills (Old Joe and Sterling Johnson).
Through the golfing metaphor, Wilson explores racial, social, and class relations in contemporary U.S. society. Golf, unlike other team-based sports, such as basketball for instance, is an individualistic game which until the 1960s was accessible to upper-class White people only. As Margaret Booker explains, the "Professional Golf Association did not admit blacks until Charlie Sifford, first black in the World Golf Hall of Famé and author of Just Let met Play (1992), pioneered the way in 1961" (185). In this sensé.
In this regard, my argument concurs with Margaret Booker and Harry Elam's understanding of Pierre Nora's '"lieux de mémoire" in relation to Wilson's Radio Golf. While Booker argues that the Hill district in particular functions as a ''lieu de mémoire" ("Radio Golf 183-84), Elam attributes this function to
"Aunt Ester's House, Harmond Wilks and Barlow's shared lineage, and Sterling Johnson's répétition without reproduction" (Radio Golf in the Age of Obama, forthcoming). As collective sites of cultural memory, thèse "lieux de mémoire" are informed, as Elam rightly suggests, with "Wilson's singular use of his own dramaturgical history, as well as his reliance on our memories of the earlier plays and figures such as Hambone, Sterling Johnson, Citizen Barlow, and Aunt Ester" (Ibid.).
Wilson examines liow contemporary African Americans-—from lower to upper classes—
have participated in and claimed their share of the American Dream. Wilson's Radio Golf specifically scrutinizes questions of assimilation of the Black bourgeoisie in connection to spiritual aliénation at the end of the century. More generally, is it possible for African Americans to reach social and économie advancement while preserving their history and cultural memory? While, according to Wilson, African Americans have wrestled with such questions since the Emancipation Proclamation, resolving this dilemma would open up new avenues for cultural healing and cultural réclamation in the présent.
The drama's conflict is powered by the two real estate developers, Harmond Wilks and Roosevelt Hicks, who are indeed, as Booker states, "eraser[s] of history and memory"
(187-188) par excellence. Roommates at Comell University, Harmond and Roosevelt represent the récipients of the expanding opportunities made available in the aftermath of the civil right movement and beyond. Both Harmond and Roosevelt stand for upper- middle class African Americans who were unrepresented in Wilson's cycle of plays so far. While they both believe that golf has provided them with the necessary tools to succeed in life, their approach to the golf game and its rules varies greatly. As the play gradually reveals, their visions towards golf symbolically reflect their opposed values towards life and cultural memory.
From the play's outset, even though Harmond and Raymond are business partners, Wilson clearly positions the two players in opposite teams. As the lights come up on a dusty office where unpacked boxes are scattered about the stage, the conversation
between Harmond and his wife, Marne, clearly situâtes Harmond as a man who values the legacy of history. Significantly, Harmond decided to settle the new construction office of Bedford Hills Redevelopment in the Hill District rather than in Shadyside, a more affluent area of Pittsburgh
Marne: This is it? This isn't anything like the way you described it. This ceiling's what you were so excited about?
Harmond: Look close. See the embossing on the tin.
Marne: Harmond, it looks raggedy.
Harmond: See those marks. It's ail hand tooled. That's the only way you get pattem like that. That tin ceiling is worth some money.
Mame: Then take it down and sell it. At least put some new paint on it, I wouldn't want to do business here.
Harmond: This is a construction office. It's net to impress anybody.
Mame: Your campaign office cannot look like this. (RG 7, bold emphases added) In this short opening exchange, Wilson highlights the importance of perception versus reality. The répétition of the verbs "to look" and "to see" establishes a distinction between appearance and truth, material and spiritual values. To Mame's question "What's wrong with Shadyside?" (RG 8), Harmond firmly answers: "l'm from the Hill District" (RG 8).
Likewise, situating almost ail his plays in the Hill District, Wilson, like his character Harmond, values the place where he was bom and where he grew up. Similarly, in his willingness and dream to revive the Hill District, Harmond—and by extension Wilson himself—demonstrate their passion about the historiés and memories associated to a spécifie geographical place and time.
A second significant example of Harmond's positioning towards cultural memory consists in his willingness to name the new apartment building complex after Sarah Degree, the "first black registered nurse in the city" (RG 10). '^^ While Mame and Roosevelt are in favor of the name "Model Cities Health Center" because "Nobody knows who Sarah Degree was" (RG 10), Harmond precisely argues the opposite: "That's
AU my quotations are borrowed from August Wilson's Radio Golf published by Théâtre
Communication Group in 2007, with a "Foreword" by Suzan-Lori Parks. Hereafter cited as RG with page références given parenthetically in the text.
'''•^ It is interesting to note that in real life Miss Sarah Degree was August Wilson's neighbor in the Hill District. As Wilson explains in his conversation with Dinah Livingston in "Cool August: Mr. Wilson's Red-Hot Blues," Miss Sarah Degree introduced him and numerous other chiidren from the
neighborhood to church on Sunday. As Wilson claims, "we need to honor" Miss Sarah Degree's good work and charity "in some ways: Miss Sarah Degree Gymnasyim, Miss Sarah Degree House for Wayward Women, [...] Miss Sarah Degree Child Care Center [...]" (45-46). Weaving personal memories within his cycle of plays, Wilson thus offers tribute to Miss Sarah Degree by remembering her in his last play.
why the Health Center needs to be named afiter her. So we remember" (RG 10, emphasis added). Clearly, thèse two examples position Harmond as someone for whom history and cultural memory matter. Therefore, from the play's outset, Harmond is depicted as a strong-willed individual who has the potential to see beyond false appearances.
Interestingly, thèse values are reflected in Harmond's ideas about the game of golf Like his place of origin, Harmond's golf clubs are an inhérent part of him: "You can't replace them. They are a part of me. I got those clubs when I started playing golf twelve years ago" (RG 31). Accordingly, to him the hand-tooled embossed tin ceiling of his new office or Aunt Ester's staircase carvings cannot be "taken down and sold," as thèse are irreplaceable. Similarly to his moral code, Harmond considers golf as a game of honour, providing those who can play "ail the rules they need to win at life" (RG 23). He is a man of integrity, believing in common sensé, foUowing légal procédures, respecting other people's rights, and faithfiil to his wife. Echoing the words of his grandfather, Ceasar Wilks, the first black policeman in the Hill District in Gem of the Océan, Harmond believes in playing by the rules: "You got to have rule of law. Otherwise it would be chaos" (RG 70). A "well-placed local leader" (RG 6), Harmond is running for Mayor and considers Martin Luther King, Jr. as his hero. Therefore, he insists on protesting against police violence in his candidacy speech because he views the law as a means to ensure social justice and protect individual well-being.
By contrast, Harmond's business partner in real estate development, Roosevelt Wilks enters the stage with a shocking statement resonating with class préjudice:
Roosevelt: I got to see my car. Thèse niggers be done stole the hubcaps.
Harmond: What hubcaps? You don't have any hubcaps. They quit making hubcaps in 1962.
Roosevelt: That's what l'm saying. They'll get mad there aren't any hubcaps and steal the wheels. One man asked me for five dollars. I told him five dollars if he watched my car. He want to know how long I was gonna be. Like he got something to do. He's just lazy. Ain't got to do nothing but stand there keep
the rest of the niggers from stealing my tires and my radio.
(RG 9, emphasis in original)
From the start, Roosevelt's racist assumptions about other African Americans position him at a strikingly différent place within the African American community. Mimicking the behavior and reiterating the stereotyped views of racist white individuals, Roosevelt recalls Fanon's observations of the alienating effects triggered by such a paradoxical positioning. As Fanon explains in détail in Black Skin, White Mask, in an attempt to escape a network of négative associations—embedded in the very culture and média as well as in the language itself—the black man dons a white mask and seeks to intemalize the language and values of the colonizer. Even though Fanon diagnosed thèse
"psychological scars" in another context and era, the necanisms of racism ruling a withened world sheds light on Roosevelt's aliénation. Such a reaction créâtes a fundamental disjuncture between consciousness and body, mask and skin, which profoimdly aliénâtes the black subject from himself and others. Interestingly, the theater program of the Seattle Repertory Théâtre features a black hand covered with a white golf glove holding a tiny house in the form of a toy. One again, according to Fanon, this image deeply resonated with the notion of masks and entrapment. The black skin of Roosevelt's hand, hidden by a white cover—i.e. the white golf glove—suggests endangering his cultural héritage represented in the symbolic house of Aunt Ester.'''^
Significantly, Roosevelt's hero is the world famous golf player Tiger Woods whose poster he puts on the wall at very beginning of the performance. Like Martin Luther King (whose poster Harmond hangs on the wall in response at the end of that same scène (RG 14)), Woods "stand[s] up and stand[s] out and fight[s] the power" as Suzan-Lori Parks
'•"^ Sec the Encore Arts Program cover of the Seattle Repertory Theater repreinted in Appendix 2, at the end of this thesis.
argues. (RG ix). However, thèse "two bright Hghts" (Parks, RG ix) may be leading African Americans in two opposite directions depending on how you interpret their actions. In Roosevelt's eyes, Woods embodies the realization of the American Dream. He confesses to Harmond:
I hit my first golf bail, I asked myself where have I been? How'd I miss this? I couldn't believe it. I fait free. Truly free. For the first time. I watched the bail soar down the driving range. I didn't think it could go so high. It just kept going higher and higher. I fait something lift off me. Some weight I was carrying around and didn't know it. I felt the world was open to me. [...] I keep looking for that feeling. I wish somebody had coma along and taught me how to play golf when I was ten. That'll set you on a path to life where everything is open to you. You don't have to hide and crawl under a rock 'cause you black. Feel like you don't belong in the world. (RG 13)
As is the case with Harmond, Roosevelt considers the game of golf as an empowering sport that can give kids "a chance at life" (RG 13). Golf can "set you on a path to life where everything is open to you" (RG 13). In this light, playing golf is synonymous with embracing a world of endless opportunities and experiencing a renewed sensé of freedom.
Nonetheless, besides the liberating interprétation of Tiger Woods' achievement and the potentially positive effects golf may offer its practitioners, Wilson nevertheless wams his audience about the dangers of blinding commodification. Indeed, as the rest of the play reveals, for Roosevelt playing golf has also meant to assimilate uncritically the materialistic values and racism of White U.S. society. If the city does not proceed to rid itself of its blight, potentially jeopardizing the redevelopment project, Roosevelt worries that "the bank will have the keys to my house and Arleen's new Saab. [...] They'll have to fight me over my Lexus" (RG 12). Similarly, as he admires Tiger Woods' poster, he wonders: "How much you think Tiger makes a swing? I wish Nike would buy a pièce of me" (RG 10). Furthermore, he is constantly in the process of printing business cards to distribute around him and especially on the golf course: "I got my promotion and don't have any cards. [...] Without them cards they'll think l'm the caddie" (RG 18).
Characteristically, as he quits his position of Vice-President of Mellon Bank to become one of Bemie Smith's partners in WBTZ radio station, he décides to have his office painted in "[l]ight money green" and has his "new business card on rush order" (RG 61).
A superficial proof of one's status in society, for Roosevelt business cards are the
necessary means to differentiate himself from other African Americans. It serves to prove his social positioning in a society that continues to discriminate him because of the color of his skin.
Paralleling Roosevelt's materialistic conceras in life, he envisions golf as a great opportunity to establish contact with potential business partners. Golf courses mainly consist in places where appearances matter, where one needs to impress. His goal on the golf course is to pass out his business cards and close deals, no matter what part he plays in them. Therefore, when Smith and other white businessmen invite him after a game of golf, Roosevelt naively revels in being "breaking out ahead of the pack at a table of millionaires [...] this is where l've been trying to get to my whole life" (RG 36). As Bemie wants to partner with him to buy WBTZ radio, Roosevelt does not care whether he is actually used by Bemie to act as the "black face" so that the latter can secure a
govemment minority grant to buy the local radio station at a reduced price. As Nike pays Tiger Woods to foster their brand, Roosevelt agrées to cash in some of the profit because
"This is business. This is the way it's done in America" (RG 37). While this may certainly be true in the U.S. and elsewhere, Wilson here raises issues of ethics. Can anything be done in the name of business?
In this play, Roosevelt may have adopted a "mask of résistance"''*'* by making it into the White men's world, by sitting at "the center of the table," and taking his revenge on ail the other black men who were previously segregated to the positions of caddies. As Roosevelt claims, "There was a time they didn't let any blacks at the table. You opened the door. You shined the shoes. You served the drinks. And they went in the room and made the deal" (RG 37). And indeed, as a graduate from Comell University and the Vice- president of Mellon Bank, Roosevelt's position in society surely attests to positive developments in the économie and social advancement of African Americans in contemporary America. In this sensé, Roosevelt' success in American society, like Harmond's, émerges as positive and empowering.
Nonetheless, in Radio Golf and throughout his entire cycle, Wilson underlines the danger of blindingly celebrating this social and économie success to the point of forgetting or even denying one's cultural héritage. As Mike Giuliano argues in his performance review of Radio Golf, "[t]he forceful point of Wilson's play is that material success comes at a spiritual priée" (40). Reminding us of other characters from Wilson's plays, such as Levée in Ma Rainy 's Black Bottom or Boy Willie in the Piano tesson,
Roosevelt's arguments trigger questions of history and cultural memory. Like Roosevelt in Radio Golf, Levée and Boy Willie fail to acknowledge and encompass their collective past. Consequently, they are unable to reach spiritual re-connection in the présent and for the ftiture. In Ma Rainey, Levée cannot appreciate the significance of Ma Rainey's
metaphorical old traditional blues, which eventually leads him to murder a black brother,
In his study entitled Sears of Conquest/ Masks of Résistance: The Invention of Cultural Identities in African, African-American, and Caribbean Drama, Tejumola Olaniyan explores the notion of mask with regard to performative identity through the works of Wole Soyinka, Le Roi Jones/Amiri Baraka, Derek Walcott and Ntozake Shange. For more détails, the reader can tum to Olaniyan's examination of the multiple "agones, scars and masks" that replète the realm of the social in a world where discourse "is not monologic but multiple and most often dispersed and contradictory" (4).
Toledo. Similarly, in Piano Lesson, Boy Willie fails at first to understand the value of his blood memory represented in the piano and the slave carvings on its wooden legs. It is not until his sister, Bemiece, décides to play it again, conjuring the White man's ghost of Sutter, that Boy Willie start to encompass the true meaning of his ancestors' legacy.
In Radio Golf, blinded by the wealth of opportunities open to him, Roosevelt
similarly fails to understand the spiritual value of Aunt Ester's house and its significance for African American cultural memory in the présent. Ail Roosevelt can see is a
"raggedy-ass, rodent-infested, unfit-for-human-habitation eyesore, that they should have tore down twenty-five years ago" (RG 48). In the play's second Act, the diametrically opposite opinions between Harmond and Roosevelt build to a climax. At the opening of Act II, Harmond reveals that he has visited Aunt Ester's house. He not only marvels at the house's beautiful and unique architecture: "I couldn't believe it. [...] There's a huge stained-glass window leading up to the landing. And the staircase is made of Brazilian wood with a hand-carved balustrade. You don't see that too often" (RG 61). Harmond has also started to perceive the magical aura of Aunt Ester's sanctuary: "You should feel the woodwork. If you run your hand slow over some of the wood you can make out thèse carvings. There's faces. Lines making letters. An old language. And there's this smell in the air" (RG 62). Clearly reminiscent of the carvings on the piano legs in Piano Lesson, the enigmatic faces and letters belonging to an old language can resurrect the ancient power of blood memories for those whose soul is not completely corrupted by capitalist values. To Harmond, "the air in the house smells sweet like a new day" (RG 62)
underlying a positive potential awakening. This realization and the confirmation that Old Joe still owes the house—as it was sold to Wilks property illegally—motivate Harmond's décision to alter the "plan." They suggest an alternative which would préserve the house by building around it.
On the contrary, Roosevelt, keeping in Une with his individuahstic and materialistic concems wants to "stick to the plan" (RG 63). "Look at this. AU the money's lined up.
We got contracts with Whole Foods and with Starbucks and Bames & Nobles" (RG 63).
To him, ail the specificities of the "ugly-ass house" (RG 62) are "shit" that "people don't like anymore" (RG 61). Significantly, in Roosevelt's mind, the smell of hope for a better fiiture can only be the smell of "mothballs. People used to throw mothballs ail through the old shit. They'll stink up the air like that" (RG 62). Interestingly, Roosevelt associâtes the past with moths and mothballs. Literally, moths are linked to the idea of slow but sure decay, eating clothes and creating holes in them. Symbolically then, Roosevelt's vision of the past in gênerai and cultural memory in particular recall the same visual images:
préservation stinks as the past, slowly forgotten and disintegrated, fiill of holes, is listed for démolition.
Roosevelt's response to Harmond's marvelling at the craft of Aunt Ester's mystical house—"Ail that's listed in the démolition contract. They have salvage rights. That's why we got a good price on the démolition" (RG 61)—not only reveais the tremendous divide that by now séparâtes the two old friends, but also raises more gênerai concems about architectural héritage and conservation in gênerai. One could wonder in what ways U.S.
policies regarding urban development may in fact reflect deeper national core values. On the one hand, U.S. permissive laws grant enormous freedom to real estate—an idéal indeed inscribed in the Constitution. On the other, however, thèse same laws nevertheless raise questions regarding préservation of héritage.'''^
Clearly, a study of urban redevelopment policies falls outside the scope of this thesis. Nonetheless, the gênerai tendencies are worth commenting upon, especially in the context of this play. In what spécifie cases should a house be saved from démolition and on the account of which spécifie reasons? In Belgium, for instance, real estate deveiopers certainly struggle with countless laws protecting a city's héritage. In many cases, houses or buildings are listed for préservation, often transformed into muséums, as thèse are deemed an important part of one's héritage and identity. Moreover, most new constructions
