A Study Of The Defamiliarization In Suzan-Lori Parks’s Plays

In the 21st century’s African-American theatrical circles,Suzan-Lori Parks is a very important playwright who can’t be ignored.She is the second African-American figure who won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama after August Wilson and she is the first black female playwright who received this prestigious award.After August Wilson passed away,she has become a leading figure in the African theatrical circles.Her plays have been awarded many important awards in the American theatrical circles,supported by a number of funds,praised by drama critics,and studied by the academic researchers.Her plays have rich themes,profound connotations and creative techniques,which are the fundamental reasons for her to win so many important awards in American theatrical circles.In overseas countries,the research of Parks’s plays started a bit earlier.The academic results covering the introduction,comments,dissertation and monographs have been on the increase annually.On the contrary,the domestic research started later and the papers haven’t been published until 2006.As for the existing results home and abroad,although they have been on the increase gradually and enriched in the past two or three years,it is not difficult to find that most of the researches focus on some single theme of those award-winning works while lack the comprehensive and systematic studies.Some researches have been achieved by juxtaposing Parks’s works with others’ but lack the specialized analysis on her works In short,the current research lacks stereoscopic perspective on the content and art form.There has been no result from the perspective of defamiliarization.This dissertation focuses on the study of Parks’s nine plays including Todog/Underdog,The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World,Devotees in the Garden of Love,Red Letter Plays,Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom,Father Comes Home from the Wars,Venus,The American Play,Betting on the Dust Commander.It deals with dramatic scenes,plots and relations among performers,audiences and roles.Guided by Bertolt Brecht’s Theory of Defamiliarization,this dissertation conducts a comprehensive study on how Parks masters the essence of the Defamiliarization and realizes its artistic effects.The first chapter of this dissertation focuses on the defamiliarization of the dramatic scene in Parks’s plays.In Topdog/Underdog,Parks connects the stage with the reality through all bright lights and simple props;In The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World,Parks represents the history by reconstructing the stage space and remodeling the historical scene;In Devotees in the Garden of Love,using the messenger and television as the media,Parks makes the drama have a clear spatial perspective so that the dramatic scenes blended with virtual scenes and real scenes hinder the formation of the illusion.The second chapter concentrates on the defamiliarization of the dramatic plot in Parks’s plays.In Red Letter Plays,Parks resorts to the intertextuality with Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and the African American women’s actuality to create the plot.In Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom,Parks integrates the history and current situation of African American ethnic groups into the fragmented plot,and reintegrated scattered fragments to break the traditional mode of linear development.In Father Comes Home from the Wars,changing the basic form and number of members of the ancient Greek chorus,Parks lets the chorus intervene in the structure and influence the communication between the stage and the audience.The third chapter centers on the defamiliarization of the relations among the performers,audiences and characters.In Venus,Parks turned performers into insiders and outsiders of drama,allowing them to keep distance from their characters and audiences as well.In The American Play,Parks combines family stories with national history,and tries to change the passive state of audiences in the traditional model by utilizing the "Great Hole of History".In Betting on the Dust Commander,by applying the "Revision and Repetition" as their language strategy,Parks lets her characters embody her own intention,keep distance from the audience and stimulate the audience’s thinking so as to realize the defamiliarization.There is a great variety of themes in Parrkes’s plays including African-American history and.presence.Her plays intend to convey the altered and forgotten ethnic history to the audience,present the humble and embarrassing status quo to them.In the process of transmitting her intention,Parks tried to use multiple techniques to realize the defamiliarization.She plans to let the plays entertain the audience while make it more conducive to education:free the audience from the shackles of Aristotle’s aesthetics and motivate them to conduct the profound thinking by contacting the history and the reality actively.