On The Exploration For Self-Identity In August Wilson's Plays

August Wilson (1945-), a black dramatist who has taken upon himself the task of dramatizing the experience of African Americans in the twentieth century through a series of plays, stands out as the most important and exciting voice in the 1980s American theatre. The well-known New York Times critic Frank Rich regards Wilson as a major find for contemporary American theatre. Some other critics even consider him to be another most acclaimed playwright that America has ever produced since Eugene O'Neill, Tennessee Williams, and Arthur Miller.With the publication and performance of Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (1985), Fences (1987), Joe Turner's Come and Gone (1988), The Piano Lesson (1990), Wilson has been so phenomenally successful in his project that he wins numerous prestigious awards like Pulitzer, New York Drama Critics Circle award, and Tony Award. Through his project, the playwright intends to focus on the important issues confronting black Americans for each decade in the twentieth century. His cycle of plays serves not only as a panoramic record of black history over past hundred years but also as an encouragement for African Americans to trace back their historical experiences. Indeed, the theme that surges through Wilson's plays is the need for black Americans to forge anew their identity that is at once African and American by way of embracing their racial past.August Wilson's greatest contribution to the American theatre lies in his exploration for African Americans' self-identity through his broad artistic vision and new dramaturgy. Having inherited the artistic techniques and skills of those forerunners in various artistic fields, the playwright ingeniously develops them and constructs his new dramatic style. As a black dramatist, he insists that his literary creation be based on black tradition. He manages to follow this in the formation of his new dramaturgy. Generally speaking, Wilson's distinctive style is a creativecombination of different black traditional forms like the blues music, storytelling and metaphoric language. It is no exaggeration to say that all Wilson's literary work is the quintessence of black oral tradition. With the help of this nontraditional dramatic structure, Wilson succeeds in striving for a way to identity for his fellow African Americans.This thesis, therefore, aims to make a tentative analysis of the playwright's exploration for black Americans' self-identity through new dramaturgy. The main body consists of four chapters.Chapter One first points out that the playwright has been much influenced by various merits from those forerunners like the four "Bs" — the Blues, African American writer Imamu Amiri Baraka, African American painter Romare Bearden, and Argentinean short story writer Jorge Luis Borges. August Wilson inherits their artistic techniques or spiritual ideas in the course of his playwriting. Then, it focuses on the playwright's creative development of these virtues and the eventual formation of his own distinctive dramatic style, which just timely answers the call for a balance between form and content and the vernacular theory in the study of contemporary African American literature.Chapter Two discusses the function and the significance of the blues music throughout Wilson's literary creation. Lloyd Richards, Wilson's frequent director and collaborator, has said that he handles Wilson's plays as if they were music. The employment of the blues music helps establish the emotional context, give the structure, and infuse the content of Wilson's cycle of plays. Thus the most pervasive theme of these plays is revealed and emphasized; the audience can both watch and hear all the plays.Chapter Three is intended to analyze another dramatic device that Wilson manages to employ in his drama — storytelling. Having juxtaposed fact with fiction, past with present, the strategically storytelling device makes great contributions to a deep exploration for the historical information, the black people's response, and even the theme expansion throughout Wilson's playwriting.Chapter Four focuses on Wilson's employment of metaphorics in his theatrical creation. The playwright himself claims that metaphor is the very idea that distinguishes his playwriting from those in contemporary American theatre. By analyzing the fabric and the duality of metaphorics, this chapter provides an effective clue for a better appreciation and evaluation of Wilson's beauty of language and his motivation for creation throughout his cycle.To sum up, my study intends to show that August Wilson establishes himself as a conspicuous figure in the American theatre due to his new and creative dramaturgy in his playwriting. Since Wilson has been so new a voice in contemporary African American theatre, there are not many people who do researches on or even are familiar with him in our country.The originality of this thesis lies in that by systematically analyzing the distinctive writing style and its combination with the content of plays, it reveals the playwright's deep exploration for black Americans' self-identity and even his daring pursuit for artistry.