| Chapter 1: | Theorizing Contemporary American Drama |
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Bob gets the draft notice, addressed to “Job” in a typo, and in one scene students go off to the march, Vietnam seems just to be part of the background of the time; but in fact the war is the unstated center of the play. Like that war, what is real and what is not real—issues that divide with no seeming certainty for the audience about either side—parallels the issues concerning the war at that time.
In The Taking of Miss Janie (1974), Ed Bullins similarly toys with audience expectation, dealing with racial issues rather than with Vietnam. The play opens with Janie’s monologue accusing Monty of rape: “For such a long time I thought of you as one of my few friends. A special friend, really. Do you understand that, Monty? … My special friend … And now you rape me … you rape me!” (200). Monty concludes the two-page opening scene: “Shut up, I said! … I’ve wasted too much love and caring on you already. From the first moment you met me you knew it would come to this … And you’ve got the nerve to cry and act like this” (201). The audience can only conclude that he is a heartless abuser, and when the play then fades to flashback through their relationship since the late 1960s, one assumes that the cause of this rape will be revealed.
But when the play reaches the last scene, back in the present, a very different construction appears, as the scene seems to be one that precedes the opening: