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BLACK PLAYWRIGHT LOOKS AT WHITE AMERICA   NESS

become an American radical."  Sidney Brustein is concerned with the question of what it takes to change a liberal, an ordinary, relatively comfortable, educated middle-class Jewish liberal into a radical.

The play is about this kind of change as it happens to Sidney Brustein.  The drama is developed along the lines of two basic themes, the theme of Sidney's relationship to his wife, Iris, and the times of his involvement in the election campaign of a local reform candidate named Wally O'Hara.  Sidney and Iris love each other, but Iris does not share his interest in politics, which she considers naive, nor does she respect his restless roaming from one job or business enterprise to another.  Also, she resents his paternalism and his self-righteousness, which, among other things, have reduced the circle of their friends to a small group of men very much like Sidney himself.  Furthermore, she feels that her present life is leading nowhere.  She tells him, "And now something is happening to me, changing me.  Since we've been married....You know what I want, Sidney?  I am twenty-nine and I want to know that when I die more than ten or a hundred people will know the difference.  I want to make it, Sid.  Whatever that means and however it means it."  Their marriage is quite strained.

Sidney does not take her seriously, much as he does not take seriously her sister Mavis, or his black friend Alton Scales, who wants to marry Iris's other sister, Gloria, but who does not know (because Sidney, under pressure from Iris to keep quiet, does not tell him) that Gloria makes her living from prostitution.  However, in spite of his rigidity toward others, Sidney is basically a compassionate man who cares deeply about life and about other people: he is critical, but never cruel; and his critical attitude is more than likely to emerge when someone says to him, as Iris does at one point while they are discussing a social issue, "Who cares?"  Here, Sidney shouts back, "Is that all you can ever say?  Who cares, who cares?  Let the damn bomb fall, if somebody wants to drop it....Well, I admit it: I care!  I care about it all.  It takes too much energy not to care.  Yesterday I counted twenty-six gray hairs on the top of my head-all from trying not to care."

This is the kind of feeling that allows Sidney to be persuaded into joining Wally's campaign.  Once involved, he pursues the political activity wholeheartedly, to the extent of donating his home as campaign headquarters and hanging a large "VOTE REFORM" sign in his window.  And to everyone's surprise Wally wins.

But the very energy of Sidney's elation at this victory turns against

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Transcription Notes:
---------- Reopened for Editing 2024-02-14 16:40:25 ---------- Reopened for Editing 2024-02-14 17:59:13