Dutchman
by LeRoi Jones

Name: Dutchman
Brand: LeRoi Jones
SKU: 9780688210847
Rating: 3.81 (3301 reviews)

Off-Broadway

Highlights

Female

Male

One Act 75 mins 1960s Role(s) for Black Actor(s) Interior Set Contemporary Costumes/Street Clothes

Awards & Recognition

Obie Award

Winner! 1964 Obie Award for Best American Play

Synopsis

Dutchman is an emotionally charged and highly symbolic version of the Adam and Eve story, wherein a naive bourgeois Black man is murdered by an insane and calculating white seductress, who is coldly preparing for her next victim as the curtain comes down.

The emotionally taut, intellectual verbal fencing between Clay (a Black Adam) and Lula (a white Eve) spirals irrevocably to the symbolic act of violence that will apparently repeat itself over and over again.

Jones/Baraka's play is one of mythical proportions, a ritual drama that has a sociological purpose: to galvanize his audience into revolutionary action.

Published in tandem with The Slave .

Press Reviews

"What resonates here... is the sense that entrenchment and political corruption are timeless."
— Philly Stage

Characters

Character	Gender	Age	Description
Grace His white ex-wife.	female	—	His white ex-wife.
Easley Grace's current husband. A white professor.	male	—	Grace's current husband. A white professor.
Walker Vessels A Black American poet.	—	—	A Black American poet.