Self Reconstruction -- The America Play and Topdog/Underdog Under Performance Studies

Yixuan Li

《International Journal of Social Science and Education Research》 4卷11期 (2021/11) Pp. 379-385

https://doi.org/10.6918/IJOSSER.202111_4(11).0059

摘要

Suzan Lori Parks (1963-) is an American playwright, musician, and novelist who won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2002 for her work Topdog/Underdog (1999), becoming the first African‐American female writer in American history. In virtue of Richard Schechner's theory of Performance Studies, this thesis tries to interpret Parks's ＂Lincoln Act＂, The America Play and Topdog/Underdog in social performance and aesthetic performance, and explore how the self is reconstructed in performance. Parks investigates the relationship between the self and role and points out the significance of performance in self‐development, as well as in social advancement. Therefore, analyzing Parks's plays under Performance Studies has both academic value and social relevance.

關鍵字

Suzan Lori Parks ； The America Play ； Topdog/Underdog ； Richard Schechner ； Performance Studies

參考文獻

R. Isaac. Social Dramas, Shipwrecks, and Cockfights: Conflict and Complicity. Social Performance: Symbolic Action, Cultural Pragmatics, and Ritual (2006): 146-167.

A. Paige. Mcginley. Reviewed Work(s): The African American Theatrical Body: Reception, Performance, and the Stage by Soyica Diggs Colbert, Theatre Journal, vol. 65 (2013): 298-299.

D. Guy. The Society of the Spectacle (Aldgate Press, The United Kingdom 2005).

E. K. Harrison. Bang, Bang, Mr. President: Re-Visioning Presidential Assassination on The American Stage (Ph.D., University of Colorado at Boulder, The United States 2012).

P. Suzan-Lori. “Possession.” The America Play and Other Works (Theatre Communications Group, The United States 1995), p.3-5.