Dramaturgical Analysis -
August Wilson's Ma Rainey's Black Bottom
Dramaturgical Analysis - Refined Eight Questions:
Here are the eight questions for your ready reference.
1. How has August Wilson chronicled the positive reality of the Black American experience in the 20th century?
2. In what ways does Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom as a play about the Blues fit into the continuity of the Pittsburg Century Cycle?
3. Is there a definitive struggle between two signature Black musical traditions (the blues and jazz) in the play?
4. How do the characters, as individuals, interact with one another throughout the play?
5. Does each character represent a different perspective on the practical rules of everyday economic struggle as well as symbolically embodying the musical instruments each one plays? If so, how is each strand interwoven into each character’s expression?
6. Is a new mythology developed in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom for the Black American experience that provides meaning in the spaces of Black American life as a part of the human condition? If so, how does Wilson manifest his new mythology in this play?
7. Does the play’s climax provide a point of view on the Black American experience for the audience?
8. How does Wilson resolve the characters’ conflicts?
Possible conclusions:
Are the lives of the characters improved or destroyed by another or by circumstance?
Are their conflicts resolved, through a process of restoration…or are they replaced with another conflict?
Are they separated by life and/or death?
Is Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom a ghost story?
Does the play end punctuated by fate or destiny?
Is there a transcendence of character in the play through the dramatic action of another?
Cite in-text and end source (APA).
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Paragraph Template
Introduction - Paper Structure (P 1):
Sentence Zero (P 1) = Key statement about Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.
This is a macro statement about the play’s ethos. It becomes the point of focus for the entire paper and leads your discussion of the play, which is distilled and mirrored in the conclusion paragraph.
Sentence One (P 2) = Universal defining statement of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom’s specific contribution to the expression of positive Black life experience in the 20th century.
Answer: 1. How has August Wilson chronicled the positive reality of the Black American experience in the 20th century?
Sentence Two (P 3) = This needs to be an analytical revelation of why the play is set in Chicago and how it portrays a deeper assessment of the ultimate thought endeavor of the play - a play voiced as a musical expression of cultural life expressing the world of the characters in and through the blues.
Answer: 2. In what ways does Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom as a play about the Blues fit into the continuity of the Pittsburg Century Cycle?
Sentence Three (P 4) = Does music act as a metaphor for character in the play? If so, which character (and musical tradition) emerge as the protagonist and the antagonist in the play Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom?
Answer: 3. Is there a definitive struggle between two signature Black musical traditions (the blues and jazz) in the play? Which characters are most associated with those two traditions?
Sentence Four (P 5) = Explore and identify how the characters portray the diverse experience of the Black American experience in real time and space throughout the play’s performance, especially through language, dramatic actions and conflicts? What is communicated through words, storytelling, the music, and the non-verbal (the subtext of the play’s dramatic action)?
Answer: 4. How do the characters, as individuals, interact with one another throughout the play?
Sentence Five (P 6) = Explore how August Wilson sets up and delivers his final coda on the ‘music of life’. How is this song conveyed in the title of the play? What is the relationship of death to the song of life? How does it manifest in the dual representations of the economic struggle and musical expression?
Answer: 5. Does each character represent a different perspective on the practical rules of everyday economic struggle as well as symbolically embodying the musical instruments each one plays? If so, how is each strand interwoven into the character’s expression?
Sentence Six (P 7) = Does the play satisfy the audience through its structural display of era, convention, class, race, gender, music and space? Explain why and how it delivers a unique experience to the audience and reader. This is your studied opinion and need to be fresh impressions after you have seen and digested the play – although keep it still in third person.
Answer: 6. Is the play a transformative experience for the audience?
Sentence Seven (P 8) = This paragraph should be the discovery paragraph that explicates how the play provides climaxes through the conflicts in the play. How does the conflict of the protagonist and antagonist, especially in the interweaving of conflicting desires, pursuit of freedom and expression of free will through music exhibit philosophical tensions and emergent musical ideas?
Answer: 7. Does the play’s climax provide a point of view on the Black American experience for the audience?
Sentence Eight (P 9) = Identify the overall affect of each of the characters on the lives of the other characters. Ultimately, consider if the music that is expressed in the lives of the characters also performs as a philosophical and praxical engagement. Do the conflicts of personal desire and the expression of musical traditions coalesce into a greater meaning of life for the audience?
Answer: 8. Possible conclusions:
Are the lives of the characters improved or destroyed by another or by circumstance?
Are their conflicts resolved, through a process of restoration…or are they replaced with another conflict?
Are they separated by life and/or death?
Is Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom a ghost story?
Does the play end punctuated by fate or destiny?
Is there a transcendence of character in the play through the dramatic action of another?
Cite in-text and end source (APA).
Decide if the play transcends time and place and delivers a deeper understanding of what it means to be human in a material world.
Conclusion –
Sentence 9 (P 10) = Conclusion & Resolution. Provide the solution(s) of the two musical signatures through the resolution of desire.
Explicate if the play reconciles the characters’ conflicts successfully? Analyze how Wilson handles the tensions he has devised.
Does he elect to end his play with theatrical poignancy, mystery, and/or emotional ambivalence?
Is praxis is portrayed and radical reflection is invoked?
The conclusion paragraph also sums up and distills the essence of the play’s ethos (deepening sentence one).
Glean these developed ideas from your introduction’s ten sentences and the subsequent (in order) body paragraphs.
Deepen and refine your own organic and original thought explicated in each sentence/paragraph (in order). Do not repeat the same wording of any single idea throughout the paper unless it is for a purposeful repetition and/or added emphasis. Select a final quote from the play or scientific theory as an intellectual or emotional punctuation to conclude your analysis. This is a micro statement that mirrors and deepens your macro analysis of the ethos of the play in the Introduction.