This study investigated four black plays that were produced on Broadway and Off-Broadway between 1969 and 1981. The study asserts that playwrights can be rhetors and that their works can have wide persuasive appeal. The plays chosen represented critically acclaimed works which had the potential to reach a wide and disparate audience. Each play was produced in at least one other medium outside the New York legitimate stage. / Additionally, the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s had a profound influence on black theatre. The movement proclaimed that art be functional. The revolutionary playwrights of this period created plays whose function was to develop a revolutionary and nationalistic consciousness through their plays. The possibility for incompatibility of philosophic thought seemed likely to exist between the black playwright whose plays are produced for the integrated world of the commercial theatre and the black playwright whose work is produced to address black audiences exclusively. This seeming incompatibility led to the formulation of the following research questions: (1) To what extent do these plays conform to or reject the ideology of the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s? (2) What social issues do these plays raise? (3) What rhetorical strategies can be found in the works of these playwrights? / The study focuses on rhetorical and critical analysis. The plays were examined to determine strategies employed to address a black audiences and to appeal to general audience as well. Aristotelian theory of modes of proof and types of discourse were used to determine the rhetorical structure of the plays. / The study provides an overview of the history of the professional black playwright in the United States in order to place the plays in an historical and social perspective. Additionally, production data on all the plays is provided, and detailed synopses of the works are also given. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 46-09, Section: A, page: 2486. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1985.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_75637 |
| Contributors | DAVIS, RONALD O., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 263 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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