Playing for high stakes : theatricality, power, and the human condition in George F. Walker's drama
Date
1995
Authors
Schoenhoff, Steve
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Abstract
George Walker's exaggerated style has elicited both condemnation and praise from critics who are divided on the merits of such an approach. A focus on style, while valid, neglects Walker's consistent thematic concern with power, specifically the power within human relationships. This paper will, therefore, examine Walker's use of exaggeration as a manifestation of his thematic concerns with power.
The first chapter argues that two early plays, Bagdad Saloon, Beyond Mozambique and demonstrate Walker experimenting - both in the themes of his drama and in his own dramatic technique - with power as an ability to attract attention. In the dramatic personae of each play, an overabundance of famous individuals not only guarantees viewer attention, it also precipitates a chaotic power struggle between the needs of the individual for recognition, and the needs of the community for order. These early plays demonstrate they way in which Walker's desire as a playwright to make "connections" (interview, 74) with his audience manifests itself as an exploration of the links between staging and power.
The second chapter examines a shift in focus from the famous to the authoritarian in Zastrozzi, the Master of Discipline. Through his violent theatricality, Zastrozzi dominates all other characters, generating a fear of powerful individuals, while simultaneously stimulating the community's need for order at any cost. The chapter will consider Walker's movement away from borrowed characters toward a personal style described as "high stakes realism" (Interview, 71), a dramatic technique that attempts to be both overblown and realistic. Zastrozzi's abuse of physical power is compellingly visible, seducing the audience, on stage and off, into witnessing his crimes with a degree of fascination, even pleasure. Walker's "realism" springs from
a "high stakes" visibility that implicates the community in Zastrozzi's crimes by revealing a powerful need within the community for the leaders they both create and fear.
The final chapter follows Walker's development through Criminals in Love and Better Living. Walker's "high stakes realism" continues to narrow its focus by examining the exaggerated emotions found in the modern family. In these later plays, the absence of the father creates a power vacuum, allowing the emotional needs of the community to dominate the stage. The paradoxical conjunction of fear and need in the relationship between individual and community
continues, becoming central to Walker's assessment of the "human condition" (Criminals 11). As his work matures, it becomes increasingly obvious that it is this realistic, yet paradoxical condition that drives Walker's characters to such exaggerated behavior.