Our play attempts to take up residence within the solitude of our greatest poet. This time the 4th wall is absolute. You can see her, but for her you are never here. (And at no time can the actress playing Emily show any awareness of an audience.) This is a play about what happens inside a mind when no We is any longer present. As such it is, of course, opposed to the contemporary dogma that all is public—even our deepest inwardness. Such is the primary contemporary dogma whereby the tragic is denied, avoided, exorcised. For Emily Dickinson the opposite was the only worthy pursuit. Thus, here solitude remains inviolate, unbroken, sovereign—in keen and quivering ratio of ecstasy-anguish— and sumptuous despair. The entire play takes place inside her head—voicing that a concession to theatrical representation. Many stories are told of the life Emily Dickinson. But none about what happened in a room alone at night when there were only words—and her intractable will engaged in a drama where psyche, poetry, sexuality are identical.
A profound, challenging, wide-ranging book, back in print for a new generation
This book explores the complex relationship between art and politics to develop a psychoanalytic critique of the impact that the current political climate is having on all artistic endeavour. Starting with an analysis of the censorship of the play My Name Is Rachel Corrie, “Art and Politics” shows how all art that challenges the mainstream is suppressed or distorted to suit the politics of our time — one that will not recognize the contradictions of capitalist society.
How does religious fundamentalism assault our psychological and cultural well-being? In what ways is the domestic terrorism practiced by the Bush Administration a greater threat to our way of life than any danger from outside our borders? Answering these and related questions takes us to the heart of the psychosis that defines the Bush Administration as sign and symptom of a disorder that characterizes American society today.
An attempt to know the psychological truth of what happened to JonBenét Ramsey and to use that knowledge as the basis for discussion of what the Ramsey case reveals about conflicts central to American society.
A demonstration of how artistic cognition can be used to interrogate and transform a particular discipline — in this case History — thereby liberating a knowledge of its subject which that discipline has thus far been unable to attain.
Through a detailed reading of five great modern American plays — The Iceman Cometh, A Streetcar Named Desire, Death of a Salesman, Long Day's Journey into Night, and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf — Walter A. Davis calls for a more penetrating look at drama and its psychological impact on the audience.