A bust of John Steinbeck located on Cannery Row in Monterey, California, the setting of his 1945 novel Cannery Row.
|Born:||February 27 1902
Salinas Valley, California, United States
|Died:||December 20 1968
New York, New York, United States
|Magnum opus:||The Grapes of Wrath|
John Ernst Steinbeck (February 27 1902 – December 20 1968) was one of the best-known and most widely read American writers of the twentieth century. A winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962, he wrote Of Mice and Men (1937) and the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath (1939), both of which examine the lives of the working class and migrant workers during the Dust Bowl and subsequent Great Depression.
Steinbeck often populated his stories with struggling characters, and his fiction drew on real historical conditions and events in the first half of the twentieth century. His body of work reflects his wide range of interests, including marine biology, politics, religion, history, and mythology.
Seventeen of his works, including Cannery Row (1945), The Pearl (1947), and East of Eden (1952), went on to become Hollywood films (some even multiple times), and Steinbeck also achieved success as a Hollywood writer, receiving an Academy Award nomination for Best Story in 1944 for Alfred Hitchcock's Lifeboat.
Steinbeck was a socialist who, like many intellectuals of his era, idealized the working class and accentuated class divisions in his writings. His depictions of class conflict and exploitation of the poor were informed by genuine empathy toward victims of social injustice, yet provoked controversy. The social realism, psychological insight, and vividly drawn protagonists of his most influential work, The Grapes of Wrath, had a lasting impact on public attitudes toward migrant laborers and has been compared to Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, which significantly influenced popular attitudes toward slavery in Southern culture.
John Ernst Steinbeck was born in Salinas, California, of German American and Irish American descent. Johann Adolf Großsteinbeck (i.e. Grossteinbeck), Steinbeck's grandfather, changed the family name from Grossteinbeck to Steinbeck when he migrated to the United States. His father, John Steinbeck, Sr., served as the Monterey County Treasurer while his mother, Olive (Hamilton) Steinbeck, a former school teacher, fostered Steinbeck's love of reading and writing. During summers he worked as a hired hand on nearby ranches.
Steinbeck graduated from Salinas High School in 1919. He then attended Stanford University intermittently until 1925, then departing to New York City without graduating to pursue his dream as a writer. However, he was unable to get any of his work published and returned to California.
Steinbeck's first published novel, Cup of Gold, based on the privateer Henry Morgan's life and death, was published in 1929. The novel centers on Morgan's assault and sacking of Panama City, sometimes referred to as the "Cup of Gold," and the woman "fairer than the sun" reputed to be found there.
Steinbeck followed this with three further novels between 1931 and 1933. The Pastures of Heaven, published in 1932, consisted of twelve interconnected stories about a valley in Monterey, California, which was discovered by a Spanish corporal while chasing runaway American Indian slaves. In 1933 Steinbeck published two works; The Red Pony is a short 100-page, four-chapter novella, which recollects memories from Steinbeck's childhood. To a God Unknown follows the life of a homesteader and his family in California.
Steinbeck achieved his first critical success with the novel Tortilla Flat (1935), which won California Commonwealth Club's Gold Medal. The book portrays the adventures of a group of young men in Monterey who denounce society by enjoying life and wine before U.S. Prohibition in the 1920s. The book was made into a film of the same name in 1942, starring Spencer Tracy, Hedy Lamarr, and John Garfield.
Steinbeck began to write a series of "California novels" and Dust Bowl fiction, set among common people during the Great Depression. These included In Dubious Battle in 1936, Of Mice and Men in 1937, and The Grapes of Wrath in 1939.
Of Mice and Men is a novel written in the form of a tragedy play. The story follows two traveling ranch workers, George and the dim-witted but physically powerful itinerant farmhand Lennie, trying to work up enough money to buy their own farm. It encompasses themes of racism, loneliness, prejudice against the mentally ill, and the struggle for personal independence. Along with Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden, and The Pearl, Of Mice and Men is one of Steinbeck's best known works.
Of Mice and Men was critically acclaimed and the stage adaptation of the work was also a success, starring Broderick Crawford as Lennie and Wallace Ford as George. However, Steinbeck refused to travel from his home in California to attend any performance of the play during its New York run, telling Kaufman that the play as it existed in his own mind was "perfect," and that anything presented on stage would only be a disappointment. Steinbeck would ultimately write only two stage plays (his second was an adaptation of The Moon Is Down).
The novel was made into a movie three times, in 1939 starring Burgess Meredith, Lon Chaney Jr., and Betty Field, in 1982 starring Randy Quaid, Robert Blake and Ted Neeley, and in 1992 starring Gary Sinise and John Malkovich.
Steinbeck followed this success with The Grapes of Wrath (1939), based on newspaper articles he had written in San Francisco, and considered by many to be his finest work. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize in 1940 even as it was made into a famous film version starring Henry Fonda and directed by John Ford.
The success of The Grapes of Wrath, however, was not free of controversy, as Steinbeck's leftist political views, portrayal of the ugly side of capitalism, and mythical reinterpretation of the historical events of the Dust Bowl migrations led to backlash against the author, especially close to home. In fact, claiming the book was both obscene and misrepresented conditions in the county, the Kern County Board of Supervisors banned the book from the county's public schools and libraries in August 1939. This ban lasted until January 1941.
Of the controversy, Steinbeck himself wrote, "The vilification of me out here from the large landowners and bankers is pretty bad. The latest is a rumor started by them that the Okies hate me and have threatened to kill me for lying about them. I'm frightened at the rolling might of this damned thing. It is completely out of hand; I mean a kind of hysteria about the book is growing that is not healthy."
The film versions of The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men (by two different movie studios) were in production simultaneously. Steinbeck spent a full day on the set of The Grapes of Wrath and the next day on the set of Of Mice and Men.
Steinbeck divorced his first wife, Carol Henning, in 1943. He immediately married Gwyn Conger that same year, and had two sons, Thomas Myles in 1944 and John Steinbeck IV (Catbird), in 1946. They divorced in 1948. Two years later, Steinbeck married Elaine Scott, the ex-wife of actor Zachary Scott. They were married until his death in 1968.
In 1940, Steinbeck's interest in marine biology and his friendship with Ed Ricketts led him to a voyage in the Gulf of California, also known as the "Sea of Cortez," where they collected biological specimens. Steinbeck's narrative portion of this collecting expedition (with some philosophical additions by Ricketts) was later published as The Log from the Sea of Cortez, and describes the daily experiences of the trip. The full catalog of the marine invertebrates taken was also published as a biological catalog of the intervertebrate life of the Gulf of California. While it remains a classic in nature studies, it failed to find a popular audience.
Ricketts had a significant impact on Steinbeck as a social traveling companion and fellow researcher on trips to collect biological specimens. Steinbeck even based his character "Doc" in the novels Cannery Row and Sweet Thursday on Ricketts. Steinbeck's close friendship with Ricketts would end when Steinbeck moved away from Salinas when separating from his wife Carol.
During the Second World War, Steinbeck served as a war correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune. During the war, Steinbeck saw action in accompanying some of the commando raids of Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.'s Beach Jumpers program, which (among other things) launched small-unit diversion operations against German-held islands in the Mediterranean. As a war correspondent, Steinbeck would certainly have been executed if he had been captured with the automatic weapon which he routinely carried on such missions. These missions would help to earn Fairbanks a number of decorations, but as a civilian, Steinbeck's role went officially unrecognized. Some of Steinbeck's writings from his correspondence days were later collected and made into Once There Was A War (1958).
During the war, he continued to work in film, writing Alfred Hitchcock's Lifeboat (1944), and the film A Medal for Benny (1945), about paisanos from Tortilla Flat going to war. John Steinbeck later requested that his name be removed from the credits of Lifeboat, because he believed the final version of the film had racist undertones.
His novel The Moon is Down (1942), about the Socrates-inspired spirit of resistance in a Nazi-occupied village in northern Europe, was made into a film almost immediately. It is presumed that the country in question was Norway, and in 1945 Steinbeck received the Haakon VII Medal of freedom for his literary contributions to the Norwegian resistance movement.
After the war, he wrote The Pearl (1947), already knowing it would be filmed, and traveled to Mexico for the filming; on this trip he would be inspired by the story of Emiliano Zapata, and wrote a film script (Viva Zapata!, which was directed by Elia Kazan and starred Marlon Brando and Anthony Quinn.
In 1948 Steinbeck again toured the Soviet Union, together with renowned photographer Robert Capa. They visited Moscow, Kiev, Tbilisi, Batumi and the ruins of the Battle of Stalingrad. He wrote a humorous report book about their experiences, A Russian Journal, that was illustrated with Capa's photos. Avoiding political topics and reporting about the life of simple Soviet peasants and workers, Steinbeck tried to generate more understanding towards the Soviet people in a time when anti-Communism was widespread in the U.S. and the danger of war between the two countries was heightened. In the same year he was also elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Following his divorce of Gwyndolyn Conger, and the sudden, tragic death of his close friend Ed Ricketts, Steinbeck wrote one of his most popular novels, East of Eden (1952). This book, which he considered his best, traces the fortunes of two families of settlers, the Trasksand the Hamiltons—based on Steinbeck's maternal ancestry—and set in rural California in the years around the turn of the century. The novel is roughly adapted from the biblical story of Cain and Abel and follows to trajectory of lives of sharply contrasting values.
In 1952, Steinbeck appeared as the on-screen narrator of 20th Century Fox's film, O. Henry's Full House. Although Steinbeck later admitted he was uncomfortable before the camera, he provided interesting introductions to several filmed adaptations of short stories by the legendary writer O. Henry. About the same time, Steinbeck recorded readings of several of his short stories for Columbia Records; despite some obvious stiffness, the recordings provide a vivid record of Steinbeck's deep, resonant voice.
Following the success of Viva Zapata!, Steinbeck collaborated with Kazan on the theatrical production of East of Eden, James Dean's film debut. Steinbeck found the actor was arrogant, but nevertheless said that Dean was the perfect person to play Cal Trask.
In 1960, Steinbeck bought a pickup truck and had it modified with a custom-built camper top—rare for that day—and drove across the United States with his faithful poodle, Charley. In the sometimes comical, sometimes melancholic book, Travels with Charley: In Search of America, Steinbeck describes his journeys from Maine to Montana to California, and from there to Texas and Louisiana and back to his home in Long Island. In the work, Steinbeck reminisces about his lost youth and lost roots, and both criticizes and praises America on many levels. The restored camper truck is on exhibit in the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas, California.
Steinbeck's last novel, The Winter of Our Discontent, was written in 1961. In many of his letters to friends, he spoke of how this book was his statement on the moral decay of the U.S. culture, and it is quite different in tone to Steinbeck's amoral and ecological description of the innocent thievery of the protagonists of his earlier works such as Tortilla Flat and Cannery Row. The novel was critically savaged and commercially unsuccessful.
In 1962, Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize for Literature for his “realistic and imaginative writing, combining as it does sympathetic humor and keen social perception.” Privately, he felt he did not deserve the honor. In his acceptance speech, he said:
[T]he writer is delegated to declare and to celebrate man's proven capacity for greatness of heart and spirit – for gallantry in defeat, for courage, compassion and love. In the endless war against weakness and despair, these are the bright rally flags of hope and of emulation. I hold that a writer who does not believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature."
Steinbeck's literary background brought him into close collaboration with leftist authors, journalists, and labor union figures, who may have influenced his writing. Steinbeck was mentored by radical writers Lincoln Steffens and his wife Ella Winter, and through Francis Whitaker, a member of the United States Communist Party’s John Reed Club for writers, Steinbeck met with strike organizers from the Cannery and Agricultural Workers' Industrial Union.
Steinbeck complained publicly about government harassment. In a 1942 letter to United States Attorney General Francis Biddle he wrote "Do you suppose you could ask Edgar's boys to stop stepping on my heels? They think I am an enemy alien. It is getting tiresome". The FBI issued ingenuous denials that Steinbeck was not "under investigation." In fact, Steinbeck was indeed the object of intense FBI scrutiny, although not technically "under investigation," a term reserved in FBI parlance for investigation in connection with a specific crime.
Steinbeck was also screened for of his political beliefs by Army Intelligence during World War II to determine his suitability for an officer's commission. They found him ideologically unqualified. In later years, he would be criticized from the left by those who accused him of insufficient ideological commitment to Socialism. In 1948 a women's socialist group in Rome condemned Steinbeck for converting to "the camp of war and anti-Marxism." Then in a 1955 article in the Daily Worker his portrayal of the American Left was criticized.
In 1967, at the behest of Newsday Steinbeck went to Vietnam to report on the war. Steinbeck saw the Vietnam War as a heroic venture, and his sons both served in Vietnam prior to his death. Steinbeck visited one son on the battlefield (at one point being allowed to man a machine-gun watch position at night at a firebase, while his son and other members of his platoon slept).  His sympathetic portrait of the United States Army caused the New York Post to denounce him for betraying his liberal past, while Steinbeck biographer Jay Parini has suggested that Steinbeck's personal affection for Lyndon Johnson, whom he considered a friend, influenced his view of the war. Earlier, in September 1964, Steinbeck had been awarded the United States Medal of Freedom by President Johnson.
Steinbeck was a close associate of playwright Arthur Miller, author of Death of a Salesman and The Crucible. In the 1950s, Steinbeck took a personal and professional risk by standing up for his companion, who was held in contempt of the United States Congress for refusing to name names in the infamous House Un-American Activities Committee trials. Steinbeck called the period one of the "strangest and most frightening times a government and people have ever faced."
John Steinbeck died of a heart attack on December 20, 1968 in New York City. In accordance with his wishes, his body was cremated and an urn containing his ashes were interred at his family gravesite in Salinas. His third wife, Elaine was buried with him in 2004.
Like William Faulkner and Mississippi, Steinbeck was deeply associated with a specific region. Drawing from his experiences in Salinas Valley, California, and the migrations of laborers into California in the 1930s, Steinbeck composed fiction richly informed by local scene, speech, and history. He expressed special empathy for the downtrodden, those deprived of dignity and in extreme want, yet animated by emotions, hopes, and ideals that transcend class. Steinbeck dramatized the social upheaval of the Great Depression and Dust Bowl era, and criticized impersonal economic forces that divided society into haves and have-nots.
Steinbeck has been criticized both for his socialist political leanings and the unevenness of his fiction. In his lesser novels, comic episodes of promiscuity give way to socially dysfunctional behavior that is treated sentimentally, obscuring the moral import of the action. In his greatest works, notably The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden, Steinbeck explored contemporary social history with insight into human psychology and dramatic storytelling. On the strength of these works Steinbeck became known throughout the world, receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962.
"His place in [U.S.] literature is secure," reviewer Charles Poore wrote in the New York Times. And it lives on in the works of innumerable writers who learned from him how to present the forgotten man unforgettably."
Many of Steinbeck's works are often included on required reading lists in American high schools, as well as in other countries, notably in Canada and the United Kingdom. In the United Kingdom Of Mice and Men is one of the key English Literature texts used by the examining body. A study by the Center for the Learning and Teaching of Literature in the United States found that Of Mice and Men was one of the ten most frequently read books in both public high and independent schools.
All links retrieved May 23, 2018.
1951: Pär Lagerkvist | 1952: François Mauriac | 1953: Winston Churchill | 1954: Ernest Hemingway | 1955: Halldór Laxness | 1956: Juan Ramón Jiménez | 1957: Albert Camus | 1958: Boris Pasternak | 1959: Salvatore Quasimodo | 1960: Saint-John Perse | 1961: Ivo Andrić | 1962: John Steinbeck | 1963: Giorgos Seferis | 1964: Jean-Paul Sartre | 1965: Michail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov | 1966: Shmuel Yosef Agnon, Nelly Sachs | 1967: Miguel Ángel Asturias | 1968: Yasunari Kawabata | 1969: Samuel Beckett | 1970: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn | 1971: Pablo Neruda | 1972: Heinrich Böll | 1973: Patrick White | 1974: Eyvind Johnson, Harry Martinson | 1975: Eugenio Montale
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Drama – Drama guide and glossary
Drama conventions and terminology
Actor – This word normally describes a person who takes the role of one or more characters in a play to be performed to an audience. In process drama, where there is no outside audience, the word “participant” is normally used to describe the students making drama whether in- or out-of-role, and “actor” is used when they are using theatrical conventions to present images or scenes within the drama to others.
Blocking – In a theatre production, this refers to the plan of movements of the actors on-stage to ensure that the action is visible to the audience, and aesthetically effective. Traditionally, the director decides this, usually in advance. Nowadays, most directors work with actors to decide the blocking during rehearsals, though sometimes special effects and specific scenes have to be decided in advance for the sake of the stage manager or lighting designer. When primary children are performing, it is doubly important to work with the actors so that they can understand the need and motivation for moves, and contribute to the whole production.
Character – This defines a person (or other animated figure) in a dramatic context. It is a synonym for “role”, although sometimes it is used to denote roles of specific individuals (rather than more generic roles such as “journalist” or “scientist”). “Characterisation” refers to fleshing out a role until it is a realistic and believable character.
Chorus – This convention from ancient Greek tragedies can be very useful in performance work with young people as it ensures that all members of the group can play a useful role, and can introduce an element of ritual. The classic chorus uses words recited in unison and group movement in order to comment on the action. The chorus provides a break from the story, and can introduce ironic elements, especially if the chorus members have characters, not just a “shadowy” role (see Role-play - Twilight or Shadowy role). These characters could include, for instance, local townspeople who are implicated in the results of the main dramatic action, yet are powerless to change it.
Collage Theatre – This refers to performance that is constructed from a range of theatrical genres patched together, rather than a straightforward narrative that may or may not include dialogue. Collage theatre usually includes statements and readings, as well as visual and physical symbols.
Community Theatre – This is a generic term that has come to refer to plays and drama work taking place within very specific localities or ethnic groups to highlight their concerns, celebrate their identity, and provide a vehicle through which they can express themselves, occasionally in protest.
Context – In any drama lesson (or any drama event), there are a number of contexts that must be taken into account:
- the real context, that is, the real world of the participants, their lives, experiences, and relationships that they bring to the drama lesson
- the dramatic context, namely the fictional world of the drama and its characters.
Between these components is the context of the event (sometimes known as the performance context), which is the organisation of time and space that must take place to turn the classroom into the “special place” or theatre. The dramatic context is then created in this “special place” and the real context is temporarily suspended.
Contrast – This is a very important element of drama, both to keep the children interested and to make the drama powerful. There are some particularly significant dimensions of contrast within drama of which a good teacher will need to make use. These include: sound/silence; light/dark; real/unreal; movement/stillness; big/small movements; quick/slow; direct/indirect; light/heavy; sudden/continuous; smooth/jerky; and so on.
Costumes – Like props, costumes are optional, and should be minimal. They can help both teacher and students to create a more authentic sense of the context and setting; however, they can be a distraction or make the wearer feel more self-conscious and as though they are “acting” rather than experiencing the role. In this drama, costumes were the children’s idea and enhanced the ceremony.
De-roling (debriefing) – This is the process where actors step out of their roles and back to the real context. Children can usually do this more effortlessly than adults, as children do it in their own dramatic play all the time. That said, a general discussion at the end of a drama or a scene where you let the children talk freely is often all that is necessary to release residual tension. A thought-tracking circle (see Thought-tracking) can be a good intermediate step to help those students who are affected by a role longer than others, particularly if there have been emotional issues involved in the drama, such as family relationships or death.
Director – In a theatre production, the director is responsible for what the audience sees on stage; the interpretation of the play; rehearsing the actors and ensuring that their performances fit into the whole; and working with the designer and other experts (such as choreographers and fight arrangers) to create the most effective and powerful result.
Distance – See Framing.
Drama-in-education (DIE) – This term is synonymous with “educational drama” and “drama education” as a generic description. Like TIE (see Theatre-in-education (TIE)), the term was coined in England to narrowly define an approach to classroom drama based on process drama, the central use of role-play and active participation, and, usually, the exploration of social issues through drama.
Dramatic reconstruction - If a particular key moment has some mystery about it, or the stories of different characters contradict each other, you can stop role-playing, and ask the group to become actors in a “docu-drama”. In such situations, the group is given the task of re-constructing a moment based on the information that they have been given. If two or more sub-groups each have to reconstruct the same moment, this makes good discussion material through comparing the reconstructions. This technique was used three times in The Treasure of Trivandrum.
Dramaturge (dramaturgy) – You may occasionally come across this word, which has two alternative definitions in the theatre:
a.) A playwriting dramaturge helps a playwright to shape and structure his or her dramatic ideas into a theatrical script
b.) A production dramaturge helps the director to study the playscript, research its background, its context and the playwright’s life, and other productions of the play.
Whether or not you know the term, you will often act as one or other of these kinds of dramaturge in your class.
Dual affect – This phenomenon is an important aspect of the drama experience that the teacher must understand. A child (or any other actor) involved as a character in dramatic play or performance will emotionally exist in two worlds simultaneously: “inside” the role (identifying and empathising with the character and their situation), and “outside” (enjoying or analysing the sensation). Though sometimes deeply moved and emotional in a role, the normal player in a drama is always distanced enough to come back to real life at any time.
Empathy – This is the emotional quality of identifying with a character and a dramatic situation (or “standing in another’s shoes”), so that the participant feels and acts instinctively and unselfconsciously as that character.
Enrolling (Enrolment) – This is the process of building belief and identification with the role of the character being played. Occasionally it simply consists of giving the players a point of view and a task: “You are journalists about to interview local citizens. What questions might you ask to get a really good story for your program?” If the role demands deep empathy and passion, this must be painstakingly built, perhaps with preliminary exercises, in-role writing, or preparatory role-play in pairs. Whatever the depth, the teacher must always take care of, and allow enough time for, this component of the drama.
Five Ws - A simple schema to help plan the essentials of any new drama: What’s happening? Who is involved? Where and When is it happening? ...and the most important one, What’s at stake? The first four Ws provide the dramatic context, and the last provides the tension to drive the drama.
Focus – When the Five Ws have been decided upon, the drama needs to be focused to find a beginning and a frame for the action, so that the students work in a significant way rather than just enacting a story (see Framing).
Focus Question – This is the question that the drama sets out to answer, and the teacher must decide according to what learning outcomes are desired. In The Treasure of Trivandrum, the focus question was, “Who does the treasure belong to, and how would it best be used?”
Forum Theatre – This technique of participatory theatre was made popular by the Brazilian founder of Theatre of the Oppressed, Augusto Boal. Forum theatre involves a group of actors creating a scene that depicts oppression of some kind. The actors enact the scene several times to an audience, some of whom are invited to stop the scene at any point and then intervene as “spect-actors” by stepping into the role of the oppressed protagonist. The intervener tries to lessen or overcome the oppression by acting differently. If the intervention is far-fetched or the spect-actor behaves out of character, the audience is encouraged to shout “Magic!” and the scene starts again from where it was interrupted. Because of its simplicity and its capacity to spark lively discussion, this technique (or variants of it) is often used in the classroom.
Framing – The teacher (like any playwright) has to choose what part of the story or what story line is concentrated on to answer the focus question. This decision is known as framing. Framing provides the perspective through which the context or story is explored; this context is known as distancing. In the case of this pre-text, the teachers started “inside” the dramatic event with the opening of the treasure chamber, but then set most of the drama “on the edge”, enrolling the children and teacher as local Indian television journalists investigating and reporting on the findings and their implications.
Freeze – The word is used for a temporary stop in a drama. The teacher can “freeze” the action in order to add some instruction or negotiate with the participants, or to give the participants the opportunity to find out what is happening all round the room.
Freeze-frame (or Tableau) – This is a moment from a drama that has been created or frozen so that it can be examined closely. A freeze-frame allows the group or sub-groups to create a physical image to illustrate a particularly important moment in the drama that the class can look at, compare, and discuss. A brief time jump is a way of extending this to show what was happening thirty seconds before, and thirty seconds after. In Lesson 1, the first activity following the treasure hunt was to create a freeze-frame (a “news photograph”) of the opening of the temple.
Frozen effigy (sometimes called Living picture) – This useful technique starts with a prepared freeze-frame, which is slowly brought to life in stages, allowing the other participants to reflect on and interrogate the details as they slowly emerge. This technique was used twice, in Lessons 3 and 5, to explore the realities of child labour and to demonstrate what might have been inside the temple’s mysterious “Chamber B”.
Games – Games and other forms of warm-up (see Warm-ups) can be useful to get the students into the right frame of mind or energy for drama, but they are not drama, and they are not essential for a process drama. If a game is used, it should be thematically linked to the subject of the drama to provide a segue into the dramatic context. In an earlier version of this drama, the teachers played two treasure-seeking detective games. Though popular with the students, games can waste a considerable amount of time and, if overused, can eventually encourage students to feel that drama is trivial and merely about “just playing games”. Like props and costumes, games can be distracting.
Headlines playbuilding technique – This way of starting drama, or playbuilding, with older children quickly evolves from a general idea into a concrete and dramatic situation through the following stages.
1. Choose a topic with a problem or social issue involved. This involves breaking the class into groups of about 6–8 and asking them to identify an incident that encapsulates the topic, and a single moment from the incident that would be newsworthy. Ask the students to write the first paragraph and headline of a newspaper report of the incident and create the action photograph of the moment, as a freeze-frame (see Freeze-frame (or Tableau)). Be sure to stress that they should not over-think or “flesh out” the incident too much. All actors should be in the “photograph” except for one, who will be the reader/scribe.
2. Work with each group in turn. Ask the group to assume the freeze-frame and be ready to hold it for a long time. Ask the scribe to read the headline and paragraph, while the audience looks at the “photograph”. Introducing thought-tracking (see Thought-tracking (or Tapping in)) at this point can enrich the experience. Then lead the audience in posing all of the questions that this story and photograph encourage them to ask about the situation. Don’t be afraid to ask the obvious, such as Why was he lying to her?, or What happened next?, and then probe the students to ask more significant questions, such as, What would he go home that night and tell his family?, or Why might somebody be driven to behave so badly?. However, do not let the performing group answer any of the questions, as this will close some useful doors.
3. Give all groups the opportunity to be performers and interrogating audience. Ask students to sit down with their list of questions, each of which could start a play in itself, and choose just one (or at most, two linked questions) that they are all interested in. Then ask the students to identify one character who, if we look more closely at that character, might begin to shed light on that question. Then ask students to identify a scene that incorporates that character, away from the incident, that might shed some light on the question. The character does not have to be one who was featured directly in the first story or freeze-frame. As a result, you have established your Five Ws, your hook, and your focus question!
Hot-seat – This is where players have a need to question or interrogate a character, to find out information, to discover why the character behaved in a certain way, or to offer the character advice. This is a good opportunity for the teacher-in-role, or one of the characters being played by a group member, to be hot-seated. You might combine hot-seating with multiple roles. If you intend to have a scene where a character is hot-seated, make sure the characters asking the questions have a good reason for asking them, a real need to know something, or a desire to help.
Improvisation (improvised drama) – This is the term used for all drama work where the players do not use a script or a given scenario, but make up the words and/or action. It includes most forms of role-play, rehearsal exercises, many theatrical conventions, and exercises, theatresports (see Theatresports), some kinds of stand-up comedy, and performance storytelling. Many scripted plays and genres such as forum theatre (see Forum Theatre) start off as improvisation, where some genres are scripted to incorporate spaces for improvisation, as most famously in the Italian Commedia Dell’Arte.
In-role – This means that the players are acting as characters in the drama, not as themselves.
Mantle of the expert – This technique is central to process drama and involves enrolling the students in roles that demand real expertise (such as scientists, explorers, or in this drama, top investigative reporters), and modelling the rudiments of that expertise.
Master dramatists – Children’s play researcher Barbara Creaser[i] coined this phrase to describe those children who have an instinctively higher and more sophisticated ability to manage and control the elements of dramatic play than other children.
Mime (and occupational mime) – Commonly, this word is used for theatre with no words. However, it is derived from the Greek word mimesis meaning “representation”. Today, mime is used more loosely to refer to using or gesturing with pretend objects rather than real ones, and words may still be involved. When children use make believe to complete a task, such as chopping a tree down, driving a car, or buying from a shop, this is known as occupational mime. Practice in physical precision helps develop skills and build belief.
Mirrors – In this famous acting exercise, the class is split into pairs, A and B, and face each other, with room to move between pairs. Starting very slowly, A makes a movement that B must copy exactly, and as close to simultaneously as possible. This is a concentration exercise, and needs to be taken seriously, with the emphasis on exact accuracy and detail, not on competition, nor on tricking the partner or making funny movements. It is meant to be a true mirror image.
Motivation – This word refers to what drives the characters in the drama.
Multi-media performance – This refers to theatrical performance that uses live performance in combination with technological media. These usually include all or some of the following: lighting effects (LFX) and sound effects (SFX) if used beyond functional illumination and amplification; slide projections; computer-generated and projected images; and special effects, such as pyrotechnics or laser beams. If you are embarking on production in schools, tread warily, as multi-media can be enormously extravagant with time and financial resources. Electronic effects are not always reliable, especially on cheap equipment, and live action needs special care in integrating multi-media effects, as the effects can very easily detract from the action.
Multiple role – This very valuable convention places all of the students, or a group of them, in the same role at the same time, where several students playing witness to an event all have to answer questions as that person. This is also a valuable technique to use in combination with “hot-seat” (see Hot-seat), so that all of the students have the opportunity to be jointly enrolled in the drama as, for example, a social worker or journalist. The students must sustain consistency with each other in order to gather the important information. Together, they can be usefully combined with small-group role-play, where the key characters in a conflict scene are simultaneously interviewed by an investigator, which is played by the group as a whole using multiple role.
Multiple role circle - This variant of the above (see Multiple role) is used as a starter to provide a pre-text for a drama. All students stand in a circle, and the teacher or questioner interrogates them one at a time as the same fictional character to establish a dramatic situation. The only rule is that the answers must always be consistent with and not undermine or contradict what has already been established.
Narrative (Plot/story) – Narrative in drama is very different from narrative in a storybook or telling a story. Dramatic narrative works by exploring in depth a series of key moments from a story and explores them in terms of their symbolic meaning, the motivations of the characters involved, and the dramatic tension they generate. We are not primarily interested in the sequence of events, or how the story will conclude (even though this is a secondary factor). The organisation of the story in order to create this sequence of key moments or “scenes” is called a plot.
Performance enactment - After the students have role-played a scene as in real life, it can occasionally be useful to ask groups to demonstrate to the whole class what happened in their role-play. An effective, quick way is to ask them to enact twenty seconds of the scene to capture the essence of their play.
Playmaking (or playbuilding) – This important part of drama education is the creation of a group-devised play for performance, usually by the whole class. Process drama makes an excellent basis for playmaking. However, a process drama cannot be re-enacted on stage as work has still to be done cutting, shaping, and editing so that what is real and powerful for the participants becomes meaningful and powerful to an audience who has not had time to become invested.
Playwright (dramatist) – Traditionally, the playwright is the artist who writes a playscript to be produced and performed. However, the playwright function is one that the teacher (often) and the students (sometimes) need to assume in process drama. When a group is deciding the outcome of a situation, either by discussion or through role-play, they are being playwrights who are engaged in developing both the narrative and the characters, as well as exploring the themes. You will soon identify the “super-dramatists” in your classes who seem to know instinctively how to shape dramatic action for maximum power and dramatic tension.
Postcards – In this well-known “starter exercise”, the class stands in a circle and the leader announces a subject for a three-dimensional picture postcard. One by one, the participants step into the circle and take up a position in the picture, as a person or an object, announcing what the object is as he or she steps into the picture. As the space fills up, the remaining participants must try and make the postcard as visually interesting and aesthetically pleasing as possible. In doing so, students are made to consider the use of space, height and levels, physical position and posture, as well as whatever stories are emerging in the space.
Process Drama – What this ArtsPOP is about! It is a drama with no outside audience, and the participants use a range of types of role-play mixed with theatre techniques to enact, explore, and represent a dramatic situation or story. The central method is usually experiential role-play (see Role-play (experiential)).
Producer – In a major theatre or film production, the Producer is the person in charge of the overall project, getting it started, and overseeing the budget. If the project is big enough to have more than one producer, the boss is known as the Executive Producer.
Production Manager – In a major theatre production, the Production Manager ensures that all of the technical and administrative aspects (such as lighting, sound, design, set-building, front-of-house, bookings, and publicity) are functioning properly.
Props (or, strictly, properties) – These are real-life (that is, not mimed) objects that characters use in a drama (see Costume).
Protagonist – This term derived from classical Greek tragedy refers to the central character in a drama that has the power of action and decision. In a drama based on two-way conflict, the protagonist’s opposite is known as the antagonist.
Puppets – These are immensely valuable and immensely varied in classroom drama. They allow children to project their thoughts and feelings onto “another” in order to articulate them. Puppets can also provide size, tangibility, mystery, and humour to the drama. Puppet genres include shadow puppets, giant puppets, finger puppets, rod puppets, marionettes, and latex puppets, all of which give children lots of imaginative models to work from.
Ritual – This is a very important component of drama, especially in classrooms. Ritual provides opportunities for students to build belief and commit themselves to the drama. The teacher made sure that stepping into the role of India TV reporters was performed seriously each time and in a proper sequence: that is, ritually. Ritual may also provide opportunities for theatre, as with the ceremony in this drama, and can be used to make the most of significant moments, such as swearing an oath of allegiance, holding a procession, or making magical potions.
Role-circle – This is a convention where the whole group assumes different roles as somebody connected with the dramatic situation, and who knows a bit about it, such as neighbours, family, friends, local tradespeople, and workmates. A teacher asks the questions, but does not lead the answers. The rules about consistency are the same as for multiple role (see Multiple Role). This is a good technique to use at the beginning of a drama to give all members of the group the chance to have input in the situation.
Role-on-the-wall[ii] – This is a technique for developing and backgrounding a character by pinning a life-size paper representation of the character on the wall or floor and inviting the participants to write words or longer comments on the image to help to define the character.
Role-play (experiential) – This form of role-play is not for performance, but for participants to identify and empathise with the characters in their dramatic context. In experiential role-play, the participants step into the shoes of other individuals and live out moments of the story, physically and emotionally. It is completely unscripted, but a particular purpose and limits are usually established. In this drama, the students used experiential role-play throughout as India TV reporters, and also when asked to change roles to become the interviewees.
Role-play (performance or shared) – This is where a pair or a group of students is asked to play out their situation in front of the rest of the class, who are given the task of observing and monitoring, and it can be for assessment. Though probably the most common form of role-play in adult training programs, this is less useful in primary drama for several reasons:
- it is difficult for inexperienced actors to concentrate simultaneously on experiencing a situation and showing it to others
- the audience is mostly passive
- some students find this level of formalised performance, without the support of prepared outcomes, quite threatening and exposing, and find it difficult to role-play whole-heartedly
- some cannot resist the temptation to show off to an audience.
It can be useful, however, if a group in a simultaneous role-play, for example, has come to an unusual conclusion, or created a particularly powerful scene, and is then asked to show the whole class for discussion purposes.
Role-play (simultaneous pairs or small-group) - For a family scene or an argument between two people, it is possible to include the whole class by having the students improvise at the same time in small groups. The leader must make sure each group is clearly separate from each other; they have enough personal background to play the characters; they feel that they can believe in the characters; they are clear about the beginning of the scene, and in general terms what will happen.
Role-play (twilight or shadowy role) – This refers to a position “on the edge” of a drama, an unspecified role. The teacher may take shadowy role in first-person narration: “So we journeyed on…”, or the participants may use the shadowy role of unspecified “voices” when interrogating a character in the “hot-seat” (see Hot-seat).
Role-play (whole class) – This important role-play structure is often used throughout a drama, as it was in this drama with the India TV studio. It needs to be set up carefully, with all participants knowing what their part in the scene will be.
Role reversal – This technique involves stopping or freezing a role-play, particularly a situation of conflict or involving polarised points of view, and asking the participants to take the opposite role. This can be achieved effectively with pairs role-playing, in contexts where the class is split into two opposing groups, and in contexts where the whole class has been working together against a common enemy. If the students are empathising strongly with their original roles, they will need some re-enrolment help to re-focus and build belief in the new position.
Scene – Any drama consists of key moments from a story that are fitted together to form a plot. The plot comprises a number of scenes, or moments, that are separated in place or time, or perhaps differ in dramatic convention or style from each other. This also applies to process drama as much it does to theatrical performance (see Narrative).
Soundscape – This is a series of sound effects that creates a picture in sound of a particular location or dramatic context. This can incorporate percussion instruments, music, or vocalised noises, even words. Soundscapes may be used as a background, and the effects may be symbolic and atmospheric rather than literal. In this drama, the Indian music provided the score for the dance as well as an appropriate atmosphere.
Stage Manager – In a theatrical production, the Stage Manager (and Assistants, or “ASMs”) is responsible for the stage itself, and ensuring that the technical and logistical elements of a production are functional and operate as they should, which may include overseeing constructing and installing the set. The stage manager has two other important connected responsibilities:
a.) Managing the rehearsals so that the director can concentrate on the actors and the aesthetic elements (and can include taking notes for the director on the movement and blocking)
b.) “Calling the show”, which is giving the exact cues for the sound and lighting, the special effects, and most importantly, the actors’ entrances.
Status – This is a key component of relationships within and outside the drama. Drama gives the participants the opportunity to understand, and experiment with, status within the dramatic context. It also helps to suspend the real status relationships in the classroom.
Symbols – Drama in itself is a kind of symbolic re-enactment of real life. However, within every drama there are opportunities for investing moments, words, gestures, or objects with symbolic significance, beyond those things themselves, that leads to deep meaning and understanding. A handkerchief is not very grand or meaningful and it may initially take on an “iconic” symbolic value when it is tied to a stick and made out to be a flag. However, when it is captured in battle and flown defiantly by “the enemy”, re-capturing it becomes a symbolic deed that will restore a nation’s freedom and pride, thereby transforming the handkerchief into something of a holy object. In this drama, the India TV identity cards and notebooks were an important symbol to help the students stay in their roles and take the scenes seriously.
Tableau vivant – This is a series of tableaux (see Freeze-frame) representing actions over time that are animated in some way. The simplest way to achieve this is by the audience closing their eyes between each presented tableau.
Talk chair – The talk chair is an agreed space designated for the students and teacher to meet out of role and reflect on the drama that they have been involved in, to discuss the next stage, or to get together to replan if the current arrangements are not working. It is good practice to start and finish every session with the talk chair. Some teachers prefer to organise the students and themselves to sit in a circle, which is often done in secondary drama classes.
Tapping in – See Thought-tracking.
Teacher-in-role – You can and should take part in the drama yourself, as this will help the students to take the drama seriously; teacher-in-role gives you the opportunity to help control what happens without stopping the drama; and it gives you an unparalleled opportunity to suspend the power and status relationships in the classroom (See accompanying support document: Guide to Teacher-in-role).
Teacher narration – In order to introduce a scene, or a time jump, you can tell a story while the group listens, perhaps describing what happened between the last scene and the one you want them to play next. It helps for the teacher to tell the story as spell-bindingly as possible, perhaps with the children closing their eyes or lying on the floor relaxing. Teacher narration can link freeze-frames or improvised action.
Tempo and Timing – The tempo of drama describes the overall rhythm and pace of a drama. Teachers need to vary the tempo according to the demands of the story and to keep the students engaged and absorbed. Timing refers to the precise use of time from one moment to another. The timing of teachers’ intervention as teacher-in-role, for instance, needs careful consideration.
Tension – Dramatic tension is essential to keeping any audience engaged in a drama, and process drama is no exception. Tension is the spring that drives the drama and is derived from the answer to the fifth “W” (see Five Ws). First and foremost, the students need “tension of the task”, where in their roles they have a task that is urgent, purposeful, and that will achieve the characters’ aims. Tension may also be provided by conflict, dilemma, mystery, suspense, or surprise.
Theatre (Theatricality) – This term not only describes the physical building, but the kinds of drama that are based on performance to an audience. Something is theatrical to the extent that the actors, director, etc., concentrate on giving the audience a powerful experience.
Theatre-in-education (TIE) – This phrase, coined in England, is used to refer to plays and other dramatic experiences performed in schools, normally by visiting adults with a specific educational objective, and with elements of active participation by the audience.
Theatresports – This is a very lively performance convention entirely based on competitive improvisation, originated by Keith Johnstone. Theatresports consists of competitions mainly based on rehearsal exercises. They are a lot of fun and are very useful for developing quick thinking and confidence, as they require participants to take performance risks in public. They should not be over-used (which may be a temptation, as they are so enjoyable), because they can lead to a superficial approach to drama work and they offer limited learning potential, particularly for curricular learning.
Thought-tracking (or Tapping in) – This is a dramatic convention where characters playing roles can be frozen and asked by the teacher or other students (who tap the character on the shoulder to activate the image) to express what is going through their mind at a particular moment in the present or in the future. This technique can be combined with freeze-frames, done in a circle, or used within forum theatre.
Time jump – Between scenes you can time jump, taking the characters backwards to explore how this situation arose, or you can jump the action forwards, perhaps hours or days, to imagine the long-term consequences. In Lesson 5 of this unit, a time jump of five years was used to help the students to reflect within the drama on the implications of their decisions.
Warm-ups – These are like games (and often consist of games), and optional to process drama. The purpose of a warm-up is to focus the participants on the drama lesson and subject matter, and to generate an appropriate energy level. Thus, in some circumstances, warm-ups should be called a “cool-down” if the students have come into the lesson excited or unruly. For this reason, it is not always a good idea to pre-plan a warm-up, although it is useful to have a stock of exercises and games to call on when needed.
Young People’s Theatre (YPT) or Theatre for Young Audiences (TYA) and occasionally, Children’s Theatre – All these phrase denotes the whole range of theatre that is performed with young people in mind, not necessarily with a specific educational context or objective. The phrases are sometimes used interchangeably with theatre-in-education (TIE; see Theatre-in-education), and confusingly, with Youth Theatre (see Youth Theatre), which is an entirely different concept.
Youth Theatre – This is usually defined as plays and performances that are created and/or performed by young people themselves.
1Creaser, B. (1989). An examination of the four-year-old master dramatist. International Journal of Early Childhood Education, 21, 55-68.
2This technique was named by UK drama educator Jonothan Neelands, (1990). Structuring drama work. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.


Hurston, Zora Neale
The oral tradition of southern black folklore was an art and a skill handed down from Africa, preserved through slavery, and still thriving in the early years of the twentieth century, when Zora Neale Hurston came of age. The tradition was preserved through generations of rural southern culture and began to decline when the black workers left the agricultural South for the cities of the North. Zora Neale Hurston was singularly placed to record this material as folklore and to transform it to art through fiction. Zora Hurston's place and date of birth are obscured by the selective secrecy and mythology that veiled her personal life. Hurston wanted her contemporaries to believe that she was born 7 January 1901 in Eatonville, Florida. Birth records revealed years later, however, that she was born in 1891 in Notasulga, Alabama.
Early Life in Eatonville
The circumstances of her early life and family and the influence of growing up in Eatonville, Florida, are of primary importance in understanding Zora Neale Hurston's life and works. Hurston's father, John Hurston, had been conceived in slavery in Alabama, the son of the master and a slave. He moved with his strong-minded, intelligent wife, Lucie Potts, and seven children to the remarkable town of Eatonville, a tiny township in central Florida—organized, incorporated, and governed by black people—where he was a successful carpenter and Baptist preacher.
Zora Hurston's youth as the intelligent daughter of respected Eatonville citizens was conducive to her self-esteem and her feeling of safety, free from the sense of second-class citizenship common in southern black life. Her circumstances also led to an inborn appreciation for the richness of southern black culture. Eatonville was a melting pot of black Americans from all over the South. The people there were a bottomless source of stories. The young Zora's eyes and ears were open to the rich life of the community around her. She later wrote, “From the earliest rocking of my cradle, I had known about the capers Brer Rabbit is apt to cut and what the Squinch Owl says from the house top.” The porch of Joe Clarke's general store was the scene of “lying contests,” stories, songs, jokes, folklore. With this porch Hurston created a powerful image, an icon, throughout her work. It appears in her novels, her drama, and her folklore as well as her autobiography. This safe and comfortable childhood ended abruptly with the death of her mother. Hurston wrote the moving deathbed scene in her autobiography, Dust Tracks on a Road (1942), and her autobiographical novel Jonah's Gourd Vine (1934). Hurston's father remarried in haste, but his new wife did not want his children and the siblings dispersed to relatives and boarding schools.
The young Hurston made her own way as a black woman in the world of the American South, working as a maid or nanny when she could. These times were the ten lost years that she never mentioned, that she erased from her story. No doubt these were the years when she learned the traits of survival and self-sufficiency. She emerged as a ladies' maid and helper with a touring Gilbert and Sullivan troupe. Hurston was able to return to school in Baltimore in 1917, attending Morgan Academy and graduating in 1918. An eager student, she went on to Howard University in Washington, D.C., always working her way through school with odd jobs. Hurston blossomed at Howard and published her first short story in the college literary magazine, Stylus, in 1921.
In 1924 Hurston published her short story Drenched in Light in Opportunity magazine. Drenched in Light is thinly disguised autobiography, a story about a joyful child in Eatonville. The message is that the young protagonist is poor and black but “drenched in the light” of family, community, and culture. The story is a statement of affirmation, written by a woman who has pondered her identity and origins.
The Harlem Renaissance
The following year Hurston submitted a story, Spunk, and a play, Color Struck, to Opportunity's literary contest. Both won prizes. The Opportunity awards dinner, a showcase for young black talent attended by literary New York, was Hurston's entrée to the Harlem Renaissance. The vibrant, confident young woman with the unusual background and stories was noticed. Annie Nathan Meyer, a founder of Barnard College, obtained a scholarship for Hurston. Fannie Hurst, a popular writer, gave her a job as secretary and companion.
Hurston continued to write and publish short stories and plays, with Eatonville as her subject. Critic and biographer Robert E. Hemenway (1977) characterizes some of the work of this period as hackneyed, all theme with little plot. Yet the Eatonville material was compelling, matchless in its place in history and culture, and Hurston had an eye and ear for her subject along with a conviction of the importance of her message. She had not, however, yet found her genre or her voice. She was still struggling with her craft and her perspective.
The Harlem Renaissance was a period of a fertile flowering of black art, music, and voice in the 1920s and 1930s. Zora Neale Hurston was a presence in the Harlem Renaissance, meeting everyone, being noticed, becoming a full-fledged member of the “niggerati,” as she called the black literary community. In 1926 she organized the short-lived radical journal Fire!! with Langston Hughes and Wallace Thurman. Hurston found herself in the role of proletarian in New York City as she found the Harlem Renaissance largely a movement of northern-raised, middle-class black artists who were a generation removed from the source of their material. These were black artists who had absorbed a mainstream conception of high art; who took material with black origins and formalized it—for example turning the spirituals of the southern Baptist churches into composed and arranged songs to be performed for white audiences in concert halls. The goal of those presenting the “New Negro” and his art was to prove that black art and culture were equal to white art.
Hurston, however, was the genuine article, the folk, and her mission was to present and preserve the folk voice as she knew it from her youth in the South. Further, Hurston had a sense that the folk material that she loved was not a lower form of art but an oral tradition that had enabled the black people to survive with dignity and strength. Her goal was to glorify and preserve a form of black expression that she felt was being diluted by urbanization.
“The Spyglass of Anthropology”
At Barnard College, Hurston studied anthropology under Franz Boas, a noted authority in the field. She found that anthropology offered a scientific framework for her folklore. She had not found a voice for the Eatonville material in the short story genre; anthropology gave her the form she was searching for. In the introduction to Mules and Men (1935), Hurston wrote that she had to have “the spyglass of anthropology” to begin to codify her experience in Eatonville. Anthropology gave her the opportunity to look at her community culture and folktales with the objectivity of a social scientist; the step back from her personal experience helped to reconcile her to her past.
Soon Hurston was doing fieldwork for Boas in Harlem. Then, in February 1927 she was given a grant to collect folklore in Florida. Previously, some black folklore had been collected by white researchers, but their findings were often influenced by stereotypes and misconceptions of the black personality and experience. Hurston was unique: a black scholar and social scientist with a deep understanding of the culture she would study.
This first folklore-collecting trip was not very successful. She wrote later that people were suspicious of her Barnard manner and told her only what they wanted her to hear. She returned to Boas and admitted her disappointing results. Wise Boas was not surprised. Perhaps the cocky, confident Zora needed to learn from a failure.
In the fall of 1927 Hurston met Mrs. Rufus Osgood Mason, a wealthy white woman who was to play a major role in her life. Mrs. Mason was patron to several black artists, including Langston Hughes. At the behest of her eccentric whim, her protégées called her “Godmother.” Hurston signed a contract with Mrs. Mason that enabled her to go back to the South on another collecting trip. Mrs. Mason gave her a car and $200 a month and in December 1927 Hurston departed again, intending to begin in Mobile, Alabama, travel to Florida, and end up in New Orleans, Louisiana, to gather and record tales, songs, games, customs, and voodoo rituals of rural southern black Americans.
Hurston had learned from her first expedition. She would need the patience and imagination to live as a part of the community, not as an outsider, a northern-educated scientist. In Polk County, Florida, she created the fiction that she was a bootlegger's girlfriend running from the law. She was welcomed into the lumber and railroad work camps, where she kept her ears open and took notes. Her Florida work ended when she was nearly knifed at a “jook joint” by a woman jealous of Zora's attention from the men. She went on to New Orleans to collect voodoo practices and rituals, becoming an initiate under several practitioners.
That year spent collecting in the South under Mrs. Mason's patronage was pivotal for Hurston. The financial support was liberating. Her collecting was so fertile that she drew on the material from this trip for the rest of her life. Hurston matured. She began to see the stories and customs of her childhood and her culture as part of a pattern of black experience and survival and to fit her own life as a survivor into the pattern. On the surface she was a scientist working on a folklore-collecting expedition, but underneath she was becoming a novelist who could connect the collective stories with individual experience in an expression of art.
Hurston spent much of 1929 living on Mrs. Mason's money and organizing her field notes. Living in South Florida, Hurston met West Africans and became interested in their customs, folklore, and dancing. She began to make links between African-American and African-Caribbean folklore. She spent some time in Nassau in the Bahamas in 1929 and 1930, living again within the community, learning and collecting songs, dances, and customs.
Hurston was beginning to chafe at the restrictions of her contract with Mrs. Mason. She had the Florida and New Orleans material organized and ready for publication. She wanted to work on some new, independent projects, while Mrs. Mason contended that the contract was not fulfilled until the folklore material was published. Unfortunately, Mrs. Mason held the title to the material and Hurston was prohibited by the contract from publishing anything without Mrs. Mason's approval, so if Hurston wanted to see her book in print, she had to submit to Mrs. Mason's terms. Hurston spent nearly two years organizing her vast notes and material. She published Hoodoo in America in the Journal of American Folklore in 1931 and looked for a book publisher for a scholarly presentation of her findings.
Both Hurston and Langston Hughes were living in New Jersey in a sort of artists' colony where Mrs. Mason put up her protégées. Hurston and Hughes began to collaborate on a play, Mule Bone, a series of skits and songs based largely on the folklore that Hurston had collected in Eatonville. The first act takes place on the porch of Joe Clarke's store. Hurston envisioned a form of theater that would present authentic material in an aural context, in an exuberant and accessible manner.
The Mule Bone project and her relationship with Langston Hughes fell apart in a bitter misunderstanding that was worsened by tensions relating to Mrs. Mason's patronage. Hughes left the Mason payroll, feeling increasingly guilty about enjoying caviar in her home while writing about the blues of his people. Hurston needed Mrs. Mason's patronage for a while longer, until she found a publisher for her collection. Hughes and Hurston became estranged; then Hughes discovered that the play was in negotiation with a theater company, to be produced with Hurston as sole author. He filed suit. It turned out that their mutual friend Carl Van Vechten had sent a draft of the play to the theater without Hurston's knowledge, but the damage was done and the play was never produced.
The Great Day
Hurston's relationship with Mrs. Mason was finally severed in March 1931 while Hurston was still searching for a publisher for her folklore collection. She found herself with a need to earn a living. She also found herself with a growing conviction that her stories and songs could be better presented in some living form than in a scientific journal. She envisioned a revue that would be artistically true to the folk tradition, including comedy, songs, and dances.
Hurston wrote and staged the theatrical revue The Great Day (1932), using her collected folk material and including authentic Jamaican dancers and drummers. The revue was structured around a day in a railroad work camp, ending with an evening at the “jook.” Produced on a shoestring with Hurston ingenuity, the performance in January 1932 was an artistic success. She was to use the same material for several years, repeating the New York City performance. Hurston also created a new version at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida, and took that show on the road. She still had no publisher for her folklore collection and so earned her living by this theatrical expression of her material and experience.
Hurston tried her hand at various academic jobs in the South, working on her conception of authentic theater in college drama departments. Hurston the scholar, with her Barnard credentials, and Hurston the exuberant voice of Eatonville, with her theatrical successes, sought to present an authentic and traditional form of expression. Her goal was to bring legitimate folklore to theater and concert audiences.
Segregated Florida in the Great Depression was not a fertile ground for black theater production, nor was Hurston's vocation in academe. She was later awarded a fellowship to work on a Ph.D. in anthropology at Columbia starting in 1935, but by that time her focus was on a new form of expression for her experience.
Jonah's Gourd Vine
Hurston turned to fiction in hopes of producing income and finding a medium for her Eatonville voice. She published The Gilded Six-Bits in Story magazine in August 1933. This is a mature story, set in Eatonville, and was the catalyst in attracting the publisher that she needed. The Philadelphia publisher J. B. Lippincott noticed the story and asked her for a novel. She rented a cabin in Eatonville and sat down and wrote Jonah's Gourd Vine (1934).
This, Hurston's first novel, is a blend of autobiography, folklore, and fiction. The book succeeds because the voice of Eatonville pours from her pen. The story is authentic, based on the life of her father, the Baptist preacher born into slavery. John Pearson rises with determination, the help of his strong wife Lucie, and his gift for poetry. But John has a fatal flaw; he is a philanderer. After his wife dies, in a deathbed scene based on the death of Hurston's mother, John—filled with guilt but bewitched by his lover with the help of a hoodoo man—remarries in haste and eventually is cast out by his congregation.
The use of the collected folklore is central to the novel, which describes customs, food, celebrations, and the telling of “lies” on the porch of the general store and is written in the black vernacular. John's farewell sermon, a triumph of language and poetry, is quoted directly from a sermon Hurston collected while in Florida.
If sometimes the transitions are flawed, if the reader is brought too abruptly from the folklore material to the fictional plot, Hurston nevertheless has the gift of knowing where to leave autobiography behind and move into the realm of fiction. From the suggestion of hoodoo in John's hasty remarriage to his failed redemption, Hurston departs from life and finishes the fictional tale. Jonah's Gourd Vine was written in a fresh and knowledgeable voice, with an ear for dialect and using material and a setting that Hurston was uniquely placed to present.
Language is at the heart of the novel, as it was at the heart of all of Hurston's subsequent writing. Her authentic and original use of the black idiom, a language rich with proverbs, wordplay, imagery, and metaphor, is a solid achievement. John Pearson is aware of the power of language; his gift for language raises him from laborer to leader. Most important, language, especially black language, is honored in Jonah's Gourd Vine. John's poetry rises from a culture that values skill and improvisation in oral art, from the store porch and from the pulpit.
Mules and Men
Pleased with Jonah's Gourd Vine, Lippincott agreed to publish Hurston's folklore collection, which became Mules and Men. Lippincott wanted the anthropology material popularized for the average reader. Hurston devised a form, a story within a story, in which she puts the folklore into context, creating a first-person role for herself as narrator and collector as well as the third-person role of social scientist and observer.
Hurston found a voice when she put herself as a character in her report. She created herself, the semifictitious narrator. Her introduction to Mules and Men is a statement of her method and identity, uniting her own past in Eatonville with the curious researcher. Hurston was criticized by the scholarly community for putting too much of her own personality into a scientific report. She was apprehensive of how her mentor, Franz Boas, would react to the form, but he agreed to write the preface and presented his protégée as a collector who was able to penetrate the true inner life of her subjects.
Hurston was sometimes accused of being less than scrupulous in her writing and collecting. She was as much an interpreter of the folklore she collected as an objective scientist. The line between fact and fiction was not always sharply drawn. Perhaps she embellished. Perhaps some of the tales are stories that she herself contributed to the lying sessions on the porch of the village store. Shortly after Mules and Men was published, Hurston was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to go to Jamaica and Haiti to collect material on religious practices. She spent much of 1936 and 1937 on those islands.
Hurston's personal life was always complicated; she revealed as little as possible in her writing. She was married at least twice, and possibly another time during the lost ten years in her early life, those years whose existence she denied by changing her birthdate. There is, however, a chapter titled “Love” in her autobiography, Dust Tracks on a Road (1942). One of her marriages was to Herbert Sheen, her sweetheart throughout the Howard and Barnard years. The marriage itself was brief; the conflict between marriage and career may have been the reason for its failure. The turmoil surrounding the marriage may have contributed to the failure of her first collecting expedition in early 1927.
Their Eyes were Watching God
The trip to the West Indies in 1936 and 1937 occurred at the time of another breakup, this time of an affair between Hurston and a man twenty years younger than herself. This man, she said in Dust Tracks, asked her to marry him and give up her career, “that one thing I could not do.” Thus, it is no coincidence that the book she wrote in exile from this affair was the story of a woman who is determined to find her own identity on her own terms, and a story of a love affair between a vibrant older woman and a younger man.
Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) is Hurston's masterpiece, an elegant short novel about a young woman's search for self, for love, for freedom. The novel has the familiar autobiographical elements: a parent born in slavery, Eatonville, the porch of Joe Clarke's store, a hurricane scene drawn from a storm she experienced in the Bahamas in 1929. It draws heavily on folklore and on black history, culture, and language.
The heroine is Janie Crawford, a young black woman raised by her grandmother, a former slave. When Janie feels the stirrings of sexual awakening, her grandmother quickly marries her off to an older man who can provide land and security. Once Janie realizes that love will not come to this marriage and that her husband will treat her as another piece of property, a mule to be worked, she runs away with Joe Starks. Joe is an ambitious young man on his way to Eatonville to make something of himself. He becomes the mayor and storekeeper of the town. Joe expects his wife to play the role of “mayor's wife” and to work in the store, but he does not encourage her to join in the storytelling on the store porch or to mingle with the other women in the village. She is an adjunct to Joe's prestige and is not allowed any personal expression or voice. For both of her husbands, upward mobility focuses on ownership and suppression of Janie's own self-awareness. Janie sadly watches Joe become more pompous and demeaning, and this marriage, too, becomes loveless.
There is a moment of awakening in each marriage as Janie gradually becomes more self-aware. She walks away from her first husband when she realizes that he wants her to be “de mule uh de world.” Joe Starks represents change and the outside world and Janie is ready to move on. Later, after years with Joe, she understands that she has learned to keep her inner and outer lives separate. “She had an inside and an outside now and suddenly she knew how not to mix them.” This woman's awakening is a universal feminist theme, black or white.
Joe Starks dies and Janie is liberated from his oppression. Now a wealthy widow, she meets Tea Cake, an easygoing black man years younger than she. He is a free spirit who loves life, gambles without apology, and awakens laughter and stories in Janie. At last Janie blossoms, finally fulfilling the promise of womanhood that was nipped in the bud when her grandmother married her off to a respectable old man. Janie and Tea Cake leave Eatonville, walking away from disapproving public opinion, and live a joyous life picking beans in the Everglades.
The story ends tragically, however. Escaping from a violent hurricane, Tea Cake is bitten by a rabid dog. He succumbs to rabies himself and becomes irrational and violent; ultimately, Janie is forced to shoot him in self-defense. She is acquitted at her trial, and returns to Eatonville to live out her life, happy that she has at last known a true love and joy in life.
The novel is pure Hurston, infused throughout with folklore and autobiographical elements. She spans the history of black people in the South from the end of slavery through the 1930s. She writes with a lyrical ease, transforming folk tales into metaphor, rendering dialect with her impeccable ear. Their Eyes Were Watching God is a feminist novel, resonating with a black voice. A woman's freedom lies in discovering her own voice and identity apart from her husband; a people's freedom lies in preserving their own voice and identity apart from the oppressor. With this novel, Hurston achieved a literary expression for her experience.
Tell My Horse
Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica (1938), is Hurston's report of her collecting experience in those islands. The practice of voodoo was a powerful spiritual experience for Hurston. She treats voodoo as a serious religion, originating in Africa and coexisting with Roman Catholicism. Tell My Horse, like so much of Hurston's work, is written in an original mix of style and genre, travelogue and political commentary mingling with observations on art, dance, practices, and customs that only the now-experienced, mature, and confident Hurston could provide. Typically, she shifts between the first- and third-person voice, using the first person for observation and commentary, the third person to report history and politics. She describes instances of possession, the hierarchy of voodoo gods, and details of ceremonies, information that would only be accessible to an initiate. The book is illustrated with photos, including a remarkable photo (and report) of a zombie in Haiti.
After the publication of Their Eyes Were Watching God and Tell My Horse, Hurston returned to Florida. Through 1938 and 1939 she worked in the South, collecting, writing, working on drama projects. There was another short-lived marriage, this time to Albert Price III in 1939.
Moses, Man of the Mountain
Moses, Man of the Mountain (1939) was published at Hurston's zenith. The novel is complex, a display of virtuosity in character, background, language, themes, and satire, a Hurston blend of Eatonville, Africa, and finding a way into freedom. The basis of the novel lies in the African and voodoo approach to Moses, revered as a man of power who could talk to God face-to-face, and in the identification of American black slaves with the enslaved Jews in the Bible. The novel is set in Egypt and the promised land, but the characters are rural black Americans with the speech and mannerisms of Eatonville. The Jews of the biblical tale are black Americans and Pharaoh and the Egyptians are whites.
The voice of Eatonville, as interpreted by Zora Neale Hurston, is humorous and feisty. This was resented by some black leaders and intellectuals, who were beginning to complain that Hurston was too narrowly focused on Eatonville and that she ignored the many negatives of southern black experience. Moses, Man of the Mountain lacks bitterness. Hurston was expected as a black writer to write a protest novel, exposing the racial injustice of the South. She was determined instead to celebrate black culture in literature.
Dust Tracks on a Road
Having written five books in five years, Hurston was at a crossroads. Her publisher, J. B. Lippincott, suggested she write an autobiography. She moved to California in the spring of 1941, where she worked on the manuscript of Dust Tracks on a Road and as a story consultant at Paramount Studios.
Dust Tracks on a Road is a book that mirrors the division that emerged in Hurston's life. The early part of the book, where she describes her background, childhood, and early life is vibrant with stories and scenes and the voice of Eatonville. The reader sees the hopes and dreams of the joyful child whose father, the preacher, showed daily how language could enthrall, whose mother urged her to reach for the stars, and whose ears were tuned to the “lying” on the porch of Joe Clarke's store in Eatonville. The reader experiences that child's helplessness and despair at her mother's deathbed and begins to grasp the tenacity and self-reliance Zora Hurston needed to get an education and reach New York City and professional recognition.
Once Hurston reaches the point where she acknowledges her patron—Mrs. Mason, her “godmother”—she begins to lose the vibrancy of Eatonville's stories and her own confident voice. Her tone changes, becomes awkward and ingratiating. Dust Tracks on a Road's vitality seems to be a casualty of her odd patronage relationship. As she brings society and politics into the picture, her voice falters. Reactions were mixed. Whites liked the book; it harmed her reputation with her black peers, however.
Indeed, by the mid-1940s Hurston seemed to be losing her voice. A novel and a proposal were rejected by Lippincott, though she was publishing magazine articles and continuing to work on the black college circuit. Politically she grew more conservative; her voice shifted from the self-confident first person of idiomatic black speech to the artificial third person of unpopular political viewpoint.
Seraph on the Suwanee
In 1947 Hurston signed a contract with Charles Scribner's Sons for a novel about a white southern family. Seraph on the Suwanee (1948) was written in Honduras, on a trip to look for a lost city, financed with the advance money from Scribner's. She had ambitions for Seraph on the Suwanee. She hoped to challenge literary conventions, to prove that a black woman could write about whites. The novel tells the story of a poor white family in Florida that gradually achieves upward mobility and of a woman who struggles with her identity in marriage. The language of the novel is the southern vernacular. Hurston hoped to show that southern blacks and whites had language and cultural influences in common.
The early reviews of Seraph on the Suwanee were favorable. Just at the time that Hurston and her publisher would have promoted the new book, however, a bombshell fell. Hurston was accused of sexually molesting a ten-year-old boy. The charges were false. Hurston was able to prove that she was in Honduras at the time the incidents were alleged to have occurred; the boy was shown to be disturbed. But the damage had already been done. A national black newspaper, Baltimore's Afro-American, picked up the story and created a lurid scandal. Hurston was devastated. She considered suicide. She removed herself from the public eye as best she could. Seraph on the Suwanee was to be her last published novel.
Hurston did recover from this blow. She moved back to Florida, bought a houseboat, planted a garden. She continued to write magazine articles for a mainstream audience, worked as a maid, did some substitute teaching in Fort Pierce, Florida. Her articles were increasingly conservative in tone and it was difficult to find publishers for her work. Money was a problem. Her health deteriorated. In 1959 she had a stroke and entered the St. Lucie County Welfare Home. She died there on 28 January 1960 and was buried in an unmarked grave.
Why did Zora Neale Hurston decline from her standing as a vibrant presence in the Harlem Renaissance, a fertile interpreter of black folklore, and a lyrical writer to become a poor woman buried in an unmarked grave? Part of the answer lies in the struggle for money. The need to make ends meet overcame her art and her scholarship in the end. At the mercy of patrons and publishers, it was always a struggle to collect, to keep writing, to make art. The Eatonville voice that Hurston so loved faltered as she looked for a mass magazine audience. An outsider in the white world of publishing, she was criticized by black leaders and intellectuals as well. Then the scandal of the false sexual accusation broke her spirit. She finally became bitter.
Hurston's strength and gift was pride in the folk heritage embodied in her Eatonville experience. This emphasis on culture did not translate well to politics. She was outspoken; she wanted to affirm her belief in the individual, her belief that a black background need not be tragic. Black opinion accused her of ignoring the dark side of life in the American South, giving a whitewashed picture of southern black life. She grew even more conservative after the scandal. She was always an outsider but she had always been exuberant, excited by her work, believing in it. She lost her voice, she retreated to her garden, she was poor, she became ill, she died quietly.
Zora Neale Hurston's books were out of print for thirty-five years. Then, in the late 1970s, black writer and scholar Alice Walker wrote an essay, Looking for Zora, and interest in Hurston was revived. In Zora Hurston, black women writers found a rare model, a woman who wrote in the black vernacular, who affirmed black folk culture with pride and exuberance.
Zora Neale Hurston left a record of an oral folk tradition that she was uniquely placed to provide. She had a clear, individual, woman's voice, even if she was at times inhibited by her white patron, her publishers, and her need for cash. Her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God has become a classic of African-American feminist literature, yet the theme of a woman finding her voice and equality in marriage is universal.
Zora Hurston was at her best when interpreting Eatonville. She was happiest in Florida, and at her worst when struggling for money. She was proud to have “the map of Dixie on her tongue.” The creation of an original black literature based on pride in the language and folk tradition of African Americans was Hurston's lifelong goal and her major contribution.
The Great Day (musical) (1932)Find this resource:
Jonah's Gourd Vine (1934)Find this resource:
Mules and Men (1935)Find this resource:
Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)Find this resource:
Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica (1938)Find this resource:
Moses, Man of the Mountain (1939)Find this resource:
Dust Tracks on a Road (1942)Find this resource:
Seraph on the Suwanee (1948)Find this resource:
I Love Myself When I Am Laughing…& Then Again When I Am Looking Mean and Impressive: A Zora Neale Hurston Reader (1979)Find this resource:
The Sanctified Church (1981)Find this resource:
Spunk: The Selected Short Stories of Zora Neale Hurston (1985)Find this resource:
Every Tongue Got to Confess: Negro Folk-Tales from the Gulf States (2001)Find this resource:
Boyd, Valerie. Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston. New York, 2002. Boyd's approach to Hurston's life is journalistic rather than literary. Using carefully researched primary sources as well as Hurston's autobiography as evidence, Boyd enthusiastically presents Hurston's life as a good story of a strong and engaging woman.Find this resource:
Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., and K. A. Appiah, eds. Zora Neale Hurston: Critical Perspectives Past and Present. New York, 1993. A collection of reviews by Hurston's contemporaries as well as a fine selection of recent interpretations.Find this resource:
Hemenway, Robert E. Zora Neale Hurston: A Literary Biography. Urbana, Ill., and Chicago, 1977. An invaluable and thorough source. Analyzes the major works and details the relationship between Hurston's life, fiction, and nonfiction. Excellent section on the Harlem Renaissance. Insight into Hurston's decline after World War II. References to unpublished sources and interviews.Find this resource:
Kaplan, Carla, ed. Zora Neale Hurston: A Life in Letters. New York, 2002. A collection of over five hundred of Hurston's letters, including letters to her patron, Mrs. Osgood Mason.Find this resource:
Meisenhelder, Susan Edwards. Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick: Race and Gender in the Work of Zora Neale Hurston. Tuscaloosa, Ala., and London, 1999. Discussing the impact of Hurston's role as an outsider, both in race and gender, in a patriarchal white society, Meisenhelder positions her as one example of the complex dilemma facing African-American women writers.Find this resource:
Walker, Alice. In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens. San Diego, Calif., and New York, 1984. This collection of essays by the writer influential in the Hurston “renaissance” of the late 1970s contains several essays valuable to an understanding of Hurston's place in the canon of black woman writers. “Looking for Zora” is a classic essay in the literature of Hurston, an account of searching for Hurston's unmarked grave. “Zora Neale Hurston: A Cautionary Tale and a Partisan View” is a reprint of the Alice Walker introduction to the Hemenway biography. “The Black Writer and the Southern Experience” and “Saving the Life That Is Your Own: The Importance of Models in the Artist's Life” are also worthy of note by the student of Hurston.Find this resource: