More than an exploration of Richard Wright’s dramaturgical efforts, it is a story of the development of an artist.
Richard Wright is one of the most influential authors of the last century. His seminal works, Native Son and Black Boy, are firmly rooted in American literature and are an essential part of the academic canon. In Thunder on the Stage (University of Illinois Press), Bruce Allen Dick, through in-depth and precise reportage, recounts Wright’s lesser known foray into theatre and other mediums. There is very little literature written about Wright’s dramatic and cinematic work and many biographers seem to skim over it. However, Bruce Dick traces Wright’s journey to transform his unique artistic visions to the stage and screen. The insightful book demonstrates how specifically, Wright’s 1941 adaptation of Native Son in collaboration with Pulitzer Prize winner Paul Green, and directed by a 26-year-old Orson Welles, was brought to the American theatre and made into a film starring Richard Wright. It also discusses several of Wright’s ambitious efforts to pen his own plays such as the little known religious satire, Daddy Goodness (1956). Finally, it offers keen insight into Wright as one of America’s greatest chronicler of racial identity and oppression.
Thunder on the Stage begins with some anecdotal incidents of Wright travelling through Jim Crow south to meet his collaborator, Paul Green, in Chapel Hill. He meets with numerous challenges and a horrid array ofracial transgressions from the outset. This sets the tone for the rest of book. Bruce Dick explains that Wright’s efforts in theatre rarely measured up to his work in literary prose. Therefore, it is important to question why his work in this area was so limited. According to Bruce Dick, Wright’s dramaturgical work was either too ambitious, too underdeveloped, or unable to garner appropriate support.
Bruce Dick discusses in the introduction to Thunder on the Stage that while the stage adaptation of Native Son was a relatively successful performance, drama is ultimately uniquely interconnected to Wright’s work as whole. The very fabric of Wright’s life and writing lends itself to the theatrical or to the dramatic. This becomes the reoccurring theme throughout this book. Noted in a key quote that introduces Thunder on the Stage, Wright proclaimed in his journal after seeing a New York stage production of Hamlet that he would make thunder on that stage. He proclaimed, “by God, not a year has past and Native Son appeared on that very same stage.” The rest was history in the making.
When one thinks of hardboiled noir, Richard Wright’s novel, Native Son, does not usually come to mind. However, Thunder on the Stage discusses how the 1951 film adaptation of the novel starring Wright as the story’s protagonist, Bigger Thomas, and directed by French director Pierre Chanel, fits into that pocket. We have hardboiled dialogue, ambiguous morality, and of course, a crime. On top of that, the film attempts to be a call to social justice though critics were skeptical that the film brought any real revelations to black suffering. This Argentinian production suffered from amateurish acting and was poorly received. The film was unavailable in the United States until 2016, under Obama’s presidency. Also, sloppy studio interferences and racial controversies caused a choppy and “not-quite-fully-realized” vision, like many of other of Wright’s experiments with different mediums, which is essentially the crux of Thunder on the Stage. After reading Thunder on the Stage, a reappraisal of the 1951 film Native Son is due. In the case of hardboiled or noir studies, the film can be understood as underdeveloped “experiment” with noble intentions.
Bruce Dick is extraordinarily thorough in delving into pivotal aspects of Wright’s life including his early encounters with theatre. From minstrelsy in the Mississippi, to Shakespeare, and then ultimately Chicago, where Wright met up with like-minded artists and thinkers, Thunder on the Stage covers it all. The book also addresses key influential figures who inspired Wright such as Langston Hughes, Paul Robeson, and Theodore Ward and even includes a chapter on Wright’s boxing journalism.
There is a wide range of influences that had saturated Wright’s imagination as Bruce Dick demonstrates, and they manifest themselves in Wright’s nuanced and multi-faceted literature. From the raw racial dialectics drawn from a Southern literary tradition to the leftist ideologies of political writers such as Odets and Mencken, Thunder on the Stage demonstrates the trajectory that Wright’s dramaturgical work could have taken had it been under the right circumstances. Bruce Dick also chronicles Wright’s unknown experiments with theatrical formats such as a little-known play for German radio while visiting Hamburg on lecture tour in 1956 called, Man, God Ain’t Like That, which was later included in a collection titled Eight Men.
Thunder on the Stage also covers Wright’s later experiences abroad with existentialists such as Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre that would help define his authorial identity even further. More than an exploration of Richard Wright’s dramaturgical efforts, it is a story of the development of an artist. It discusses every aspect of Wright’s oeuvre and is so meticulously researched one may be in awe of the depth and breadth of Wright’s life’s work. Wright was such a multi-faceted figure and so little is known about the subject of this book, which makes Thunder on the Stage a fascinating read.
The book also proves to be an invaluable resource for anyone seriously researching Richard Wright. It is full of extraordinary anecdotes and history that makes it more than a scholarly read. Written in an accessible and engaging style, Thunder on the Stage proves to be an authoritative text on Wright on any level.
William Blick is an Assistant Professor/Librarian at Queensborough Community College. He has published articles on film studies in Film International, Senses of Cinema, Cineaction, and Cinemaretro and on crime fiction at Retreats from Oblivion: The Journal of NoirCon. His fiction has appeared in Out of the Gutter, Pulp Metal Magazine, and Pulp Modern Flash.
Retreats from Oblivion: The Journal of NoirCon 