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Jackie Sibblies Drury

Auteur de Fairview

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Crédit image: Sebastian Venuet

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The Multiple Roles and Potential Spaces in Jackie Sibblies Drury's Fairview

A Cognitive Pragmatic Approach

Dr. Mohammed Sameer Abd Elsalam

In her play, Jackie Sibblies Drury mixes the event of celebrating the grandmother's birthday with the event of the game of identity representation, or the game of free individual choice, and the game of deep exploration of the aesthetic and spatial dimensions beyond the visible space. Then, the play has a set of experimental or avant-garde elements such as the postmodern blending between artistic references and the real event, and the abundance of directive speech acts or existential and cultural questions that require, from a pragmatic perspective, deferred or interpretable experimental answers, and, in this context, I confirm the presence of some Brechtian tones such as narration and presentation of the problem, but in a way that refers to the act of an aesthetic play, which is the origin of experimentation in the structure of the text.

Consequently, the discourse connects dance, singing, and theatrical monologue, and evokes the spectra and characters of movies, jazz songs, and stories in the context of a game of exchanging hypothetical roles and identities. That is why the discourse allows building a set of many inferences about the multiplicity of the event, the artistic-cultural role, the multiplicity of the place layers between the theater, the family home, and the virtual spatial references such as Asia, the Latin aesthetic semiotic space, its sounds and tones, and the space and the imaginary atmosphere of some African-American artists.

*Context, Communication Attitude, and Relevance:

I can read the context of Grandma's birthday party only through its relation to the cultural, historical, and artistic forces at work in the layers of spatial reference; We can restore harmony in the American hybrid global artistic heritage, the problems of individual freedom, the interpretation of being, the special female poetic language in the interpretation of the event, and the fate of postmodern multiculturalism that confirms the effort of Ihab Hassan, Edward Said, and Linda Hutchon; These cultural and intellectual forces remain active under the layers of the party and its philosophical and aesthetic questions.

Additionally, if we re-read the context from a cognitive angle and according to the theory of relevance from the perspective of Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson, we will notice that the characters have agreed on the cultural role-playing game while reserving the right to interpret the individual being, and then the characters have elected the contextual indicator of the return of the spectra of art characters as effective personalities within the space of the grandmother's birthday, then the characters expanded on constructing conclusions related to merging the representative role with the existing situation in experimental dialogue sentences that reflect the symmetry and possible pluralism in the scene. Hence, the attitude of communication that includes the dinner table, songs, and dance enhances the selection of the element of expansion in the representation of possible experimental cultural aesthetic roles as artistic masks for play and meditation at the same moment.

*Recurrent Neural-Cognitive Processing:

We can read two levels of recurrent neural cognitive processing of the event and the hypothesis of the other acting role in the play, and in this context, we can be inspired by Victor Lamme's recurrent processing theory. In particular, We note that Suze's character, for example, has performed local superficial processing of the auditory and linguistic data inherent in the question about the possible another role; At first, she refused, then she delayed answering, then she answered when she combined the acting hypothesis with the memory of her affectionate nursemaid; that her brain does superficial local processing of an image that is still in memory and has similarities in the communication attitude; As for Keisha's character, she made deep global processing according to the indicators of the new context, which is a dynamic, open global context in the processes of exchanging aesthetic and cultural roles without an end or a central return to the past. It is the closest treatment to the problem of the main existential philosophical essays of the play.

*Mental States:

We infer the mental states of the characters through the dynamism of hypotheses lurking under the dinner table settled at the party, through Keisha's self-awareness of her individual, private female presence, through the memory laden with the aesthetic and artistic realization of some influential characters, and through the expansion of the topic of role-playing and the modalities of self-realization from During the potential cultural role.

*Mental Representations:

We can see the mental representations of the hypothetical child in the text; It exists as an unverified hypothesis; Hence, it is an experimental entity located between the virtual and the real within the characters' brains and their daydreams, and I see that the sign of Keisha's hypothetical child is connected through the anaphoric liking, in the discourse unit, to the birth of Suze, the birth of Keisha, and the birth of the mother, which is a birth that has the meaning of individual female self-realization in a way compatible with modernization values.
*The cognitive metaphor between the self and the representative artistic mask:
The unity of the play's discourse as a whole assumes a mixture of cultural artistic play and real life. Then, we can inspire the cognitive metaphor according to the efforts of Fauconnier, Lakoff, Johnson, and the blending space of Mark Turner in reading the main conceptual metaphor in the play between the mental space related to the person in a real social attitude, and the representative artistic cultural mask, and each of the two mental spaces will be associated with semantic links such as the first perception of the self within an artistic or social climate as it prepares for the act of reading being or the act of individual positive or creative performance, the possibility of transforming the artistic or cultural role in the imagination, and the possibility of creating broad cosmic relationships of sympathy; Therefore, the blending space will be the character that includes many possible cultural artistic personalities and masks.

*The Cataphoric Semantic Linking:

We cannot understand the party, dancing, or singing at the beginning of the discourse unit, in the play, except through the semantic connection to Keisha's artistic theatrical discourse at the end. As if to remove the thumb from the partial presence of art in the beginning to a greater degree of the creative presence at the ends; It is the degree to which the presence of individual identity expands as well.

*Some Basic Speech Acts and Paul Grice's Cooperative principle:

The main representative speech act was formed by informing about the problem of free choice of the representative roles and inner voices philosophically, culturally, and aesthetically, the acceptance of this choice by the characters, and its expansion. It cognitively affects the recipient of the speech by modifying his knowledge of the realistic situation in the text and the degree of its potential closeness to art.

The expressive speech act is related to the internal reinforcement of pluralism and its transformation into a global, aesthetic, or cosmic dance; As for the directive speech act, it is sequential through the question about the child, the individual identity, and the female identity, and is achieved in the world of the recipient of the in the active response by creating a renewed contextual answers about his multiple narrative interpretations of his self according to the impact of the heritage of art, music, films, and the dynamic context.
As for the promising speech act, it relates to the promise related to the continuation of the realization of the individual identity or the creative female identity between the theatre stage and the real.

Also, If we re-read the conversation between Jimbo and Suze according to Paul Grace's cooperative principle, we will notice a kind of quantitative digression that refers to the slow rise in the entering of the representative cultural artistic role, and we will notice the same way in building arguments and counter-arguments until the hypothesis is technically achieved in the character's consciousness and unconsciousness. Additionally, the manner was based on repetition and narration in Keisha's speech As well as the many questions that suggest a mixture between harmony and silent contemplation. As for the principle of relevance, it is achieved through the imaginary or artistic contextual indicator and its escalation in the real artistic situation in the spatial potential layers of the party.

Finally, I believe that Jackie Sibblies Drury's play includes experiential, imaginative, and intellectual elements that stimulate the idea of identity in a positive aesthetic way.

Dr. Mohammed Sameer Abd Elsalam

Literary Critic and Art Critic
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Signalé
Mohammed_Sameer | 2 autres critiques | Apr 2, 2023 |
Gazing at the White Gaze
Review of the Theater Communications Group paperback edition (August 27, 2019) of the original play first premiered Off-Broadway (June-August 2018)

[early 3 rating based on print only, will revisit after seeing live]
I have a ticket to see Fairview in March 2023 at its Canadian Premiere, as performed by Obsidian Theatre Company at the Canadian Stage Berkeley Theatre in Toronto. I was curious to read the play in advance as it was already in print and as it had won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

See photograph at https://www.obsidiantheatre.com/wp-obsidian/wp-content/uploads/Fairview_Photo1.j...
An early publicity photo for the 2023 Canadian Premiere of 'Fairview'. Image sourced from Obsidian Theatre Company in Toronto, Canada.

Fairview has a 3 act structure which starts off in Act 1 as a very conventional sit-com with a Black American family preparing for a birthday meal and celebration. In Act 2, the events of Act 1 are reperformed/mimicked by the same actors, but 4 White Americans (a fictional audience) comment on the action in a way that becomes increasingly racist. In Act 3 the White Actors 'enter' the play of Act 1 in what becomes a surreal and absurdist exaggeration of 'Whites' being 'Black'.

A lot of this reads as very offensive on the page but the comic possibilities can also definitely be anticipated. This is especially so in Act 2 where the two sets of actors are performing independently but there are likely points where their actions will crossover and seemingly comment on each other (you can't really 'see' this when you read it). Act 3 may seem somewhat ridiculous and over the top on the page, but with excellent actors there is sure to be a cathartic experience. The play also breaks the so-called '4th wall' at times and addresses the audience directly.

I'm looking forward to seeing it live on stage.

Other Reviews (of the stage version)
A review of another current 2023 production can be read at At Speakeasy, 'Fairview' Stares Down the White Gaze by Don Aucoin in the Boston Globe, February 20, 2023.

Trivia and Links
You can see a trailer for the Berkeley Rep production (the 2nd production after the Soho Rep premiere) from October-November 2018 on YouTube here.
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Signalé
alanteder | 2 autres critiques | Feb 23, 2023 |
A uniquely interesting play centering around a Black families' celebration of the birthday of their aging grandmother. Race and family are looked at from different generational and gender perspectives. In one act they ponder if they could be any racial or ethnic group what would they pick and why. We have a local theater group in Dayton and I would love to see them perform it. I can certainly see why the play received all the acclaim that it did.
 
Signalé
muddyboy | 2 autres critiques | Jun 23, 2020 |
(seen on 26 March 2014 at the Bush Theatre, Shepherd's Bush, London)

This metafictional play originally appeared at Soho Rep in NYC in 2012, and this production at the Bush Theatre, which features plays by young writers across the globe, marks its European premiere. In the opening scene, six actors portray actors in a theatre, as the speak to the audience about the play that they are going to perform. Its topic is the experience of the Herero people, who live in what is now Namibia, during the occupation of their homeland by Germany between 1884 and 1915, when it was known as Deutsch-Südwestafrika. The Herero people were originally appointed by the Germans as the favored tribe, due to their resourcefulness and friendliness. However, when the Herero rebelled against the ever repressive rule of the colonists, they, along with the Nama people, were slaughtered by the Germans in retaliation during the Herero and Namaqua genocide, which is considered to be the first act of genocide in the 20th century. From 1904 to 1907, roughly 65,000 Herero, roughly 80% of its population, along with 10,000 Namaque, half of its population, were shot to death, hung, or banished to the desert, where they died of starvation and dehydration.

Because this genocidal act is unknown to most people, the ensemble decides that it should provide the audience with background information about the experience of the Herero under German rule. Actor 6/Black Woman, the artistic director of the ensemble, which consists of three white and three black young actors, provides the audience with this information, as her colleagues act in the background.

Later, the actors move to a practice space, where they work on the presentation and the play itself. Information about the genocide comes largely from letters and accounts by German colonialists, and the black actors, in particular, seek to tell the story from the vantage point of the Herero people. Conflicts arise between the actors, which are largely instigated by Actor 2/Black Man, who rigidly and determinedly insists that his white colleagues cannot understand or sympathize with the Herero people (while simultaneously proclaiming that he can convincingly portray a German character, since he lived there), and that any black person can and should identify with the Herero, whether they lived in Africa or not. It seems as though the cast has set aside its differences and come to an agreement, until the final shattering scene that left the actors, and the audience in stunned silence.

We Are Proud to Present... was a very good and brave production about racial misunderstanding and its implications, which was quite funny and most entertaining, thanks to its excellent cast. Bravo to the Bush Theatre for hosting this play, which I would highly recommend to anyone who can see it.
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Signalé
kidzdoc | Mar 28, 2014 |

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