SOURCE: "LeRoi Jones' 'Slave Ship,'" in The Drama Review, Vol. 14, No. 2, Winter, 1970, pp. 212-19.

In the following excerpt, Brecht explores the images in Baraka's play, "Slave Ship."

The production [of "Slave Ship"] is spectacle, the play being imagist & exhortatory. It does not develop: it shows. Its style is somewhat epic—what little interaction exists is either demonstrative (commiseration, rape) or semi-ritual-istic, having the form of recall (Christians vs. Africans: the child-ignoring preacher vs. the member of the tribe pressing the child on his attention)—& the rhythm is the uneven, leisurely one of telling, not the drive of process. The music underscores this epic rhythm, but also builds up the emotional intensities. (The play does not afford much scope for Archie Shepp's marvelous lyricism.) These intensities attach to the affects to whose representation the acting is devoted: suffering & affection, degradation & dignity. The acting style is idealizing naturalism—more...