MASARYK UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF EDUCATION BACHELOR THESIS Brno 2014 Gabriela Zemanová MASARYK UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF EDUCATION DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE IDENTITY IN THE PLAYS BY JOHN GUARE BACHELOR THESIS Thesis Supervisor: Author: Mgr. Lucie Podroužková, Ph.D. Gabriela Zemanová 2 Declaration Hereby I declare I have written the thesis entirely on my own and all sources used are attached in the references at the back of the thesis. April 13, 2014 ___________________________ Gabriela Zemanová 3 Acknowledgements I would like to thank to Mgr. Lucie Podroužková, Ph.D. for supervising my work, her valuable comments as well as supportive approach. 4 Table of Contents 1. Introduction ............................................................................................................................ 6 A. JOHN GUARE .................................................................................................................. 6 B. THE PLAYS .................................................................................................................... 13 2. Constructs of Identity ........................................................................................................... 16 A. MODERNITY ................................................................................................................. 17 THE PILGRIM ................................................................................................................. 17 B. POSTMODERNITY ....................................................................................................... 21 IDENTITY PATTERNS ................................................................................................... 22 THE STROLLER ............................................................................................................. 23 THE VAGABOND ........................................................................................................... 28 THE TOURIST ................................................................................................................ 36 THE PLAYER .................................................................................................................. 44 3. Conclusion ............................................................................................................................ 48 Works cited ............................................................................................................................... 50 Annotation ................................................................................................................................ 51 Keywords ................................................................................................................................. 51 5 1. Introduction The thesis focuses on two plays of contemporary American playwright John Guare, The House of Blue Leaves and Six Degrees of Separation, from the perspective of identity. The object of this thesis is to clearly demonstrate how the characters' features are highly in accordance with the seminal attributes of either modernism or postmodernism. The thesis is divided into three parts; the first one introduces the personality of the playwright, crucial fragments of his life, his literary style as well as an overview of his plays. It aims not to be a biography only and provides an evaluation of various factors that have influenced Guare's work. The second part analyses the identity of characters with the focus on the plays. Thorough the whole chapter, five identity patterns, created by Zygmunt Bauman are respected. In each subchapter, key features of the Pilgrim, the Stroller, the Vagabond, the Tourist and the Player are first briefly listed, then illustrated on characters of both plays. Their values and their dreams are the prime focus that provides an insight into the characters‟ selves. A. JOHN GUARE John Guare, a contemporary American dramatist and an author of several award winning enterprises, remains relatively unknown to the Czech public despite the fact his work is both voluminous and extremely witty. This recognized author of more than forty plays does not mind using his own experiences of any sort and making the best out of them to get to the point. And that he does have a point is clear after a single encounter with any work of his. Lucky for little John was it that his parents resided in New York City where he had plentiful opportunities to enjoy the experience of theatregoing. In combination with genes he inherited from his ancestors, it seems he was quite obviously predestined to became a playwright. “My parents liked to go see shows, and I went to see plays every time there was a birthday or a holiday. I also had two great-uncles who had toured in vaudeville,” adds John Guare to answer Jackson R. Bryer's question whether he fell in love with theatre as a boy (Bryer, 1995). 6 Having read or heard over twenty interviews with John Guare, another fact appeared to me as clearly visible; it must be a reporter's joy to come across a man that combines a great deal of admirable features. At the age of 74, he is nimble minded, provides lengthy answers, has plenty to say in terms of passing the knowledge, is willing to talk and displays a surprising exactness in a language use. Not only the reporter has to think about what Mr. Guare is responding to, he or she also has to be alert and pick appropriate words when asking. Failing to do so, the reporter is being teased to rephrase his or her question before he or she gets an answer of qualities described above. Since it is words that are the only playwright's tool, it makes a perfect sense to pay attention to them. That he was born to be a star was strangely enough clear to him at a young age. His mother's brother, a head of casting at MGM, came to visit his sister to relax from demanding work, which was finding a boy perfect for a part of Huckleberry Finn in a Hollywood production. Little John, spotting the unique chance, packed his bag ready to leave his parents for the big world at the age of eight, positive the success is guaranteed. Like most of what he mastered to perfection later, it turned out to be an exquisite farce, happening exactly as he describes it in The House of Blue Leaves, claims Guare for The Art of Theatre (Cattaneo, 2013). I began dancing. And singing. Immediately. Things I have never done in my life- before or since. I stood on my head and skipped and whirled spectacular leaps in the air so I could see veins and sang and began laughing and crying soft and loud to show off all my emotions. And I heard music and drums that I couldn't even keep up with. And then cut off all my emotions just like that. Instantly. And took a deep bow like the Dying Swan I saw on Ed Sullivan. I picked up my suitcase and waited by the door. Billy turned to my parents, whose jaws were down to about there, and Billy said, “You never told me you had a mentally retarded child.” (Guare, 1987) We can assume that it, if at all, influenced his ambitions only temporarily as at the age of eleven he did not deplore on a rejection of Life magazine to show interest in a play he had written and contacted a local newspaper to notify them that he and his friend would put it up. He admits the story describing their act might have been published in the newspaper only because they also announced the money they make would go to an orphanage (Cattaneo, 2013). Nevertheless, the impact it had on his parents was rather a decisive one for his future 7 as he got his first typewriter and he gained his parents' respect for his work. Out of a self- confident child he grew to be a self-confident teenager of self-confident parents. When his family had to move outside New York City to help his father recover from illness, his parents decided it would be better not to enrol their son at a local school because of the school's attitude during McCarthy period. A thirteen year old John spent a whole off-school year reading and writing, his “soul protected from the red menace. I'm the only person I know who benefited from the McCarthy period,” he adds (Cattaneo, 2013). It suggests that growing up during McCarthism must have been difficult, yet John Guare seems to have been born in perfect times as after getting a degree at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., he continued his education in Yale Drama School. New Heaven, where the school resided, was close enough to New York, and the Off-Broadway and Off-Off-Broadway theatres were just starting. In spite of this proximity, his route to theatre was neither straightforward nor arid; it got greatly spiced on its way until it reached the target. In 1963, hearing for the first time after the Huckleberry Finn fiasco from his uncle, who was clearly impressed that John managed a master's degree from Yale, he learnt that his uncle had arranged a job at Universal Studios for him (Cattaneo, 2013). Today, he feels to have been prevented from even starting it, as he got his draft notice and left for air force for six months during which another largely absurd story happened to him. He was promised ten thousand dollars by his aunt, on the condition of leaving California, going to New York, writing plays, going to Europe and sending her postcards (ibid). He fulfilled it to the last bit and after gaining experience through hitch-hiking in Europe he resided in New York City. It soon proved that fate and universe were pulling together as his first production in Caffe Cino would not have happened, had