DUTCHMAN (1964), A Landmark Play by Amiri Baraka (1934-2014), American poet, playwright, and political activist. Born in Newark, New Jersey, as LeRoi Jones, he studied at both Rutgers and Howard Universities, receiving his B.A. in 1954.
Always controversial, and often quoting Stalin, Mao and The Peking Review, the plays Amiri Baraka wrote, include Dutchman, Black Mass, Home on the Range, and Police, and are among his dozens of books of poems, fiction and non-fiction works. While giving hundreds of talks across the country on writing and Civil Rights, he befriended Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Jesse Jackson, Andrew Young, and other notable African American leaders of the 1960s and 70s.
Above is Amiri Baraka’s mentor and Stage Director, Edward Parone’s original, signed script for Dutchman. Baraka’s signature work, Dutchman introduced the black revolutionary play to American theatre audiences. He won an Obie, an off-Broadway award given by the Village Voice newspaper, that brought him and the play notoriety. Henceforth, black actors would perform in roles that not only affirmed blackness, but portrayed political militancy. Baraka garnered further notoriety in 1964 when four of his plays (Dutchman, The Toilet, The Baptism, and The Slave) were produced off-Broadway.
Taken together, Baraka’s works express a scathing denunciation of the good intentions, pretensions and condescensions of mainstream America towards people of color.