Thunder on the Stage

The Dramatic Vision of Richard Wright

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by Bruce Allen Dick

Type

Studies

Subject

Others persons > Richard Wright

Keywords

Richard Wright, screenwriter

Publishing date

2024

Publisher

University of Illinois Press

Language

English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Paperback • 296 pages
5 ½ x 8 ¼ inches (14 x 21 cm)

ISBN

978-0-252-08779-0

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Book Presentation:
Theater’s impact on the writer’s work and artistic worldview

Richard Wright’s dramatic imagination guided the creation of his masterpieces Native Son and Black Boy and helped shape Wright’s long-overlooked writing for theater and other performative mediums.
Drawing on decades of research and interviews with Wright’s family and Wright scholars, Bruce Allen Dick uncovers the theatrical influence on Wright’s oeuvre--from his 1930s boxing journalism to his unpublished one-acts on returning Black GIs in WWII to his unproduced pageant honoring Vladimir Lenin. Wright maintained rewarding associations with playwrights, writers, and actors such as Langston Hughes, Theodore Ward, Paul Robeson, and Lillian Hellman, and took particular inspiration from French literary figures like Jean-Paul Sartre. Dick’s analysis also illuminates Wright’s direct involvement with theater and film, including the performative aspects of his travel writings; the Orson Welles-directed Native Son on Broadway; his acting debut in Native Son’s first film version; and his play “Daddy Goodness,” a satire of religious charlatans like Father Divine, in the 1930s.

Bold and original, Thunder on the Stage offers a groundbreaking reinterpretation of a major American writer.

About the Author:
Bruce Allen Dick is a professor emeritus of English at Appalachian State University. He is the author of A Poet’s Truth: Conversations with Latino and Latina Poets and coauthor of American Soccer: History, Culture, Class.

See the publisher website: University of Illinois Press