Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Joy and Tyranny

Joy and Tyranny

Wesker, Arnold

Paperback

Series: Oberon Modern Plays

Plays

ISBN10: 1849431086
ISBN13: 9781849431088
Publisher: Oberon Books
Published: Feb 28 2012
Pages: 96
Weight: 0.20
Height: 0.20 Width: 5.00 Depth: 8.00
Language: English

'My preoccupation, ' says Arnold Wesker in his interview/portrait Ambivalences (published by Oberon Books) 'with-violence-stemming from-perceived-intimidation-by-the-bright-ones who dare to be cleve ror simply different, began with an incident at school. While queuing for a school meal, one of the other boys wanted me to try his liquorice stick .I didn't want to. This other pupil insisted. I continued to decline. I didn'tlike liquorice! That I didn't want to share what he liked, what he thought was good, enraged the other boy who couldn't bear my indifference to his taste, and he hit me. I've never lost this image of violence induced by the outsider, the one who dissents, the one who doesn't share in what others like or believe. One day', Wesker vowed, 'I may write a play beginning with that image - of the boy who wants another boy to share his taste in liquorice and hits him because he doesn't. It'll be an exploration of the nature of violence.'

In late 2010 he wrote just such a play, Joy and Tyranny, but the playwright doesn't describe it as a play, rather as: Arias and variations on the theme of violence. In fact it is a patchwork quilt knitting together many extracts from other of his works, as though throughout his career he was infusing those works, ghost-like, with a hidden play waiting the right time to emerge.

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