Introduction: -"Locating the Ancestral Burial Ground": Let the Journey Begin

My task as playwright is to - through literature and special strange relationship between theater and real-life - locate ancestral burial ground, dig for bones, find bones, hear bones sing, write it down. The bones tell us what was, is, will be; [... ] song is a play}n Gem of Ocean,2 first installment of August Wilson's monumental ten-play historical cycle, 285-year-old Aunt Ester tells us:Take a look at this map, Mr. Citizen. See that right there... that's a city. [... ] The people made a kingdom out of nothing. They were people that didn't make it across water. They sat down right there. They say, 'Let's make a kingdom. Let's make a city of bones.' The people got a burning tongue, Mr. Citizen. Their mouths are on fire with song. That can't put it out. That song is powerful. It rises up and come across water. Ten thousand tongues and ten thousand chariots coming across water. They on way, Mr. Citizen.Throughout Wilson's plays, characters must learn to re-locate present personal experience in light of an empowering collective past. They must un1 forget4 the names of gods, re-connect with memory and rediscover that their hearts [are] kicking in chest with a song worth singing.5 As crucial as four basic elements, these powerful songs symbolize ground on which you stand,6 wind that propels you forward (53), blood - Blood is thicker than water (38) - and finally fire of survival. These songs are what African American playwright Suzan-Lori Parks rightfully identifies in Possession as play[s] (5).Undeniably one of most significant characters7 in Wilson's plays, Aunt Ester is not only carrier of past African and African Americans' memories. Born in 1619, when first African slaves set foot on American continent, Aunt Ester does not merely embody the Ancestor,8 connecting African American collective past to present century. Beyond representing a lieu de memoire, in Pierre Nora's sense of term, or enacting the actual site of African American legacy,9 Aunt Ester most importantly keep[s] [...] memories alive; she feeds of Wilson's characters and audience members (43). Her metaphysical presence onstage provides sustenance and spiritual guidance. Her stories initiate journeys of selfdiscovery and genuine transformation. Taking Citizen Barlow (as well as all of us - readers and audience members) on a spiritual journey across ocean, to City of Bones, Aunt Ester exemplifies theater's magical potential to resurrect, enlighten, and empower.Inspired by songs of an increasing number of playwrights on contemporary North American stage, I have embarked on a thrilling and daunting journey: exploring vast landscape of English Canadian and American multi-ethnic drama. In this book, I examine significant dramatic works interrogating and redrawing boundaries of cultural and national identities. In current political climate and cultural crisis, theater remains a site in which to probe. For multi-ethnic drama in particular, theater offers a space of continued contestations of definitions of new ethnicities, in Stuart Hall's sense of term, and of social dynamics of race in North America.Since 1970s, a growing number of English Canadian and American playwrights have engaged with a highly diverse set of socio-political and aesthetic concerns. At a time when 'otherness' and different types of ethnic 'authenticity' are being commodified for visual consumption, ethnic and indigenous playwrights in particular raise a number of delicate issues in relation to culture and tradition. In provocative and innovative theatrical works, playwrights of (South) Asian, African, Latino, or Native heritage have challenged classics of various forms, such as theater of Shakespeare, George Bernard Shaw, or Eugene O'Neill. …

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