Reading Response 1, Week 7

I read the River Niger this past weekend while in judging at a debate tournament. After reading more of the short plays, I realized the strength in keeping your prose in one location and trying to work around that central location. In the River Niger everything takes places in the William’s house who are expecting their son to come back from the air force. While describing the family waiting for their son to come back the text gave directions and descriptions of actions the actors would make that created this character with a background and life and added something to the story. The grandma was an alcoholic who would stash her swig in a cabinet right next to the refrigerator where the husband/father keeps his stash, but they hate each other; only accepting one another to honor their alcoholism. Joseph A Walker, uses minimal instructions to create a story that makes you want to read more. Similar to West of Stupid the dialogue in this rather short play-only three acts- the characters converse, but in a disconnected almost as if they aren’t friend way. John and his friend the doctor, argue back and forth all the time over the status of the black man; the doctor a Caribbean immigrant and john an American negro clash over their blackness articulating the larger struggles at the time Walker wrote the play. But what I got most out of it was the way the story developed and how to make something happen with just dialogue and setting up the scene with descriptions of the people, its very minimalist in some respects to how we come to understand the development of it all.