Stonewall Jackson's House by Jonathan Reynolds
While leading a tour of the haphazardly restored home of the Confederate general, a young African American docent suddenly has a revelation. An uproar ensues as she abruptly stops the tour and asks an affluent white couple if she can come home with them - as their slave But the most astonishing moments are still to come ... A sophisticated, yet unrestrained rampage through the well-intentioned, but agenda-laden forces of the politically correct. The gloves come off early in STONEWALL JACKSON'S HOUSE, Jonathan Reynolds's caustic comic tirade against political orthodoxy. A woebegone black guide leading a group through the haphazardly restored home of the Confederate general suddenly stops the tour to ask a well-to-do white couple from Ohio if she can come home with them, as their slave. It's a provocative moment: where is this playwright, who so deliciously savaged film making fifteen years ago in GENIUSES, headed with this tasteless conceit? Mercifully, not to a scene depicting modern slavery. The revolving panels of the play's simple set are eventually pushed aside to reveal the rehearsal room of a small theater company whose self-righteous administrators, interviewing playwrights for the new season, denounce the play the audience has just sampled. With that, Mr Reynolds climbs on his soapbox for a ambling, funny, cranky and highly entertaining diatribe against all the agenda-laden forces and high-minded programs (especially of the liberal stripe) that he believes have conspired to wring common sense out of American political and cultural life. Affirmative action, political correctness, nontraditional casting, the welfare state, black studies, ethnocentrism, multiculturalism: Mr Reynolds pushes so many buttons he could have staged the play in an elevator ... You don't have to agree with Mr Reynolds's inexhaustible supply of opinions to get a kick out of this ... The plot of STONEWALL JACKSON'S HOUSE takes several outrageous turns, culminating in a hilariously radical restaging of the tour-guide scene along lines more politically palatable to the theater company's old guard ... But maybe a little more unvarnished spleen-venting is just what the theater needs. -Peter Marks, The New York Times In STONEWALL JACKSON'S HOUSE, Jonathan Reynolds has created an American play of ideas much in the manner of Paddy Chayefsky, with intelligent characters expressing their philosophies with a wit that sparkles and stabs at the same time. -Howard Waxman, Variety ... the funniest and most outrageous play of the season, a withering fusillade of satire aimed at our comfortably congealed political orthodoxies. He's brought brainy cantankerousness back with a vengeance. -Jack Kroll, Newsweek
Erik Gilbert was born in Fairfax, Virginia. He and his family moved to Ghana in 1966, when he was two years old. He subsequently lived in Nigeria, Cameroun and Tanzania. He did his undergraduate work at the College of William and Mary, where he studied ancient Greek. After a short stint as an ice cream scooper, bartender and ski bum, he went to the University of Vermont where he received an M.A. in history. He then moved to Boston University where he received a Ph.D. in African history in 1997. His research has focused primarily on coastal East Africa and Indian Ocean trade. Indian Ocean research has taken him to Zanzibar on a Fulbright scholarship, to Yemen (where in addition to doing research in the ports, he studied Arabic at the Yemen Language Center) and to Kenya. He has taught at Casdeton State College, the University of Vermont and is currently an associate professor of history at Arkansas State University. Jonathan T. Reynolds completed his undergraduate work at the University of Tennesse in 1988 with majors in honors history, anthropology and ancient Mediterranean civilizations. He completed his Ph.D. in African history at Boston University in 1995. A specialist in West Africa and Islam, he has traveled extensively in the region since 1990-including an unsuccessful attempt at driving across the Sahara in a British car in 1994. His research has been supported by the Fulbright Foundation and the West Africa Research Association. He has taught at Bayero University, the University of Tennessee, Livingstone College (where he received the Aggrey Award for Excellence in Teaching in 1998) and Northern Kentucky University (where he received the Outstanding Junior Faculty Award in 2001). He served as the coordinator for the Southeastern Regional Seminar on African Studies from 1997 to 2000. Dr. Reynolds currently holds the rank of associate professor of history at Northern Kentucky University.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780881452389 |
| ISBN 10 | 0881452386 |
| Title | Stonewall Jackson's House |
| Author | Jonathan Reynolds |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Broadway Play Publishing |
| Year published | 2004-05-15 |
| Number of pages | 96 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |