Artistic Performance and the Crossing of Boundaries in Caryl Phillips’s Dancing in the Dark
In his 2005 novel Dancing in the Dark, Caryl Phillips explores the difficulty of crossing the colour line in early twentieth-century America. Through a fictional account of the life of the vaudeville entertainer Bert Williams, he examines the frustration experienced by performers who were trapped in...
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| In: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/ces, |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Language: | Anglais |
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Commonwealth Essays and Studies
2021
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| Online Access: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Summary: | In his 2005 novel Dancing in the Dark, Caryl Phillips explores the difficulty of crossing the colour line in early twentieth-century America. Through a fictional account of the life of the vaudeville entertainer Bert Williams, he examines the frustration experienced by performers who were trapped in racial stereotypes. This article focuses on the notion of performance as a way of understanding the narrative techniques used by Phillips to express Williams’s incapacity to escape the racial discourse of his time and transform his art into a valid form of black cultural expression. |
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