ABSTRACT
Some 76 years after Richard Wright wrote Native Son (1940), playwright/actress Nambi E. Kelley adapted the novel into a swift, non-linear, visceral theatrical script that concludes with protagonist Bigger Thomas not on his way to the electric chair, as in the original, but in flight after he’s been thrown down a trapdoor by police. This chapter explores Bigger’s flight as a restoration of his human-cargo or citizen-property status and considers how American theatre is a function of that restoration.
