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A Study Guide for Alice Childress's "The Wedding Band"
A Study Guide for Alice Childress's "The Wedding Band"
A Study Guide for Alice Childress's "The Wedding Band"
Ebook35 pages15 minutes

A Study Guide for Alice Childress's "The Wedding Band"

By Gale and Cengage

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A Study Guide for Alice Childress's "The Wedding Band," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Drama For Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Drama For Students for all of your research needs.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateJul 27, 2016
ISBN9781535840460
A Study Guide for Alice Childress's "The Wedding Band"

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    A Study Guide for Alice Childress's "The Wedding Band" - Gale

    3

    Wedding Band

    Alice Childress

    1966

    Introduction

    Although Alice Childress wrote Wedding Band (the full title of which is Wedding Band: A Love/Hate Story in Black and White) in the early 1960s, the play was not performed professionally until 1966. There was interest in producing the play on Broadway, but because of its controversial subject matter the play remained largely unknown to audiences. Finally in 1972 Wedding Band was produced in New York for the first time. Subsequently, a New York Shakespeare Festival production of the play, based on Childress’s screenplay, was broadcast by ABC in 1973; however, several ABC affiliates refused to carry the television production. The play examines the enduring nature of love between a white man and a black woman in 1918 South Carolina. Wedding Band confronts racism, but Childress reveals that racism is not only directed at blacks, but is also displayed by blacks. In the play, whites, Asians, and Jews are also victims of racism. Childress’s depiction of an interracial love affair broke long-standing taboos on stage and television. While white critics argued that Herman should have been stronger and more determined to break away from southern racism, black critics maintained that Childress should have focused her writing on a black couple. Childress’s characters are not idealized human beings; they are the imperfect men and women of a real world. Rather than present audiences with a model for racial harmony, Childress exposes the reality of life for black and white Americans as she explores the frailty of a humanity so entrenched in maintaining rules and social lines that it forgets that there are lives at

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