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    A Study Guide for Bill Harris's "Robert Johnson: Trick the Devil"
    A Study Guide for Bill Harris's "Robert Johnson: Trick the Devil"
    A Study Guide for Bill Harris's "Robert Johnson: Trick the Devil"
    Ebook42 pages1 hour

    A Study Guide for Bill Harris's "Robert Johnson: Trick the Devil"

    By Gale and Cengage

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    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for Bill Harris's "Robert Johnson: Trick the Devil," 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
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateAug 12, 2016
    ISBN9781535832199
    A Study Guide for Bill Harris's "Robert Johnson: Trick the Devil"

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      Book preview

      A Study Guide for Bill Harris's "Robert Johnson - Gale

      10

      Robert Johnson: Trick the Devil

      Bill Harris

      1993

      Introduction

      Bill Harris's Robert Johnson: Trick the Devil is a play inspired by the legend surrounding the historical blues musician Robert Johnson. According to the legend, Robert Johnson met the devil at a crossroads in the Deep South and sold his soul in exchange for unparalleled guitar-playing skills. Harris's play is set in 1938, the year the real Johnson died. Harris's character Robert Johnson, who is being pursued by a white man named Kimbrough, finds himself at a jook joint owned and operated by a woman named Georgia. (Jook joint is the term used to describe an African American bar where music, dancing, and gambling are the primary attractions. Jook joints first arose in the South during the late 1800s.) Johnson soon becomes the object of Georgia's affection, while Kimbrough confesses his desire to hear Johnson's story about the deal he made with the devil. By the play's end, Johnson has finally told his story, revealing to Kimbrough, and the others, that he tricked the devil at the crossroads, realizing as he played that he had no need of the devil's bargain after all. Johnson, however, is poisoned by Georgia's estranged husband. After Johnson's death, Kimbrough asserts that Johnson did in fact sell his soul to Satan, and that is the sole reason that Johnson was able to play guitar with such skill, thereby rejecting Johnson's own accounting of the alleged incident.

      Originally staged in 1993 in New York's New Federal Theatre, Harris's play is available in the 1995 anthology The National Black Drama Anthology: Eleven Plays from America's Leading African American Theaters, edited by Woodie King, Jr., and published by Applause Theatre Books.

      Content Advisory Note: Harris's play contains some sexuality and violence that may be deemed objectionable for middle-grade readers.

      Author Biography

      Little has been published about Harris's life. He was born in 1941 in Anniston,Alabama, and raised in Detroit, Michigan, from the age of two. After attending Cass Technological High School as a teen, Harris later went on to study at Wayne State University. Harris received both his bachelor of art and master of art degrees (his master's in 1977) from Wayne State University. He has written plays, poems, and literary criticism. In the 1980s, Harris worked as the Production Coordinator for Jazzmobile, a non-profit organization providing free jazz concerts in New York City, and for the New Federal Theatre in New York. Three of his own plays were staged during his time

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