Jackie Sibblies Drury's Fairview: Affect in Three Acts

Authors

Nancy Jones

Abstract

In lieu of an abstract, the first paragraph of the essay follows:

Fairview, the 2019 Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Jackie Sibblies Drury, examines notions of race and racism in the United States as experienced by African Americans under the surveillance of the White gaze. The play is groundbreaking in both structure and content, as Drury's innovations on the dramedy form are intricately connected to her project of disrupting racism. The published script's epigraph immediately reveals Drury's Fanonian influences: she quotes his well-known racist epithet "'Dirty n----r!' Or simply 'Look! A Negro!'" then instructs the reader that "this reversed, is the play, in a way."¹ From this startling epigraph and continuing throughout the play, Drury conducts a shrewd investigation of the ways in which racist ideologies are constructed through the White gaze, then upends that notion as she makes the ramifications of being watched visible. In this way, affect—visceral, embodied experiences that transcend intellectual interpretation—is integral to the concept of the play and its proposed influence on the spectator. Drury's overall intention, to examine and critique the White surveillance state, is palpable in both the script and its performance as she destabilizes genre expectations, inviting audiences into the familiar comfort of a dramedy, only to confront them with a searing critique of their complicity within the mechanisms of White surveillance.

Notes

1. Jackie Sibblies Drury, Fairview (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2019), 6. All quotations from the play are hereafter cited parenthetically in the essay.

Recommended Citation

Jones, Nancy (2025) "Jackie Sibblies Drury's Fairview: Affect in Three Acts," Comparative Drama: Vol. 59: Iss. 1, Article 8.
Available at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/compdr/vol59/iss1/8