[1] Dutchman was first presented at the Cherry Lane Theatre in Greenwich Village, New York City, in March 1964 co-produced by Rita Fredricks.
At the time, he was in the process of divorcing his Jewish wife, Hettie Jones, embracing Black nationalism, and after lamenting the death of Malcolm X in 1965.
[5] With Dutchman and his other works, Baraka was a respected playwright among other figures (Phyllis Wheatley, Frederick Douglass, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, and Ralph Ellison) in the Black Arts Movement.
[6] The play was revived for the first time off-Broadway in 2007 at the Cherry Lane Theatre starring Dulé Hill and Jennifer Mudge, and in 2013 was restaged by Rashid Johnson at the Russian and Turkish Baths in the East Village.
[7] Scene I The action focuses almost exclusively on Lula, a mature white woman, and Clay, a young black man, who both ride the subway in New York City.
She ignores his denials and uses stereotypes to correctly guess where he lives, where he is going, what Clay's friend, Warren, looks and talks like.
"[9] Another layer of the title's symbolism is the myth of the Flying Dutchman, a ghost ship which, much like the subway car Clay rides on, endlessly sails on with a crew that is unable to escape the confines of the vessel.
The story is set in an underwater civilization, where enslaved people who were thrown from the slave ships can live and breathe in the deep ocean.
[11] This connection perhaps refers to the moment at the end of the play when Clay was thrown overboard of the moving train in the “Underground” world that resembles the “underwater” society in the novel.” Yet, the play shows that, within the context of the slave ships, Lula is the enslaver or the ship captain while Clay is one of the enslaved people.
Throughout the play, Lula’s lines, at many moments, suggested the conception of double consciousness in Clay’s dressing in a suit, self-control speech, childhood upbringing, and intellectual mannerism as an educated man.
Nevertheless, Giroy also advocates how “dual soul” builds intercultural power that unites Black people and communities around the world.
According to Joseph Lelyveld, an executive editor of The New York Times, the film was shot with a low budget of 600,000 USD for only six days.
[18] The film adaptation raised discussions about surrealism, tension violence and race, and the existence “in a vacuum” that was set in one location only.
The film stars André Holland, Zazie Beetz, Kate Mara, and Stephen McKinley Henderson.