Dutchman (play)

Dutchman is a play written by playwright Amiri Baraka, then known as LeRoi Jones. Dutchman was first presented at the Cherry Lane Theatre in Greenwich Village, New York City, in March 1964 co-produced by Rita Fredricks. The play won an Obie Award; it shared this distinction with Adrienne Kennedy's Funnyhouse of a Negro. Baraka's stage play was made into a film in 1967, starring Shirley Knight and Al Freeman Jr. Dutchman was the last play produced by Baraka under his birth name, LeRoi Jones. 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. Dutchman may be described as a political allegory depicting black and white relations during the time Baraka wrote it. With Dutchman and his other works, Baraka was a respected playwright in the Black Arts Movement and is considered a major African American literary figure alongside Phyllis Wheatley, Frederick Douglass, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, and Ralph Ellison .

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 and 2025 was restaged by Rashid Johnson at the Russian and Turkish Baths in the East Village.

Plot

Scene I

The action focuses almost exclusively on Lula, a mature 30-year-old white woman, and Clay, a 20-year-old young black man, who both ride the subway in New York City.