Contemporary playwrights are constantly writing about and commenting on current social and political issues. Some do it directly and very obviously, addressing the events in the plot and the world of the play. Others do it merely through being classified as contemporary, without needing to address topics like war, politics, or racism. The very fact that they are writing in the current world makes their work a product of the issues facing the world every day. So how does one compare and contrast plays from each of these categories? If a piece is almost "over-addressing- a social topic, almost to the point of satire or stereotype, can it be placed into a category with a play that is built around exaggerating the lack of such a topic, using a plot which doesn't draw from current issues at all? I have found that it is this very opposition which creates large similarities between these kinds of plays. The two plays I would like to discuss do just this and, in turn, reveal other parallels which comment on the nature of human communication. Although both pieces are written a bit too obviously for my personal taste, Trying to Find Chinatown by David Henry Hwang and Reverse Transcription by Tony Kushner create a similar statement through the playwrights' exaggeration of stereotype and lack of plot resolution that people's knowledge of themselves in the contemporary world is constantly being covered up and locked away.
In the play Trying to Find Chinatown, David Henry Hwang addresses racial identity and discrimination, almost to the point of overkill. His two characters are perfect stereotypes of the races they symbolize. There is a blonde haired, blue-eyed, Midwestern Caucasian man in his early 20's named Benjamin and a Chinese man in his early 20's named Ronnie who wears retro 60's clothing, and sits on a sidewalk playing a violin. Already, even before reading the first word of the play, the reader can see who these people are and what this confrontation will be about.
