士兵的戏剧 (1982)

《士兵的戏剧》（英语：A Soldier's Play）是一部美国剧作家查尔斯·富勒的戏剧作品，改编自赫尔曼·梅尔维尔的中篇小说《水手比利·巴德》。戏剧以种族隔离时代南方的一处美国陆军基地为背景，讲述了一个全黑人部队对中士谋杀案的调查，透过一桩谋杀之谜来探讨一些非裔美国人彼此之间复杂的愤怒和怨恨情绪。

该剧荣获1982年普利策戏剧奖等荣誉。富勒也为1984年改编电影《大兵》编写剧本。

2021年9月，有消息称索尼影视电视有意将《士兵的戏剧》改编成有限剧集。大卫·亚伦·葛瑞主演（他也在2020年百老汇版主演），并担任该剧的执行制片人。

A Soldier's Play is a play by American playwright Charles Fuller. Set on a US Army installation in the segregation-era South, the play is a loose adaptation of Herman Melville's novella Billy Budd, and follows the murder investigation of the Sergeant in an all-black unit. The play uses a murder mystery to explore the complicated feelings of anger and resentment that some African Americans have toward one another, and the ways in which many black Americans have absorbed white racist attitudes.

The drama won the 1982 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, among other accolades. It was the basis for a 1984 feature film adaptation, A Soldier's Story, for which Fuller wrote the screenplay.

Plot synopsis

In 1944 at the United States Army's Fort Neal in Louisiana, a light-skinned black man Sergeant Vernon Waters is murdered by an unseen shooter. Just before his death, Waters utters the enigmatic cry, "They still hate you!"

Captain Richard Davenport is a black Army officer; a rarity. He arrives to investigate the killing. Initially, the primary suspects are local Ku Klux Klansmen. Later, bigoted white soldiers fall under suspicion. Ultimately, Davenport discovers the killer was one of the black soldiers under Waters' command. Waters' men hated him because Waters himself treated Southern black men with disdain and contempt.

As Davenport interviews witnesses and suspects, flashbacks show what Sergeant Waters was like, and how he treated his men. The light-skinned Waters was highly intelligent and extremely ambitious. He loathed black men who conformed to old-fashioned racist stereotypes. Waters dreamed of sending his own children to an elite college where they would associate with white students, rather than with other blacks. In Waters' mind, Uncle Toms and "lazy, shiftless Negroes" reflected poorly on him, and made it harder for other African-Americans to succeed. For that reason, Waters persecuted black soldiers like Private C.J. Memphis, whose broad grin and jive talk infuriated Waters. Waters' cruelty and vindictiveness drove Memphis to suicide, which alienated the rest of Waters' men and turned them against him.

Shortly before he was murdered, Waters came to realize how futile and foolish his lifelong attempts to behave like a white man had been. His dying words, "They still hate you," reflected his belated understanding that white hatred and disdain of black men like himself had nothing to do with stereotypical black behavior, and that whites would probably always hate him, no matter how hard he tried to emulate "white" ways.

Productions

The play originally was staged Off-Broadway by the Negro Ensemble Company at Theater Four (now called the Julia Miles Theater). It opened on November 20, 1981, and closed on January 2, 1983, after 468 performances. The original cast included Adolph Caesar as Sergeant Waters, Denzel Washington as Private Peterson, Larry Riley as Private C.J. Memphis, Samuel L. Jackson as Private Louis Henson, Peter Friedman as Captain Charles Taylor, and Charles Brown as Captain Davenport. The director was Douglas Turner Ward. In addition to the Pulitzer Prize, the play won the Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Off-Broadway Play, the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best American Play, and the Obie Award for Distinguished Ensemble Performance.

The Valiant Theatre Company presented the play Off-Broadway at Theatre Four from November 19, 1996, to December 8. Directed by Clinton Turner Davis, the cast featured Wood Harris (Private First Class Melvin Peterson), Keith Randolph Smith, Danny Johnson (C.J. Memphis), Geoffrey C. Ewing (Captain Richard Davidson), Jonathan Walker and Albert Hall (Sergeant Waters).