Tennessee Williams play Orpheus descending - an analysis

However, juvenile delinquency is said to be at an all-time high level in the United States in the 50s. African-Americans were still subject to racial segregation. However, McGee was executed. As no white man ever was executed for rape in Mississippi, many people claimed that the judges decision was influenced by the fact that a lot of people in the South were simply against any relationships between blacks and whites. Among the whites Christianity enjoyed broader popularity again and organizations such as Youth for Christ and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association were founded.

Society was conservative, especially in the so-called Bible Belt in the South. Sexual relationships were only approved in a marriage. In the play the women in town gossip about Lady because she had an affair with David Cutrere before she married Jabe. Small-town society in the play is marked by conformity, sexual frustration, narrowness, and racism. The town community is rather reserved towards the life outside of town, in particular life in the cities where life-style is regarded to be criminal, depraved and immoral.

Even Lady is critical towards Val: However, this view of the outside world from the inside world of the town is not objective and shows rather self-deception than critical self-reflection. The play involves 21 characters but the focus is on the gently evolving affair between Lady Torrance and Val Xavier. Therefore it is essential for any further interpretation to take a look at their characters first: Val is 30 years old and a man with an eventful past life. Val has been a wanderer who has enjoyed easy living, gambling and women.

However, he has sworn off his wild ways and is searching for a new perspective in life; he wants to settle down and to do something steady. He is honest [12] and willing to leave his past behind. However, he is not interested in affairs anymore. New York et al. English Language and Literature Studies - Literature. English - Literature, Works. GRIN Publishing, located in Munich, Germany, has specialized since its foundation in in the publication of academic ebooks and books. The publishing website GRIN. Free Publication of your term paper, essay, interpretation, bachelor's thesis, master's thesis, dissertation or textbook - upload now!

Register or log in. Our newsletter keeps you up to date with all new papers in your subjects. Request a new password via email. To get a better grasp of the play and its interpretation I will concentrate in my thesis on these selected aspects: Essay on Literature into Film. Yeats "The Second Coming". Violence lurks just below the surface, and it bursts into the open at the play's end. The play is also rich in imagery, lyrical language, and symbolism.

It is now recognized as one of Williams's weightier plays, although perhaps not on the level of his finest work. Williams, whose first published story appeared in Weird Tales in , attended the University of Missouri from to , continued his education at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, from to , and then graduated with a bachelor of arts degree from the University of Iowa in Before he became a full-time writer in , Williams worked various jobs, including clerk and laborer for a shoe company in St.

Louis, and waiter, hotel elevator operator, teletype operator, and theatre usher in New Orleans ; Jacksonville, Florida; and New York City. In Williams's first major production, Battle of Angels , took place in Boston, but the play was a failure and was quickly withdrawn. However, Williams did not have to wait long for success. Williams then entered a prolific period, and over a period of a decade, a new play of his was produced every few years. Many, although not all, of these plays were highly acclaimed, commercial successes.

But in the s, Williams's critics became harsher, disturbed by the amount of violence and sexuality in his plays and what they saw as repetitious themes. Williams had a mental breakdown in and was committed to an institution in St. Upon recovery, he continued to produce plays. During this period, his reputation revived, and he was acknowledged as one of the foremost American dramatists. His plays were translated into many languages and many of them were made into films. Williams also produced three volumes of short stories, two novels, a memoir, and essays. He died February 24, , when he choked on a medicine bottle lid in a New York City hotel.

Orpheus Descending is set in a dry-goods store in a small southern town. It begins with Dolly and Beulah laying out a buffet supper. As they talk they reveal that Jabe Torrance has had surgery in Memphis but he is dying. Beulah recalls how he had in effect bought his wife Lady, when she was eighteen and had just had her heart broken by David Cutrere. Beulah also recalls that Lady's father was an Italian immigrant who during Prohibition acquired an orchard and made a wine garden of it.

But he made the mistake of selling liquor to a black man, and the incensed locals burned down his orchard. He was killed in the blaze. Beulah wonders if Lady knows that her husband, whom she hates anyway, was the leader of the mob. Beulah also explains that Lady is planning to reopen a "confectionery" which will serve as a kind of nightclub in another room in the store. Carol Cutrere makes a telephone call, while the Temple sisters gossip about her. Val Xavier enters, and shortly afterwards Vee Talbott arrives with one of her paintings. But it is Val, the stranger, who is the center of attention.

Carol insists that she has met him before, in New Orleans , but Val denies it. Carol suggests they go out together, but Val, who is looking for a job, is not interested. Lady and Jabe enter. Jabe looks sick and goes upstairs to bed, but not before he and Lady reveal their mutual dislike. Carol continues to pester Val, and reveals to him some of her past. She used to be a civil rights campaigner, and once went on a protest walk wearing nothing but a potato sack. She was arrested for lewd vagrancy, and a vigilante group warned her to stay out of the county.

Val picks up his guitar and leaves the store as the women continue to gossip. Two hours later, Val and Lady talk. Val complains about Carol's earlier attempt to seduce him. He shows Lady his guitar, which has been autographed by famous blues singers. Lady agrees to hire Val as a clerk, while insisting she has no wish to become sexually involved with him. A few weeks have passed. Val, who has been falsely accused by a woman of making a sexual advance on her, explains to Lady his past in New Orleans, where he indulged in wild living.

He says he has now put that behind him. Outside, Carol constantly sounds her car horn, because the gas station refuses to serve her. Then she goes to a pharmacy, while Lady says she will provide Carol service if she comes into the store. Carol enters, and her brother David calls to say that he is coming to fetch her.

Lady says she will refuse to allow him, her former lover, in the store. Carol once again makes romantic declarations to Val, which he again shrugs off. It transpires that he did know Carol during his New Orleans days. When David enters, Lady sends Carol and Val out of the store, and confesses to David that she had been pregnant with his child when he discarded her, and she had an abortion.

She tells him never to return. Val and Vee discuss Vee's painting, Church of the Resurrection, and Val understands her artistic gift. Vee's husband, Sheriff Talbot, arrives and visits Jabe upstairs. Vee and Val continue to talk, as Val shows great understanding of her work. He takes her hands in his and lifts them to his mouth.

At that moment, Talbott comes down the stairs. He sees the gesture and angrily tells them to stop. Val tells Lady that he wants to stay in town, even though he does not feel safe. Lady offers to allow him to stay at the store, in a small alcove behind a curtain. She says it will make her feel safer if he is there, guarding the store. She is physically tense and he manipulates her head, neck, and spine to relieve the tension.

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He also strokes her neck, after which she leaves to get linen for the bed. While she is gone, Val removes some money from the cashbox and leaves the store. Lady returns and discovers the theft. Late that night, Val returns and replaces the money he took.

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Lady appears on the landing and Val tells her he is quitting his job because he has won money gambling. Lady is suspicious and finds out that Val borrowed money to gamble with. She accuses him of robbing her, saying she deliberately left the money in the cashbox to see if she could trust him. Val accuses her of hiring him because she wanted to take a lover, which she denies. Then she breaks down in sobs. As Val is about to leave, she begs him to stay, and they go together to the alcove behind the curtain. Early Saturday morning, just before Easter, Lady tells Val to get dressed and come out of the alcove, since Jabe is coming down and he does not know that Val lives there.

Jabe sees the new confectionery and dislikes the way it has been decorated. At that moment, a circus calliope is heard, advertising the opening that night of the Torrance Confectionery. Jabe cruelly reminds Lady of her dead father, and then makes it clear that he was part of the mob that was responsible for his death. After he has gone back upstairs, the nurse returns saying that he is having a hemorrhage. Lady is stunned by Jabe's admission. At sunset, Vee enters the store and says she has been blinded by a vision of the risen Christ.

She falls on the ground and as Val tries to lift her, her husband enters, furious. He orders Val not to touch his wife, and then interrogates him while Dog and Pee Wee point knives at him. Talbott asks to see Val's guitar, but as Dog touches it, Val jumps on the counter and kicks at the men's hands.

Talbott tells him he has until sunrise the next day to get out of the county. Half an hour later, Beulah and Dolly discover that the confectionery has been decorated to resemble the orchard of Lady's father. Carol enters, trying to find someone to drive her across the river. She has heard that Val is leaving that night.

Lady expresses surprise, and Val says he is not leaving with Carol. Lady is determined to continue with the opening of the confectionery that night. She wants to resurrect in spirit her father's wine garden, and show that she has not been defeated. Val emerges with his luggage; he has decided to leave since he has been threatened.

Lady says if he goes, she will not pay his wages. He replies that he is going anyway. Lady grabs his guitar and says she will go with him, but they must wait until Jabe dies. She tries to persuade the nurse to give Jabe a fatal dose of morphine, but the nurse refuses. The two women quarrel, and the nurse blurts out that she believes Lady is pregnant. After the nurse leaves, Lady confirms to Val that she is pregnant and the baby is his.

She tells him he must leave because it is dangerous for him to stay. Jabe appears on the landing with a revolver and fires, wounding Lady. He rushes out saying that Val shot his wife. Lady dies and then some men arrive, bent on murder. One of them has a blowtorch. They rush out, and cries of anguish are heard as they burn Val to death. Beulah Binnings is the middle-aged wife of Pee Wee.

She gossips with Dolly about local events and people, and she plays an important role in the prologue, where her monologue serves to inform the audience about the tragic story of Lady's father. Pee Wee Binnings is a small, red-faced planter who keeps company with Dog Hamma. During Val's confrontation with the sheriff, he menaces Val with a knife. Carol Cutrere is David's younger sister. She looks over thirty years old and likes to gain attention by her appearance.

Her face and lips are powdered white, her eyes are outlined with black pencil, and her eyelids are painted blue. She admits to Val that she is an exhibitionist who wants to be noticed. She likes to drink and dance and expects to get her way, but she is also, in spite of her exhibitionism, vulnerable and lonely. Her family is the oldest and most distinguished in the area, but she is unpopular in the county.

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Some years earlier she was involved in civil rights campaigning and, after going on a protest walk wearing nothing but a potato sack, she was arrested for vagrancy. As a result, she is not allowed to stay in the county overnight. The local people gossip maliciously about her, calling her corrupt and degraded. She once met Val in New Orleans, and when he appears in town, she tries to get to know him better, but he is not interested in her. She entices him out on the ruse that her car needs fixing, and Val returns wiping lipstick off his mouth and face.

But, it is clear he rejected her advances. After Val's murder, Carol takes his snakeskin jacket as a reminder of the wild freedom he represented. David Cutrere is Carol's brother. He is tall and handsome, but with a hard look about his face and eyes. A plantation owner, he married a rich girl and now drives a Cadillac.

Twenty years earlier, he had a romance with Lady Torrance, but he rejected her, breaking her heart in the process. He appears only in act two, scene one, when he comes to collect Carol, and Lady tries in vain to prevent him from entering the store. He and Lady have an emotional confrontation in which Lady tells him that when he jilted her, she was pregnant. He did not know this before and claims to have little memory of their affair.

Dog rips Val's shirt open, then grabs his guitar. Dog is also one of the men who murder Val. Dolly Hamma is the wife of Dog. She gossips with her friend Beulah and seems to take pleasure in the misfortunes of others. His ragged clothes are decorated with talismans and good luck charms. The locals call him the Conjure Man and regard him as crazy. When he enters the store, he frightens away the Temple sisters and Dolly. Carol knows how to talk to him and gets him to give the Choctaw cry, a series of wild barking sounds. It is the Conjure Man who brings the murdered Val's jacket back into the store, and his "secret smile" is the last action of the play before the curtain falls.

Nurse Porter is the caregiver for Jabe Torrance after he returns from the hospital. She has the false cheeriness of someone used to caring for the dying, and she is mean-spirited. She and Lady quarrel when she indignantly rejects Lady's suggestion that Jabe be given a fatal dose of morphine.

Sheriff Talbott is Vee's husband, a rough, bullying man who twice catches his wife and Val touching each other in ways that appear to him inappropriate. After the second occasion, he interrogates Val and then tells him he must be out of the county by sunrise.

Orpheus Descending

Vee Talbott, the wife of Sheriff Talbott, is a heavy, sexually frustrated woman in her forties. She is a visionary painter and claims to have been blinded by a vision of the risen Christ. She finds in Val a sympathetic listener. It was Vee who first befriended Val when his car broke down in a storm and he needed a place to stay. Eva Temple is an elderly spinster who, like her sister, is curious about other people's business.

Jabe Torrance is gaunt and sick-looking, with a gray and yellow appearance. He returns home from cancer surgery in Memphis, but he is not expected to live. Jabe dominates his wife Lady, and keeps banging on the floor of his upstairs bedroom to get her to come up to him. He dislikes her as much as she dislikes him, which has been the case for many years.

Lady married him only because he had money. At the end of the play, Jabe shoots Lady to death and then calls in a mob to kill Val.

Lady Torrance is probably in her late thirties and still has a youthful figure. She is a passionate, emotional woman of Italian ancestry, whose state of mind borders on hysteria when she is under pressure. Physically tense, she must take pills to sleep at night. Lady is also lonely and bitter.

She feels she has wasted her life, having been married for twenty years to Jabe, a man she hates. She was rushed into the marriage after she was jilted by her first lover, David Cutrere. Lady was pregnant with David's baby at the time, and she had an abortion. She still has hard feelings about David, and when she meets him again, she says he must never return to the store.

Lady has also had to endure another tragedy. Her Italian immigrant father died in a blaze deliberately set at his orchard by a mob. She did not know it at the time, but finds out during the course of the play that Jabe was the leader of the mob. Lady has not forgotten her father and remodels the confectionery in the store so that it resembles his wine garden. It is her way of showing that she has not been defeated; she is determined to triumph over adversity. Lady feels liberated by her relationship with Val and becomes pregnant by him, and she exults in the fact that she is able to bear a child.

Valentine Xavier is a wandering singer and musician of about thirty who is described in the stage directions as having a wild beauty about him. He wears a snakeskin jacket, mottled white, black, and gray. In the bars of New Orleans where he sang and lived wildly, he was known simply as Snake-skin.

Val always carries a guitar with him, and he describes it as his "life's companion. The guitar itself is covered with the autographs of famous blues singers. Val is a free spirit who does not fit into conventional society, and it is significant that the Choctaw cry given by the Conjure Man, a cry of wild intensity, coincides with Val's first entrance. Val was raised in a place called Witches' Bayou, and he claims to have unusual powers of self-control.

He can hold his breath for three minutes, stay awake for forty-eight hours, and not urinate for a day. He also claims that his body temperature is two degrees higher than normal, like a dog's. He left Witches' Bayou when he was in his teens and drifted to New Orleans, where he soon found that women were irresistibly drawn to him, but he eventually tired of their attentions and of the dissipated life he was leading. Val is basically a good-hearted man who has insight into the deeper longings of life.

He can sense what others really need and desire, and he knows how to give comfort when it is needed. He himself says that although he has lived among corruption in New Orleans , he is not corrupted. In Two River County, however, people find his manner sexually suggestive, although he does nothing deliberately to cultivate this impression. However, because he is an artistic spirit who does not fit into the accepted ways of thought and action, and because he allows himself to be drawn into an affair with Lady Torrance, he is hunted down by the men of the town.

The main characters—Val, Lady, and Carol— are lonely, isolated figures. They do not fit into the environment in which they find themselves, are unable to communicate their deepest feelings and passions to others, or feel cut off. The uniqueness of their being is unable to find an outlet, or a fellow spirit, in a harsh world that continually frustrates human desires. Val sums up this theme when he says to Lady, "Nobody ever gets to know no body! We're all of us sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life! Lady is trapped in a loveless marriage, in which her passionate nature has no opportunity to express itself, except through hate and resentment over the past.

She echoes the theme of loneliness when she reminisces about her dying aunt. As a girl, Lady had asked her aunt what dying was like. The response was, "It's a lonely feeling. Her loneliness and great need to overcome it is expressed at the end of act 2, when she yells that she needs Val and will follow him wherever he goes. The third character, Carol, tries to overcome her loneliness by her showy exhibitionism.

This is really a desperate attempt to connect with others, to be significant to someone, and to get someone to take notice of her. During an emotional encounter with Val, she confesses that she uses sex for the same purpose. Even though lovemaking is physically painful for her, she endures it because "to be not alone, even for a few moments, is worth the pain and the danger. In the world of the play, people's attempt to connect in a deep and meaningful way, to overcome the solitariness of their lives, is doomed to failure.

Their happiness will be snuffed out almost as soon as it is gained. Throughout the play there is a contrast between the free expression of sexuality, presented as a positive life force, and the repressive, prudish mentality that prevails in the small town, in which the people are suspicious of anyone who does not conform to their narrow values.

Val is a very sexual figure. Women are attracted to him like bees around a honey pot. He exudes physical allure, and it is he who acts as a lightning rod for the suppressed longings of Lady and Carol. For example, after having established a sexual relationship with Val, Lady, who was full of physical and emotional tension, is restored to a new, fresh, life-affirming state of being.

This is particularly emphasized when she discovers she is pregnant and exclaims, "I have life in my body, this dead tree, my body, has burst into flower!

Val, on the contrary, is always warm—he even claims that the temperature of his body is permanently two degrees higher than normal. It is as if Val lends Lady his heat, and only then she can blossom. The erotic energy embodied in Val also manifests itself in his dealings with the sexually frustrated artist, Vee. He understands the essence of her visions and creativity, and as he touches her hands she shudders with excitement. Then as he tells her that she started to paint as if God had touched her fingers—just as he himself is doing at the time—it is as if, in his empathy and eroticism, he is divine himself.

This impression is strengthened later, in act 3, scene 2, when Vee is struggling to convey her vision of the risen Christ: As in the previous incident, it is not difficult to make the connection, perhaps subconscious in Vee's mind, that Val himself is Christ.

A moment later, Vee is on her knees with her arms around Val as he tries to lift her up—a fine visual image of the earthbound human artist being lifted by divine aid. Val's sexual potency is also symbolized by his beloved guitar. When Val arouses the hostility of the men of the town, it is his guitar that fascinates them. Talbott wants to know more about it. Dog touches it and pulls it towards him. If the guitar is viewed as a phallic symbol, it might be said that the older men are experiencing sexual jealousy of the virile younger man.

Pee Wee and others produce knives during this scene, which gives a hint, at least symbolically, of their desire to castrate their young rival. The guitar has another, more obvious function: If sexual energy, in Williams's romantic vision, is life-affirming, it is counterbalanced in the play by its opposite—denial, negation, and death. Val represents a kind of innocence his former dissolute life in New Orleans notwithstanding and primal power, but Jabe, the cancerous authority figure with his yellow and gray appearance, represents death.

Lady even refers to him in the final scene as "Mr. Lady and her unborn fetus are killed, and Val is burned to death, just as, a generation earlier, Lady's father and his vineyard another symbol of Dionysian life and ecstasy were also destroyed by fire. It is a grim, generation-to-generation reminder that the forces arrayed against life are powerful, and any happiness and fulfillment can last only for a brief time.

The principal imagery in the play is that of birds and wild animals. Both are symbols of freedom. The bird image first appears in Val's extended poetic speech in act 1, scene 2, in which he tells Lady there is a kind of tiny, almost weightless bird that has no legs and so spends its entire life flying. Since these birds are the color of the sky, they are transparent and are invisible to the hawks: Lady, who knows that such a bird exists only in Val's imagination, responds, "I don't think nothing living has ever been that free. The bird image occurs again in Val's reminiscence of the first time he made love to a girl.

As he looked at the girl from afar, a bird flew by and made a shadow on her body, and he heard its call, "a single, high clear note. The stage set contains a visual image of a bird, visible throughout the play. It is on the drapery which covers the tiny bedroom alcove where Val and Lady get together. On the drapery are depicted fantastic white birds—suggestive once more of freedom, and a stark contrast to the dullness of the general store. This is particularly noticeable at the end of act 2, when the drapery, lit from behind by a bulb, becomes translucent.

The allusions to wild animals also suggest freedom, although of a wild, untamed kind that is certain to attract predators. At the beginning of act 3, scene 2, for example, Val stands stock-still "in the tense, frozen attitude of a wild animal listening to something that warns it of danger. The image returns at the end of the play when Carol picks up Val's snakeskin jacket after it has been torn off him by the lynch mob. A snake renews itself by shedding its skin, and Carol takes the jacket as a sign that the wild, free spirit embodied in Val has indeed not been snuffed out but has been passed on:.

Wild things leave skins behind them, they leave clean skins and teeth and white bones behind them, and these are tokens passed from one to another, so that the fugitive kind can always follow their kind. Earlier in the same scene, Carol had taken up the image of wildness and extended it, linking it to positive human values and contrasting it with the artificiality of the modern world:. The country used to be wild, the men and women were wild and there was a wild sort of sweetness in their hearts, for each other, but now it's sick with neon, it's broken out sick, with neon.

There are various hints of a religious dimension to the play in the many allusions to Christianity. Val's full name, Valentine Xavier, contains the names of two Christian saints, hinting perhaps at another element of his nature. It might seem that the sensual Val is an unusual candidate for sainthood, but he does boast of his capacity to overcome the demands of the physical body—a self-denying asceticism characteristic of some forms of saintly life.

For example, he tells Lady that he can sleep on a concrete floor or go without sleep for forty-eight hours if he wishes. Another religious element in the play is Vee, a visionary artist who paints representations of the Holy Spirit and of the risen Christ. The latter points to the significance of the fact that the play takes place near Easter; and Lady's plan to reopen the confectionery the night before Easter Sunday suggests an allusion to the resurrection of the dead.

This is emphasized by the way she decorates the confectionery so that it resembles her dead father's wine garden; it is her way of showing that she is not defeated, just as Christ's resurrection showed that he had triumphed over death. This is shown visually on stage in the last scene, when the lights are switched on in the confectionery. It is as if, on the eve of Easter Sunday, light has entered the dark world. Up to that point, the confectionery has been, as Williams expressed it in his stage directions at the beginning of the play, "shadowy and poetic as some inner dimension of the play.

The play also has a mythic dimension, in that it alludes to the classical myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. Orpheus was a Greek demigod, whose songs were so beautiful that he was able to charm all of nature. When his bride Eurydice dies after a snake bite, Orpheus goes down to the underworld to bring her back.

In the play, Orpheus is analogous to Val, who enters the underworld of the small southern town, to rescue Lady, who is enduring a living death in her partnership with Jabe. In the s in the American South, discrimination against black people was commonplace. This was an actual case that occurred in in Mississippi. McGee was accused of raping a white woman, although in fact he and the woman had a long-standing sexual relationship. McGee's defense counsel challenged the fact that blacks had been excluded from the jury, and that the death penalty for rape was used only against blacks, never against whites.

During the trial and appeal, white supremacist groups threatened violence, and although the Supreme Court twice ordered a stay of execution, McGee was eventually put to death. At this time in the South, many white people were vehemently opposed to any sexual relationships between blacks and whites. The practice was referred to as miscegenation, and many states had laws that banned it. During the s and s, fourteen states repealed those laws, but sixteen others, including Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Texas, kept their anti-miscegenation laws on the books until the Supreme Court declared them unconstitutional in The routine mistreatment of black people is obvious in the play, in which they are referred to by white authority figures such as Talbott and Jabe as "niggers.

Val has the name Bessie Smith inscribed on his guitar, and he says, "Jim Crow killed Bessie Smith , but that's another story. What happened next has not been established beyond doubt, but some historians say that she was taken to a hospital that refused to admit blacks, and she died on her way to another hospital; other versions of the story say that the black hospital she was taken to was too poorly equipped to save her life. Either way, the story of Bessie Smith passed into local legend as an example of the injustices done to black people.

During the s and s in Tennessee, however, there were already signs that things were changing. In four black students were admitted to graduate programs at the University of Tennessee. In the Supreme Court handed down its historic decision, Brown v. Board of Education , which declared that school desegregation must quickly be brought to an end. Earlier in that same year, however, Frank Clement became governor of Tennessee with the promise that he would never integrate the state's schools. And in the wake of the Supreme Court decision, there was much resistance to desegregation in the South, and this led to a resurgence of the white supremacist group, the Ku Klux Klan.

But the tide towards integration and civil rights for blacks was inevitable. From to , Memphis State University began gradual desegregation, and in Clement called out the National Guard to integrate schools in Clinton. In the Federal government sued Tennessee's Fayette County Democratic Executive Committee after its officials refused to let blacks vote in a Democratic primary. It was the first lawsuit of its kind filed under the Civil Rights Act of In , as the civil rights movement gathered momentum, black college students in Nashville, Tennessee, began sit-ins to desegregate lunch counters at Kress's, Woolworth's, and McLellan's stores.

It was not long before the Civil Rights Act of forbade discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, or national origin. Many challenges remained for the civil rights movement, however. In only 29 percent of blacks of voting age were registered to vote in the southern states, compared to 61 percent of whites. The problem of disparities in opportunities to vote was addressed by the Voting Rights Act of In Orpheus Descending ran for sixty-eight performances in New York City; it was also produced in in London and Paris, and had an off-Broadway production in Critical response, however, was often harsh, and many considered the play to be a failure.