Dream on Monkey Mountain is a play by Derek Walcott. It was first published in 1967.
Though St. Lucia native Derek Walcott is primarily recognized as a Nobel Prize-winning poet, he has also written numerous plays for the Trinidad Theater Workshop, including Dream on Monkey Mountain. It is Walcott's best known and most performed play. Dream on Monkey Mountain was first performed on August 12, 1967, at the Central Library Theatre in Toronto, Canada. After at least one production in the United States, the play made its New York City debut on March 14, 1971, at St. Mark's Playhouse. This production garnered Walcott an Obie Award. Regularly performed since its inception, Dream on Monkey Mountain is a complex allegory which, at its heart, concerns racial identity. Makak, the central character of the play, lives alone on Monkey Mountain. He has not seen his own image in thirty years and ends up in jail after drunkenly destroying a café. Much of the play consists of his dream in which he discovers his self-worth as a black man. Critics are divided over many aspects of Dream on Monkey Mountain, including the effectiveness of its poetic language. Reviewing a 1970 production of the play in Los Angeles, W. I. Scobie of National Review wrote, ‘‘In Walcott's dense, poetic text and in the visual images onstage there is a brilliantly successful marriage of classical tradition and African mimetic-dance elements, two strains that are bound as one into the author's British colonial childhood. And in the myth of Makak, an ultimately universal figure, there is achieved some resolution of the conflict between black roots and white culture. This is a superb play.’’ Dream on Monkey Mountain Summary
Prologue Dream on Monkey Mountain opens in a small jail on an unnamed West Indian island. Corporal Lestrade, a mulatto official, brings in Makak, an older black man. Makak has just been arrested for being drunk and smashing a local café while claiming he was the King of Africa. Two other black prisoners already in cells, Tigre and Souris, try to undermine the corporal as he does his duty. The corporal grows frustrated and compares them to animals.
The corporal asks Makak for basic information, but the prisoner only wants to go home. Makak does reveal that he lives on Monkey Mountain and that he is ‘‘Catholique,’’ though he does not remember his real name. Next is a trial, where Tigre and Souris don judge's robes and the corporal defends Makak. The corporal presents the facts of the case to the judges. He reveals that Makak claims to have had a dream in which he was told he was a descendant of African kings. Makak was inciting people when he was arrested. Makak asks to be released because he is old. After telling them he has not looked at his reflection for thirty years, Makak relates a dream in which a white woman came to him. He claims to see her at that moment in the prison, but no one else does. Makak believes she gives him strength.
Scene One The play shifts back to the time before Makak was arrested, though it is part of his dream. In Makak's hut on Monkey Mountain, he lies on the floor. He is found by his business partner and friend, Moustique, a small black man with a deformed foot. Moustique rouses him so they can go to the market and sell their coal. Makak does not want to go. He relates the experience he had the night before. A white woman appeared to him, singing. She knew all about him and wanted to come home with him. When they returned to his hut, she told Makak that he should not live there anymore, believing he was ugly, because he comes from a royal lineage.
Moustique grows frustrated by Makak's insistence that his experience was real. He asks where the woman is now, but Makak does not know. After Makak leaves to get the coal so they can go to the market, Moustique is shaken when he unexpectedly encounters a mother spider with an egg sack. He kills it, but both men believe this is a sign of Moustique's impending death. Moustique finds a white mask under a bench. Makak says that he has not seen it before. He orders Moustique to ready things for their journey to Africa. Moustique is now convinced Makak is crazy, but follows him down the... » Complete Dream on Monkey Mountain Summary