Response plays

One could think of A Doll’s House, Part 2 as a straightforward sequel. “Part 2” is in the title, after all. But the play does much more than extend the action of A Doll’s House: like so many plays that respond to classic texts, it was provoked by an urge to continue a conversation. What exactly makes a play a “response play” (a term we at Berkeley Rep mostly made up) rather than an adaptation, sequel, backstage drama (where a known play is happening in the background of a new plotline), or a work that’s “inspired by” another play? The lines get blurry, but below are some examples of notable plays that grapple with an original work in ways that feel like more of a response than a remake:

Afterplay by Brian Friel plucks two characters from Chekhov’s plays—Andrey, the brother from Three Sisters, and Sonya, the dutiful niece from Uncle Vanya—and gives them closure during a chance encounter in a Moscow tearoom in the 1920s.

An Octoroon by Branden Jacobs- Jenkins examines the racism in one of America’s most popular historical melodramas, The Octoroon by Dion Boucicault.

Beneatha’s Place by Kwame Kwei-Armah continues the life of the daughter in A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry, but sets it in the same time periods as Clybourne Park by Bruce Norris, which is itself a response to Raisin.

Desdemona, a Play About a Handkerchief by Paula Vogel asks, what would Desdemona be like if Othello’s suspicions about her faithfulness were true? In this play she is, in fact, sleeping with everyone.

Fortinbras by Lee Blessing imagines the Norwegian prince, fresh from the battle at the end of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, seizing power, much to the dismay of the recently deceased ghosts of Hamlet and Horatio.

Lear by Young Jean Lee places the theme of mortality in Shakespeare’s King Lear in the in the hands of Lear’s daughters, all cast as black women, and the brothers Edgar and Edmund, one of whom dons a Big Bird costume at one point.