STEVE TESICH: RECOVERING THE (AMERICAN) DREAM THROUGH ART AND MORAL REBELLION
Steve Tesich: Recovering the (American) Dream Through Art and Moral Rebellion

Summary/Abstract: This paper highlights the key points of the introduction to the master’s thesis “Morality as Rebellion in the Post-Hollywood Plays of Steve Tesich.” The title of the thesis was taken from the one of the last interviews Steve Tesich gave before his sudden death. The paper emphasizes similarities that exist between the preoccupation with the moral state of America in the speeches given by Martin Luther King and Harold Pinter Nobel Prize Lecture, and the significance that Tesich ascribes to morality in his plays. There is, moreover, a notable similarity betweenTesich’s analysis of the so-called American Dream and the analyses of America reported byWimWenders in The American Dream, Jean Baudrillard in Amerique, and Umberto Eco in Travels in Hyperreality, or Faith in Fakes. Preoccupation with the moral principles on which Western civilization is founded is also the central concern of plays written by South African writer Athol Fugard and Australian playwright Stephen Sewell. All these comparisons are seen as context for the better understanding of Tesich’s contribution to American 20th century art, and background against which specific features of his talent and creativity can be studied.

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