The Breach

The spine of this play is how the Katrina disaster demands each character to find his/her strength and identity. The characters' quest for self is demonstrated through the play's performance element of text because the characters' lines highlight their progression from being submissive to defeat to successfully overcoming the tragedy. A great example of this is the transformation of Quan. The play switches back and forth between little Quan and grown-up Quan to show the audience that the little girl has found the strength to survive and retell the story. Little Quan's fear of uncertainty is cleverly presented through the silence of her character; in contrast, grown-up Quan's monologues, which she presents loudly and clearly, describe how the little girl has successfully grown to a woman who knows her place in her community.

At the same time, the play's text also detracts from the spine of the play. Most of the characters are able to find their identity and overcome the disaster, but Charlie is an exception. The audience can see his useless attempt in trying to save a dead baby. However, he chooses the dead baby over Mac, when it is clear that Mac probably has a better chance of surviving the Katrina. Instead of successfully finding his identity, Charlie falls apart and loses his sense of self.

The opening of the play shows the strongest design element that contributes to evoking "New Orleans", where a family is crawling through a hole in the roof of their home and is now stranded on the rooftop in pouring rain. This successfully illustrates how the hurricane played its part in tearing the community apart. Despite some of its strengths, the play could have added some scenes that would show a sense of community in New Orleans because after the victims lose their material belongings, they only have each other. A business owner from my article says "Even though my business is destroyed, I can still be a good neighbor" (Appel).

Since The Breach is about how the Katrina affects New Orleans and its people, Water is definitely one of the most important characters in this play. Her character is not obvious at first; however, as the play progresses, her identity is starting to take shapeÐ'--"an identity instituted through a stylized repetition of acts" (Butler 62). Her stage movements are repetitive, and this repetition of acts, accompanied by her lines in the play, helps the audience see that she is Water. Water portrays the harmless characteristics of water through her smooth and gentle movements. From the way she glides across the stage, she appears to be very graceful and feminine. Although Water's movements are very feminine, she also demonstrates her masculine side. Her whole body is extremely toned and muscular. In addition, her direct and piercing gaze, along with her strong voice, shows that she has an almost masculine personality. Water uses both her femininity and masculinity in her attempt to control Mac: she behaves very seductively like a female but she also yells and bosses him around like an army sergeant. Because Water has both feminine and masculine characteristics, she defies society's compulsory system of binary gender (Butler 275).

As observed in the play, the Katrina exposes the struggle between whites and blacks in this nation, and then forces the two races to confront each other. But they must first find their identity and figure out how their own race contributes to this struggle. One storyline is about a white reporter, Lynch, who has such a hard time earning the trust of the African American community. When he first meets Lil Sis and starts asking her about the broken levee, it seems that he is the one exercising the "gaze".