The Baptism & The Toilet

by Imamu Amiri Baraka

The Baptism and The Toilet are two of Leroi Jones' earliest plays. The Baptism, a viciously comic assault on diverse hypocrisies -religious, social, sexual- which inform contemporary American life, and the Toilet, a tough, relentless study of tenderness crushed and destroyed by an adolescent code of violence, comprise a pair of the most powerful one-act plays to be produced in New York in years.

"... one of the angriest writers to storm the theatre and one of the most gifted"
- Howard Taubman, The New York Times

"Naked hate, like naked love, is very hard to project or sustain on stage, but Negro playwright Jones can do it with venomous intensity."
- Time

Genres: Plays, Drama, Fiction

62 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1967

Reviews

[Drew · Rating 4 out of 5]

The second play in this collection is the powerhouse: an incredibly ferocious stage depiction of how the most violent strains of homophobia can be driven by repressed desire. Baraka's view of homosexuality is more ambivalent in the ritualistic "The Baptism," which pits a minister and a homosexual against each other for the soul of a boy. While neither character is particularly sympathetic and both are outrageous, the deus ex machina of a biker in leather certainly suggests a queer bias at the end.

[Jack Rousseau · Rating 4 out of 5]

Two one-act plays by Amiri Baraka (formerly Leroy Jones). Although better known for his poems (and for his ), Amiri Baraka is a remarkable playwright! According to the publisher, these are two of his "earliest plays", but I wouldn't have guesses. These are the rarest kind of plays, the kind that are both entertaining and thought-provoking.

Appropriate that "The Baptism" should be paired with "The Toilet". By which I mean to suggest that "The Baptism" is as blasphemous as a baptism performed with toilet water. The playwright's criticism of religious institutions is a minor absurdist masterpiece. Described by the publisher as being "a vicious comic assault on diverse hypocrisies - religion, social, sexual - which inform contemporary American life". These hypocrisies reach fever pitch in the play's climax, in which the small congregation of a church resolve to crucify a boy upon learning that he is not the second coming of Jesus Christ, that he only posed as Jesus Christ in order to seduce the women (nuns?) who were saving themselves for God.

"The Toilet" is difficult to classify. It's a short play (one-act) that takes it's time reaching the premise. A cast of assorted characters gradually fill a public toilet. They roughhouse and tease each other in a jocular manner. Their roughhousing and teasing begins to turn ugly leading up to the revelation of the initial conflict that set these events into motion. That conflict is the exchanging of a letter between two men, the last to arrive. In the letter, one man confessed to finding the other man beautiful, to being in love with the other man. The other man has responded with hostility, involving his assorted friends into what has evolved into a conflict: a fight between the two men in question to take place in the public toilet with the assorted friends there to act as referees (in fact, there to interfere on their friend's behalf should the fight not go as planned). This premise is reminiscent of an episode from James Baldwin's novel Giovanni's Room: After the protagonist's first erotic encounter with a man, he responded with hostility. "I picked up with a rougher, older crowd and was very nasty to Joey. And the sadder this made him, the nastier I became."

[Manha · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘The Toilet’ is visceral and haunting; I cannot seem to stop thinking about it. On violence and tenderness and queerness and temporality and race and masculinity and duplicity and language, I have many thoughts on this play that I feel unable to untangle at present. Simply, I feel stricken, conflicted, and sad.

‘The Baptism’ I actually read afterwards out of sheer curiosity and am unsure of how to feel and whether or not I even enjoyed it—perhaps I will revisit it at a later date.

Certainly, Baraka has piqued my interest as a figure of great contradiction, immensely provocative and vulnerable.

[mengwe · Rating 4 out of 5]

dang, the toilet was brutal. *insert heart-broken emoji here bc i'm on my laptop*

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

Two plays, The Baptism and The Toilet. I felt them to be confrontational. It may be that times have changed but the characters in these plays were a bit over dramatic. I enjoyed The Toilet most. It's filled with symbolism and imagery that sets a mood. I'm sure it was conscious provoking in it's day. I'm not certain what the point of The Baptism was. I may have missed the intended message if there were any made.

[Maddsurgeon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Two really provocative plays, one is a hilarious satire of religious fervor, the other a more naturalistic take on homophobic violence in the public schools. Both very striking and very much a product of the 60s, but both quite relevant today.

[Jim O'Loughlin · Rating 3 out of 5]

It seems to be a rule that when two plays by an author are put together in one book, the first one is much better than the second.

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Two solid one acts, even though at times it was hard to identify the intentions of certain moments.

[Yaya · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read The Toilet and loved it, it reminded me much of one movie I watched and can't remember the name of in 4th grade. Very sad but also fun to read.

[Michael Parker · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Baptism was a less than astounding play. The Toilet is wonderful--terrifying, but wonderful.