The Sovereign State of Language

At one point in Lonnie Carter's Sovereign State of Danielle says, The Judge is obfuscating. ' This sense of frustration reflects the one we feel upon entering the realm of Boogedy Boogedy. For much of the play, Carter seems to obfuscate at the reader's expense. It affords some, but little, comfort to recognize that the author deliberately fosters, even nurtures, the play's confusion. confusion serves, if anything, as a starting point. Sovereign State of Boogedy, as the title tells us, is first and foremost, literally and figuratively, sovereign. Everything that comes to pass within this liberated emirate o' Boogedy-Boogedy (54) is subject to its own peculiar laws. It seems Carter wants to reign over as much literary license as he can, to remind the audience or reader that literature in general, and drama in particular, operate under a different set of laws from reality. In stretching the distance between the real and the imaginary, the actual and the creative, Carter preserves that distance. In addition, the overall confusion is itself an important part of the effect the play works to achieve. play pushes the audience's or the reader's willing suspension of to its limit. Suspension of disbelief in does not refer to coincidence or to the transcendence of time and space on stage, but to the role and meaning of language. It is not surprising, therefore, that the play's main element of confusion revolves around the different uses of the many facets of language. If Carter deliberately uses language to lead us into his confusing creation, Boogedy, he must, in the end, lead us out by the same pathway. In what appears to be a contradiction then, the road to understanding means traveling with confusion, as Carter asks us to do. Fortunately, he limits the play to the boundaries of his sovereign state, which are also the boundaries of language. Nevertheless, when Shadrach says

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