Edward Albee has stated that he never writes a play with an agenda or as he put it in one interview, "I write a play to find out why I'm writing it." Kia Corthron, on the other hand, is an admittedly issues oriented playwright who builds her plays on a specific subject foundation. In the 30s and 40s she might have been categorized as an agit-prop playwright though she rejects that label as ineffective for getting her points across to audiences. In an interview with Don Shewey in The New York Times she stated that "every play of mine starts from a socio political issue."

I appreciate the theater's role as a forum for dramatizing important issues and Corthron's considerable skill to move people with the style and rhythm of her words and to create vital characters with a keen sense of humor like Cool Dip's Abebe. However, it's disappointing when she lets the preacher/teacher inside her take over from the dramatist. This is especially the case in A Cool Dip in the Barren Saharan Crick, even though it takes up an an issue that's long been of great concern to thinking people, just a few of whom are quoted below :

When the well is dry, we learn the worth of water.—Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanac

we are allowing every brook to be defiled. George Bird Grinnell, Outdoor America, February 1925

We think of our land and water and human resources not as static and sterile possessions but as lifegiving assets to be directed by wise provisions for future days.—Franklin D. Roosevelt

Water is the most precious, limited natural resource we have in this country...But because water belongs to no one - except the people - special interests, including government polluters, use it as their private sewers.—Ralph Nader

In an age when man has forgotten his origins and is blind even to his most essential needs for survival, water along with other resources has become the victim of his indifference.—Rachel Carson

We forget that the water cycle and the life cycle are one.—Jacques Cousteau

Children of a culture born in a water-rich environment, we have never really learned how important water is to us. We understand it, but we do not respect it.—William Ashworth, Nor Any Drop to Drink, 1982

Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.— W.H. Auden

Ever wonder about those people who spend $2 on those little bottles of Evian water? Try spelling Evian backward .—George Carlin

Links to other plays by Kia Corthron reviewed at Curtainup.com
Breath, Boom
Force Continuum
Light Raise the Roof
Seeking the Genesis/
Splash Hatch on the E Train Going Down