Acknowledgements

This book is the result of a continual sharpening of perceptions shared by friends and colleagues through discussion, team teaching and criticism of each other’s work. I am most deeply indebted to John Reed who, as professor of English in the University of Zambia where I first taught, and subsequently, has shaped my thinking over the past fourteen years. I am especially grateful to him for his painstaking criticism of the manuscript while he encouraged me to complete it. I am also grateful to James Currey who has encouraged my creative writing, and helped me to understand, practically and theoretically, the problems of publishing African plays while providing me with the opportunity to put my own ideas about this into practice. I am greatly indebted to my colleagues in drama at Ahmadu Bello University: Brian Crow and Salihu Bappa, Tony Humphries, Oga Abah and Saddiq Balewa, Tunde Lakoju and Sandy Arkhurst. We have worked together collectively and creatively; in addition, they not only read and criticized chapters but also gave me time to write by taking on an extra burden of work. I must also acknowledge stimulating interaction with other colleagues in ABU and with our dram.a students. Many colleagues elsewhere have offered and given help, especially Atta Annan Mensah in Ghana who has helped me to understand the function of African music in performance, and Ross Kidd in Canada who has opened to me a broader Third World context through contacts and travel opportunities.

The editors of HULA, Michael Crowder and Paul Richards, encouraged me to write the book I wanted to write; though of course I am responsible for any inadequacies and errors.

Finally, I wish to thank Joe Eke Udo for readily making available to me the secretarial facilities of the English department, ABU. I sincerely thank Joan and Franklyn Bellamy and Margery Abrahams who made their houses available to me to write; and my long-suffering family who made many sacrifices, often unacknowledged by me. Zaria, July 1981

Glossary

This glossary contains short definitions of some of the theatre terms which occur in the text. Words which appear in bold print within definitions in the glossary have a separate entry.

Act (n.IpL -s) a division of a play into sections. European theatre has tended to divide plays into either one, two, three, four or five acts, labelling the divisions thus: Act 1, Act 2 etc., depending on the number of divisions. In time, playwrights have come to structure the action of their plays in accordance with the division into acts. (See also scene.) To act (v.) is to assume a role.

Action {n. sing.) refers to events within a play. E.g. the action of the play takes place inside a prison.

Alienation effect {n. sing.) the English phrase for the German ‘Verfremdungseffekt’, ‘V-effekt’, which was the term coined by the playwright Bertolt Brecht, for a type of acting and theatre presentation which avoids creating the illusion of reality on stage in order to make the audience more critical of the action in the play. For instance, (1) the actor does not ‘become’ the character he or she is playing, (2) all the technical devices by which illusion is created are in full view of the audience, and (3) the action can be stopped in order to sing songs about relevant issues.

Allegory (n. sing.) and allegorical (adj.) in drama and theatre, allegory is the process by which abstractions, like ‘wealth’, ‘salvation’, are made concrete on stage, using characterization (including the use of costumes, masks, props) and story.

Anti-climax {n. sing.) see climax.

Apron (n. sing.) that area of the stage between the proscenium arch and the audience in a conventional theatre building. (See illustration on page 16.)

Art Theatre also art theatre {n. sing.; as pL, Art theatres, refers to theatre buildings) a term somewhat loosely used to refer to either (1) experimental dramatic production by intellectual playwrights and theatre artists (in this sense a ‘new’ theatre), or (2) established elitist theatres which produce the ‘great works’ of the

culture, including opera and ballet, in contra-distinction to the ‘new’ theatre; or (3) both'! and 2, especially in societies where all receive state subsidies and are, therefore, differentiated from the purely commercial theatre.

Aside {nJpl. -s) a comment made by an actor in role which is clearly audible to the audience but is not meant to be heard by the other characters on the stage.

Backcloth {nJpl. -s; also N.Am., backdrop) a large piece of fabric, generally with scenes painted upon it, which is behind the actors, dividing the scene from the back-stage area (except in a theatre-in-the-round production). Useful also in outdoor performances. (See illustration on page 19.) Flats can serve the same purpose as backcloths.

Black-out {n. sing.) the total elimination of light on stage and in the auditorium, usually to indicate the ending of a scene. Some playwrights conclude scenes in their play-scripts with the term ‘black-out’. (See also curtain.)

Box-office {n. sing.) the place in the foyer of a conventional European theatre where tickets for performances are purchased. A more idiomatic use is in the sense of the amount of money taken for a performance, e.g. ‘the box-office was good tonight’. In anglophone West Africa the more common word for ‘box-office’ is gate’.

Cast (n. sing.) generally refers to the group of actors who each have a part or parts in a play. Sometimes refers to the list of characters in a play, an abbreviation of ‘cast-list’. To cast (v.) is to give actors their roles, or characters they are to play, in a particular production.

Character {n.lpl. 5 ) a person within a play; people whom the play is about: e.g. the character of a corrupt party secretary; a group of prisoners whose lives the play explores. Characterization {n.) refers to the process by which the playwright creates the play’s characters.

Choreography (n. sing.) the composition of the movements for a new dance or dance-mime, to be performed either by one person or by an ensemble of dancers. The choreographer choreographs the movements, working closely with the composer of the music for that dance.

Chorus (n. sing.) in western theatre the chorus derives specifically from the ancient Greek dramatists and refers to a group of

Glossary 11

characters in a play, such as elders, who collectively comment on the action of the play, either in formal spoken verse, or in song and dance, or as individuals.

Climax {n.IpL -es) the moment of supreme tension in a play, after which matters are in some way resolved. A playwright usually shapes his play to the moment of climax so as to engage the audience’s attention fully. Some new forms of drama question the use of climax. Anti-climax (n.): a failed climax in a badly-directed play; but sometimes deliberately contrived by the playwright for a purpose.

Comedy (n.lpl. -ies) a form of drama in which matters work out well at the end of the play, proceeding to this conclusion by way of humour and wit. (See farce, satire, as specific forms of comedy.) Company {n.lpl. -ies) refers lo (\) 'an ad hoc group of actors or players who have presented a play; (2) a commercial or subsidized group of actors, directors, designers, managers, musicians, technicians, and anyone else on the pay-roll, which regularly presents performances to the public.

Concert party {n.lpl. -ies) a small group of travelling actors who travel from village to village in coastal West Africa (mainly in Ghana) presenting short comedies, staged simply but with vigorous acting and accompanied by jazzy music.

Costume {n.lpl. -5) an actor’s costume enables the audience to identify the character through appearance, which conforms to the image of that type of person. In plays incorporating history or fable or myth, costume has the added function of providing spectacle on the stage. (See also props, make-up.)

Dance {n.lpl. -s) broadly defined as rhythmic movement to music, ranging from the traditional and ethnic dances to contemporary ballet. In the performance of plays dance is used less than songs, dance-mimes {n.) are closer to drama than ‘pure’ dance, partly because there is a strengthening of the story (plot) and characterization at the expense of a specific dance aesthetic or of ritualistic dances and traditional masquerades.

Denouement {n. sing.) the resolution of the action in a play so that the ‘truth’ is at last revealed. The denouement usually follows the climax.

Deus ex machina {n. sing.; from the Latin = 'god, out of a machine’) a contrived ending by the playwright: matters are sorted out in the play usually through the introduction of a new

character, who enters the action near the end with privileged information. In ancient Gr^ek (and, later, Roman), theatre a ‘god’ came down from ‘heaven’ (on a ‘cloud’ or a ‘bird’ - the stage machine) and told the other mortal characters what was what. Dialogue {n. sing.) the discussion which takes place between characters on stage. It may be scripted already, or improvised. Dimmers (n. pi.) see stage lighting.

Director {n.lpl. -s) a person who is concerned with the aesthetics of a performance and who shapes the production of a play through a series of rehearsals. ‘Producer’ is sometimes used in this sense (but see producer, and also stage manager).

Drama {n. sing.) defies precise definition; it can refer to (1) a type of performance, e.g. African drama, as opposed to African dance; (2) an intellectual discipline, e.g. a drama course; (3) a particular play, e.g. Aidoo’s Anowa is a drama about freedom and slavery; and (4) the more intense parts of a particular play, e.g. the drama at the end of Anowa. (See also theatre, which is sometimes confused with drama in usage.)

Dramatic irony (n. sing.) information about certain characters and events in a play which the audience have, but which the characters themselves don’t have. (Not to be confused with irony which is more generally defined.)

Dramaturge {n.lpl. -s) a resident playwright of a theatre company who will shape and adapt scenes, in writing, for the director and the actors while they are rehearsing his (or someone else’s) play.

Dress rehearsal {n.lpl. -s) usually the last rehearsal before the first performance of a new production. All other aspects of the production are combined at this point with the acting: sets, costumes, props, music.

Effects {n. pi.) certain stage devices which create apparently fabulous and magical happenings on stage, e.g. explosions, the appearance of ghosts, fire-spitting gods, monsters and levitation. Sometimes referred to as special effects; see also sound effects, stage machinery.

Entrance {n.lpl. -s) and enter (v.) an actor ‘makes an entrance’ on coming into the acting area in role. In some productions, actors can sit on the stage, in view of the audience, and ‘enter’ simply by getting up and assuming their roles.

Exit {n. and v.; from Latin = ‘he/she goes out’; exeunt ~ ‘they go out’) when an actor leaves the acting area ‘he exits’, and when

Glossary 13

more than one go out ‘they exit’ - the word is now completely anglicized. We also refer to actors’ ‘entrances and exits’.

Farce {n.lpl. -es) a type of frenzied comedy in which the humour lies in the complicated situations and exaggerated characterization.

Festival theatre (n. sing.) a term suggested by Oyin Ogunba (Nigerian critic) to describe a traditional African performance mode which occurs at traditional festivals.

Flats (n. pl.\ rarely sing.) screens of varying sizes from 2m x Im to 4m X 2m, lightweight and with a taut surface which can be painted. Flats are linked or hinged together as walls, doors, arches, etc., painted accordingly, in order to form the setting for the action. (See backcloth, scenery)

Folk media {n. pi.) a term, used mainly in UNESCO publications, to refer to a variety of live traditional performances as communication media; and to differentiate these from film, radio and television which are referred to as mass media.

Freeze (v.) in multiple staging or a split scene. A group of actors can end a scene or part of a scene, and still remain on the stage, by ‘freezing’, i.e. by becoming absolutely immobile while another group of actors take over the scene. This gives the impression of actions in different locations happening simultaneously.

Gate {n. sing.) a term, especially in West Africa, for box-office, which refers to (1) the entrance to the auditorium; and (2) the charges for admission.

Hero {n.lpl. -es) also tragic hero, anti-hero the principal character in a drama, who has qualities of leadership. The tragic hero struggles against adversity, fate or evil; and often becomes a sacrifice, or victim. The anti-hero is someone who is unlikely to become a hero, but despite himself does. (All tend to be male; the female ‘heroine’ plays a more limited and limiting role.)

Improvise (v.), and improvisation {n. sing.) to act out situations in role, making up dialogue and developing characters as the improvisations proceed. Some improvisations can be entirely open-ended, others can be within a tightly-controlled scenario. Often, a play which has been developed by a group of actors through improvisation can become ‘stabilized’, and eventually transcribed as a play-script.

Irony {n. sing, mainly) but also ironies {pi.) a word with a wider, complex meaning. Briefly, in drama, it is the means by which audiences achieve a wider consciousness through unlikely and

strange (though subsequently most appropriate) developments in the action and characterization within a play.

Joker system {n. sing.) a term deriving from the work of Augusto Boal (Argentinian theatre activist) which refers to a mode of rehearsing and performing a play, through characters who are both within and outside the dramatic action, and through actors who exchange roles.

Lead (adj., as in lead roles, or leading roles) the principal characters in a play. Other characters are referred to as ‘supporting roles’ in this context.

Make-up (n. sing.) the means by which an actor emphasizes or changes his or her facial features in order to look more like the audience’s conception of the character which he or she is playing, e.g. whitening hair to look older; painting lips to look voluptuous.

Mask {n./pl. -s) the covering for part or all of an actor’s face (and sometimes for even the whole head and shoulders) to present to the audience strange features and a frozen expression which the movements of the body alone can animate.

Mask (v.) accidentally to obscure the character on stage who is speaking from the view of the audience; the actor doing so is said to be ‘masking the speaker’.

Masque (n.lpl. -s) a word deriving from sixteenth and seventeenth century courtly performances and entertainments, somewhat removed from more standard drama and theatre performances in the sense that the masque involved the courtly members of the audience, masked, as the performers. It was sophisticated and formal play by them, rather than a play for them.

Masquerade {n.lpl. 5 ) an English word, closely related in origin to masque, which now describes a widespread and important African mode of performance and entertainment; the formal presentation of the (sacred) masks to the community, accompanied, variously, by music, dance, chants, acrobatics and rituals. Melodrama {n.lpl. -s) a type of drama in which the playwright underlines the emotional impact of the play by the use of music, and in which ‘good’ finally triumphs over ‘evil’. Some critics find melodrama to be sentimental and escapist.

Mime (v.) to act without using any words or sounds; mime {n. sing.) is the performance by an actor (or mime, or mime-artist) using gestures, facial expression and body movement only. Musical {n.lpl. -s) a more popular form of music theatre than

Glossary 15

opera or ballet. Musicals have spoken dialogue between the songs; but the actors keep in character throughout the performance. Narrator {n.lpl. -s) in traditional performances, a story-teller; in a play, the narrator provides a link between scenes, and also between the audience and the drama itself. In plays which seek interaction with their audiences the narrator plays a crucial role in restating arguments which might have been missed, stopping the action, and bringing members of the audience into the performance.

Naturalism (n. sing.) in drama and theatre, naturalism is a form of stylization in performance which makes a pretence of not being stylized at all but showing things ‘exactly as they are’. This refers not only to the settings of a play (e.g. seemingly real hres under the real pots in the peasant’s hut) but also to the content of the play (e.g. the ‘real’ motivations of the characters).

Pacing {n. sing.) in play direction, refers to the way the performance is shaped, in terms of the pace of the action and the dialogue, speeding it up, slowing it down, the use of silences, the creation of tension. In the performance of individual actors the related term is a sense of ‘timing’ which is, in fact, one of the main acting skills. Performance {n.lpl. -s) refers (1) generally to any presentation before an audience, be it a traditional dance or a contemporary play; and (2) specifically to one showing of a particular production of a play. To perform (v.) has a wider term of reference than to act because it applies not only to actors but also to musicians, dancers, masqueraders, traditional story-tellers - the demonstration of each person’s art.

Perspective (n. sing.) first developed in the architecture of the theatres of the Italian Renaissance (fifteenth and sixteenth centuries), it is today, in theatre, specifically related to the painting of scenery, usually in proscenium arch theatres. Through perspective a comparatively shallow stage is given the impression of immense scenic depth. (See illustration on page 16.)

Plot {n.lpl. -s) a story restructured so as to fit into the scenes of a play for performance.

Producer {n.lpl. -s) strictly speaking one who arranges the finances for a particular production (and who ipso facto has some say in its final form); but also loosely used instead of director. Production {n.lpl. -s) a series of performances of a play by a theatre company or ad hoc group of actors.

Projection {n. sing.) technical acting term for the audibility of the

whole range of an actor’s voice to all members of the audience, and, by inference, the accessibility of the actor’s character to the whole audience. The actor is said to project (v.) his or her voice, or his or her character.

Props {n. pL) short form of ‘properties’ (seldom used now): the accoutrements, implements and various objects which actors require both in their characterization and in the action of the play. Proscenium arch {n. sing.) and proscenium arch stage {n.lpl. -- stages) a development in theatre building during the Italian Renaissance: the arch at the front of the stage provides a structural support for the curtain (which closes off the scene from the audience) and an aesthetic ‘framing’ of the perspective scenery. It also enables all the mechanical means by which theatre illusion is created to be hidden from the gaze of the audience, so that the illusion of reality is complete.

Ramp (n./pl -s) ramps provide access to different acting levels on stage other than by steps. (See illustration on page 19.)

Ritual theatre (n. sing.) in Africa, the term refers to what are seen as the traditional origins of African theatre in ritual performances which co-exist today with contemporary drama. (But there is debate over this.)

PROSCENIUM ARCH THEATRE

(view from the circle — the middle auditorium level)

orchestra pit

Glossary 17

Role {n.lpl. -s) and role-play {n. and v.) role means any character or part which an actor plays; role-play is specific to group improvisation and drama-in-education (N.Am.: creative dramatics): open-ended and non-scripted exploration of situations and roles, using the collective imagination of the group (not necessarily actors).

Rostra {n. pi.) the removable structures which create different acting levels on stage. (See also ramp; and illustration on page 20.) Saga {n.lpl. -s) an account of heroic deeds, in verse, in song or in dramatic performance, which belongs to a particular community and relates to their collective past.

Satire {n.lpl. -5) also to satirize, (v.) satire in drama is the humorous presentation on stage of individual vice and human weakness for the purposes of social and political criticism. The tone of satire is often bitter or ‘fierce’, usually sophisticated, and seldom moralistic.

Scenario {n.lpl. -s) in drama, an arrangement of what will take place within each scene; in film, a summary of the action.

Scene {n.lpl. -s) in drama and theatre, refers to (1) a further division of a play within each Act, thus: Act 1 scene ii; (2) a particular setting on the stage relating to the action within a play, e.g. the surgery in the basement of Dr Hero’s house; (3) a particular incident or series of incidents between specific characters, e.g. the scene between Hero and the Earth Mothers; and, more idiomatically, e.g. Aafaa’s big scene near the end of Madmen and Specialists.

Scenery {n. sing.) the means by which a specific place, a general area, or a special atmosphere is created within which the action of a particular play takes place. Sometimes ‘sets’ is used in a similar sense (from ‘settings’, ‘setting the scene’).

Scrim {n. sing.)\ also N.Am. scenic gauze) loose-woven material hung as a backdrop on stage, which can appear solid if stage lighting is thrown on to it, but which seems to disappear if bright stage lighting illuminates the area directly behind it. By switching between lighting systems, people or objects can seem to disappear and reappear as if by magic.

Sight-lines {n. pi.) the view of the stage from all parts of the auditorium. Sight-lines are important for directors and actors since they must collectively ensure that every member of the audience is able to see all the action in a production.

Soliloquy {n.lpl. -ies) a speech made by a single actor, alone on

the stage, in role, as though speaking aloud that character’s thoughts. ^

Sound effects {n. pi.) sounds which it would be inappropriate for actors to make in role on stage (e.g. announcements on the radio, thunder and rain, the voice of a character’s conscience) are either made live off-stage by other actors or recorded on tape and played back during a performance over the theatre’s sound system. Spectacle {n. sing.) the use of a number of illusionistic devices which together with costumes, settings, dance and music creates a dazzling show, sometimes referred to as ‘total theatre’.

Split-scene (n.lpl. -s) parts of the acting area created as separate locations in a composite scene, for the action to move back and forth, from one to the other, as appropriate. (See also freeze.) Stage {n.lpl. -s) technically a raised platform for performance, but in fact any acting area, be it raised, sunken, or a piece of canvas laid on the earth.

Stage directions {n. pi.) in a play text, the instructions to actors (and information for readers), usually in brackets or italics, indicating (1) actions appropriate to their lines; (2) the tone of voice required; and (3) a meaning contrary to the literal meaning of the words (sometimes referred to as the ‘sub-plot’).

Stage lighting {n. sing, and pi.) a means of illuminating the action of a play to heighten dramatic impact. The most elaborate lighting systems are in conventional theatre buildings; but there can be effective portable stage lighting as well. The following are the main types of lanterns: (1) spots, which ‘throw’ very bright, concentrated light on to a small area; (2) floods, which give a bright, general light; (3) battens - rows of ordinary light bulbs, backed by simple reflectors, arranged above the actors’ heads or below their feet (‘footlights’). The lanterns are wired into dimmers and a control panel, which enables the lighting technician to vary the intensity of individual lights, and to ‘fade up’ and ‘fade down’ sets of lights which have previously been ‘set’ to light different scenes. Some lighting systems in big theatres are so complicated that computers are used to light elaborate productions.

Stage machinery {n. sing.) mechanical devices, such as winches and pulleys, or, more recently, hydraulically operated platforms which can be raised, lowered, or revolved, so as to lift people and scenery on to and off the acting area. The mechanical devices are in various ways obscured from the audience.

Glossary 19

Stage manager {n.lpl. -5) the person in complete charge, back-stage, of a performance, to whom the producer and director cede their authority. (Not to be confused with theatre manager who handles the administration of the theatre company and theatre building.)

Street theatre {nJpL -s) performances given in ad hoc situations, by the roadside, in the market-place - wherever people congregate in the normal course of events.

Stylization (n. sing.) forms of drama established between actors and audiences, including stage conventions, symbols and acting techniques - all as a way of depicting ‘reality’ on the stage. Theatre {n.lpl. -s) difficult to define in ways appropriate to different cultures. Basically two meanings in western European theatre, (1) the circumstances of a live dramatic performance; and (2) a building for live dramatic performances. Theatre-in-the-round (a?.), traverse stage (ak), thrust stage (aa.) different actor-audience relationships for a dramatic performance, which are all alternatives to the proscenium arch stage. In theatre-in-the-round the audience sit all a-round the actors; the traverse stage has audience on two opposite sides; the thrust stage has audience on three sides, or in a 250° semi-circle, with a backdrop,

THEATRE-IN-THE-ROUND (a possible purpose-built structure)

Note the sunken stage in the centre and the backstage areas for actors, and entrances levels for audience seating rising up to the and exits (with ramps drawn in), as well as walled periphery. The thatched-roofed additional seating for the audience.

TRAVERSE STAGE (drawn in perspective)

THRUST STAGE

(created for an ad hoc street performance in the late afternoon)

backstage area

Glossary 21

or back-stage wall, which gives actors access to the stage and screens off the backstage area.

Tragedy {n.lpl. -ies) deriving from the Greeks (like so much of European theatre) tragedy reduces the great to death or disgrace through the working out of fate, and holds them, ironically, responsible in some way for their misfortune. (See also hero.) Transposition {n.lpl. -5), to transpose (v.), translation {n.lpl. -5), to translate (v.) transposition of plays from one culture or era to another differs from translation of the texts from one language to another in that the former attempts specifically to relate the plays to a new social milieu.

Travelling theatre {n.lpl. -5) a theatre which goes out to the people rather than expecting the people to come to the theatre.

Introduction

V

This book attempts to analyse the way African drama is developing within the context of African societies. A starting point might be the tensions which now exist in African countries between a number of playwrights and their governments: Wole Soyinka and the government in Nigeria; Ngugi wa Thiong’o and the government in Kenya; Amadu Maddy and the government in Sierra Leone. These, and other examples which are less well known, do not refer to crises past and now resolved but to an ever-widening rift.

The increasing economic and political contradictions in most of the nation-states in Africa are reflected in crises in their postindependence theatre. Established playwrights are discredited by students, their work no longer conceived relevant even in the context in which it was written. Academic theatre departments are despised by both employed professionals as well as the graduates of those departments who cannot find jobs in theatre. African governments have become much more nervous about theatre than any of the other arts; and playwrights who work in Pidgin or a vernacular find themselves harassed or sometimes even imprisoned.

These playwrights begin to perceive, objectively, the nature of the elite, the class-in-formation of which they have inevitably become a part. Their commentary upon their societies now takes on a new dimension and assumes a new focus: the sufferings of the poor can be related to them through a theory of exploitation by the elite. This process by which the creative artist or intellectual in the society discovers links with the oppressed in that society is taking place in many parts of the third world; with it there is a growing consciousness of the cultural dependence (as well as an economic dependence) which the elite have upon the developed world. And whereas, at the time of independence, it was art which tended to

Introduction 23

establish the goals for the revolution (especially in negritude), now it is seen to be the social revolution which will dictate the goals of art.

This study of African drama tries to relate the growing politicization of the playwrights and theatre activists to the development of the most social of the arts.

In relation to this I do not think that it is particularly helpful to think of African drama as ‘things’ like plays, productions, actors, texts. Even 'a history of drama’ reifies what is essentially a process through which many minds and imaginations interact with each other, in the process changing the ‘thing’ being studied. For this reason few definitions of culture ever achieve any measure of agreement; and the words ‘drama’, ‘theatre’, ‘tradition’ are no exception.

I have not offered any definitions, therefore, and have tried to present the development of drama on this continent as a process. I see it as a process in terms of individual plays: how an idea becomes a performance in front of an audience committed to watching it; how a problem becomes dramatized. I also see it as a wider process of the development of new dramatic traditions within specific communities, leading to a wider consciousness. This process is specific to the history of colonialism and neo-colonialism in Africa during this century.

The study seeks to present this process through an analysis of a number of contradictions. First, there is the contradictory relationship between the traditional performing arts and the new elites. On the one hand the cultural bureaucrats and theatre artists transform the art of the people into a product for bourgeois and international consumption - whilst at the same time professing to revive the traditional cultural values of the people. On the other hand, traditional performances with a highly conservative or reactionary function are often made to appear radical in the politics of the new nation-state, and the new urban culture of the proletariat is derided even by those who manoeuvre themselves into marketing it. This is the subject-matter of the first chapter.

Second, the tendency towards the creation of play-texts as dramatic literature appears to tie the development of drama to the western tradition of ‘great works’, with the emphasis on individual achievement. This contradicts the nature of the live performance with its own emphasis on communication with a particular audience speaking a particular language and at a particular time. The

second chapter approaches this problem in the context of existing performance traditions. ^

The ‘great tradition’, including the somewhat self-conscious reaction to it, has helped create what is sometimes known as the Art Theatre (or art theatre). On the one hand this is a professional and technically proficient theatre (which can make money), and on the other hand it is a serious and artistically experimental theatre (which loses money). The Art Theatre actually holds these two opposing tendencies in tension.

Within the ‘great tradition’ an apparently new play may be more derivative than an actual adaptation into a contemporary African context of a ‘great work’ from another culture. These adaptations are also referred to as transpositions. Chapter 3 compares some notable transpositions of ancient Greek and European plays by contemporary African playwrights.

Related to this are a number of contradictions in the development of the Art Theatre. Plays about African history which claim their function is to return to the people their history, end up alienating them even more by embedding their history in an artistic process (as well as an economic process) which effectively excludes them from understanding it. Four history plays, from East and West Africa, are analysed in Chapter 4.

It seems that all too often what the academic critics judge to be an ‘exceptional’ play is not at all ‘popular’. However, this concept of ‘popularity’ is actually restricted to an appreciation by those who are formally educated, the elite. The playwright’s sensibility reaches beyond this group, this class-in-formation, which has ironically, through its economic function, enabled the playwright to achieve intellectual distinction.

As plays become increasingly bitter and critical about the levers of power within the state, and those who control them, their authors retreat into those institutions - in fact, the university, specifically - where their salaries are protected through the currency of such concepts as academic freedom, which they increasingly support. Their criticism of the state, in the metropolitan language, is contradicted by their increasing identity with the most elitist institute of higher learning. Those whom they criticize, in English or in French, usually leave them alone. However, when the playwright goes out into the communities and works directly with and among peasants or workers, using their language and dramatizing matters from their point of view, state governments

Introduction 25

act with brutal swiftness and incarcerate the offending playwright.

Theatre in the third world, like the third world economies in which this theatre is based, is, in some aspects, over-developed rather than under-developed. Nigeria, for example has constructed elaborate theatre buildings with hugely expensive equipment inside them without having appropriate commercial companies or viable patronage to provide the product for which they were built. Smaller and poorer nations than Nigeria each fund their own national dance troupe which all too often becomes a corps de ballet trained overseas or by foreign professionals to make tours abroad. The rationale behind this is said to be the marketing of the particular country’s image abroad, for which the traditional dances have to be ‘brought up’ to ‘international standards’. Finally, countries as different economically and ideologically as Tanzania and Nigeria produce graduates in the performing arts from their universities for whom there are no professional jobs. These graduates then go into the broadcast media (for which they are inappropriately trained) or the bureaucracy or the private commercial sector.

It is appropriate to mention this here for the following reason. This book is intended primarily for African students interested in the study of drama in Africa, who may indeed be embarked upon a career in some aspect of drama or theatre; the book’s function, therefore, contradicts its message. It helps compound the problem which it seeks to analyse. There is, for the moment, no way out of this, except to try to understand more clearly the processes by which society shapes its art.

Greater understanding, greater consciousness on the part of all members of the society, is the intention of an alternative type of theatre which is now emerging in different parts of the third world. This has come to be known amongst those involved in it as ‘popular theatre’. A description of this sort of popular theatre in Africa forms the substance of the last chapter of the book.

The analysis presented in this book has a number of limitations. It would have been difficult to overcome some of these without creating other limitations in their place.

First, the analysis is largely restricted to theatre in anglophone African countries. This is partly to do with the length of the book.

partly to do with the geographical limitations of my own experience, and partly to do svith the fact that the study is quite deliberately not regional (for example, East Africa, West Africa, North Africa, Southern Africa) and it only considers the drama and theatre nationally when this is seminal to the analysis (for example, the protest drama in Nigeria). Regional studies produce their own anomalies, for example, should the region surrounding the Sahara desert be seen as culturally homogeneous (partly because of Islam, the spread of which was itself the result of trade routes across the Sahara), instead of including the Sahelian nations under West Africa in a francophone/anglophone categorization?

Another limitation, perhaps, is my own subjective involvement in the development of African drama. This may be seen in opposite ways: by those who feel that any committed involvement destroys the ‘objective’ basis of the study; and by those who feel that an expatriate can never be effectively involved in the culture. I do not believe that there can be ‘scientific’ objectivity in any cultural analysis without our losing an understanding of it as a process. Furthermore, the dispassionate observer can also distort the process in a way which may be more serious because it is unacknowledged and even unperceived.

The academic observer of a people’s traditional performances, or of serious theatrical experimentation, who goes away and presents the analysis of these ‘objective’ observations in a foreign place, is in fact something of a thief. This applies not only to the foreign scholar but even more so to the indigenous researcher from the local university, who has greater access to his or her people’s own art, whose research benefits those people not at all whilst providing the researcher with academic honours, high salary and international travel. Some African activists now maintain that recording a traditional performance, even preserving it ‘live’ in some form or other, is less relevant to the peasant owners of that art than a growing ability by them to make it contribute to a better society/or them. The research which has this latter concern is now referred to as participatory research. This participatory research approach (which, for example, is the basis for a cultural research project in the western Bagamoyo District in Tanzania called Jipemoyo) is a pointer to the sort of research in drama and theatre in the future. It is likely to come into sharp opposition with the more conventional research objectives of the bourgeois African universities.

Introduction 27

This is not a contrived radical position, or in any sense rhetorical, on the part of such intellectuals. For someone like Ngugi wa Thiong’o, or in the urban context Amadu Maddy, it is a stage in an inevitable process which begins the moment one seeks to make the art of drama available to the people, either based on their traditional performances or not, but always with a contemporary social relevance as its justification to them. In our own much more limited experience in Kaduna State, Nigeria, we have been told time and time again by the peasant farmers that they would prefer the fertilizer to plays about how they are not getting the fertilizer. They would prefer us to come and organize them into effective co-operatives, instead of presenting plays about how co-operatives are undermined. They would want us to help them regain land taken from them for speculative purposes instead of making plays about how they lost their lands. And after the plays have been enthusiastically developed, presented and received, the question always is: ‘What is the next step forward?’. For those at the bottom of the social heap, and ultimately for the intellectuals and creative artists who seek to engage with them, the art of drama cannot be separated from the greater political task, and, in its function, from social reality.

At every stage of the process there are great difficulties. It is difficult to make lasting contacts. It is very difficult to formulate the plays so as to lay bare the contradictions. This type of drama work is just beginning in Africa. It is much more developed in parts of Latin America and South East Asia. The limitation of the final chapter of this book is that I have chosen not to discuss work of a greater scope in other communities in Africa. This is because we have not been able to analyse the processes in the way in which we continue to analyse our own, along with the people with whom we work.

The notes carry a wider reference where necessary to a particular aspect of the analysis; the glossary of theatre terms is not comprehensive but covers references in the text.

1 Traditional performance in contemporary society

The various definitions of ‘performance’, ‘drama’, ‘theatre’, and of ‘tradition’ and ‘traditional’, come to exercise a tyranny over students. Very often they proceed to use the definitions and categories not so much as a means of conceptualization but as a yardstick to measure how ‘dramatic’ and how ‘theatrical’ each performance item is. It is with this in mind that we need to take note of the approaches to the study of African drama; and in the process try to set out a framework for the discussion of African theatre and drama as a complex phenomenon of social and cultural change. The African student of drama is, by the very process of reading about drama, part of this phenomenon. Those of us who are engaged in practical theatre projects, and those who study and criticize the play texts, are all engaged, wittingly or unwittingly, in transforming that which we have previously defined. Ironically, many who are keen to see their society changed radically - even through revolution - are also concerned to keep the culture, and especially the performing arts, intact. And there is another irony too, for the deeper we are within the culture, the more committed we are to it but the less we ‘see’ it. That which has been ‘seen’ as worth preserving has already been prised apart from its original social setting.

Rural traditions for drama and theatre

The following somewhat lengthy example will perhaps set forth this phenomenon of ‘tradition’, ‘performance’, ‘African drama’ as a process, together with the problems of critical and social perception. A group of university drama students presented three plays, which they had written and directed collectively, in a small village near their university’s rural campus. These complete plays, presented largely in the Hausa language, were well received.

Traditional performance in contemporary society 29

Some time later another group of drama students from the same university joined with young farmers (all men) from the same village in developing plays together about the farmers’ problems. The whole exercise had been established on the basis of a political perspective on the part of the organizers.

Some months after this, the drama staff at the university were invited as guests to witness the annual Kalankiiwa festival which is held every year in the village, and which every year is dominated by the role-play performances of the young adults of the village who are the organizers. I and my colleagues accepted the invitation and attended the ‘traditional’ performance which opened the festival in the village of Bomo.

Each year the road through the village is sealed off at both ends and the visitors, and those residents who are not ‘actors’ or ‘organizers’, are charged an admission fee. In the village, on either side of the road, booths of guinea-corn stalks have been erected, but in outline only so that the decoration and activities within each booth are readily apparent to the spectators strolling down the road. The booths are variously labelled ‘Hospital’; ‘Min. of Agriculture’; ‘Office of the President’; ‘Alkali Court’; and so on: a depiction in each case, directly made, of the agencies of government at local, state and national levels. They are all muddled up, however, and the Alkali’s Court is right next door to the Office of the President of Nigeria.

At 5.00 p.m. there was a procession into the village by the young peasant farmers, many of whom also work in the nearby university as messengers or cooks or labourers. They were dressed up in the costumes of the roles they were intending to play: military of all ranks in excellently made uniforms; nurses, newsmen, politicians. The procession moved through the crowds of villagers to the centre of the village where two pavilions were set up. The ‘military’ and ‘civilian politicians’ sat in front of the one facing the other in which the chief organizers of Kalankuwa were stationed to control the proceedings.

The role-play was entered into very seriously. At this particular Kalankuwa, which was on 19 and 20 December 1980, the ‘military’ gave a report and handed over to the ‘civilian politicians’ - an obvious reflection of what had taken place in Nigeria in October 1979. This ‘ceremony’ - in role - was followed by the award of prizes to those who had performed best in the role play (which was still to take place, since this was only the beginning of the festival),

or excelled in the organization which had preceded it. There were a very large number of prizes, awarded both to the children who were dressed up (mainly as nurses) and to the young adult farmers themselves. The prizes ranged from cash which was in excess of £50 each, to tea-sets, lamps, transistor radios and televisions. The farmers had raised the money for these prizes among themselves, and also from the proceeds of a farm which they had worked collectively during the previous farming season.

Following this, the group processed out of the village. After the prayers at sunset (Bomo is almost entirely a Muslim village), the people, still in their costumes, returned to the booth-lined street and took up positions in their respective booths and remained in role. Spectators could visit them and enter into role-play with them: they could ‘petition’ the ‘President of Nigeria’; they could be ‘tried’ in the ‘Alkali Court’; see a slide-show in the ‘Ministry of Agriculture’; be ‘charged’ in the ‘Police Station’; be attended to in the ‘Hospital’; and so on. Many of the villagers thronged through the booths; but their entry into corresponding roles appeared to be limited.

Kalankuwa is also a variation of a ‘Lord-of-Misrule’ festival,^* and there is licence within the village enclosure to gamble, smoke and take other liberties in public normally proscribed by Islam. Many of the villagers do not go to sleep at all that night, and indeed throughout the processions and the performances the serious gamblers, within the gambling booths also made from guinea-corn stalks or simply on the ground, pursue their sport.

I have attempted a sketchy outline of what was described by the farmers themselves, in their publicity in English, as ‘village drama’. It seemingly bore no relation to the drama which we had done for and with the villagers; nor was it in any way affected by that, despite the fact that a few of the village personnel were involved in both our work and their own festival. What then was our own perception of their festival ‘drama’?

First of all, the role-play was so serious and so meticulously observed that we had some difficulty knowing who was in role and who was actually a member of the village hierarchy. It was also difficult to know when people were in role and when they were not. Initially, all of us thought that the prizes were part of a central dramatized satire on the hand-over by the ‘military’ to the

* Notes and references to the text occur at the end of each chapter.

Traditional performance in contemporary society 31

‘civilians’. We thought that empty cartons and envelopes were being used in the ‘presentation of awards’. We were therefore rather disconcerted to discover that the radios, televisions, money etc, were all new and were actually prizes for organizational effort and good acting.

One of our colleagues commented that the peasant participants should be told that this was not ‘drama’ after all. However, perhaps it is possible to see it differently, from the farmers’ point of view: after seeing university students performing plays for them (‘drama’) and also after participating in making ‘plays’ themselves with the students (also ‘drama’), they have appropriated the word ‘drama’ to describe their own cultural presentation. This has been and is still undergoing a process of transformation, which we will comment on in a moment.

We also had some politicized social science students with us from the university, who commented afterwards that the young farmers ‘needed to be organized’. Again I think it is possible to see this rather differently, from the peasants' own point of view; for, in fact, effective organization was the one thing which their ‘drama’ -and indeed the whole festival - demonstrated. This organization was at the grass roots, at the very lowest social and cultural level. The ability of these young adults to form such a grass-roots organization that mobilized cadres to raise money, collect costumes, improvise imaginatively on decoration, borrow expensive equipment, and then ensure that the two-day festival ran smoothly, probably exceeded the organizational capability, at a comparable level, of the professional theatre and drama units in the university who have more resources at their disposal. It certainly exceeded these units’ ability to present performances in rural villages.

The farmers acknowledged their ability to organize themselves by presenting prizes for organization within the context of the performance itself; and it is interesting to see why this is so.

The name Kalankuwa suggests that it was originally a harvest festival. However, the symbolic connection with the harvest now seems tenuous - except, ironically, that funds from the harvest are now used to organize a ‘drama’. A festival will continue to exist only if its organization is guaranteed from year to year. This is much more likely to be the case if the traditional hierarchy orders the festival and maintains it. A grass-roots organization for a specifically cultural (as opposed to a purely economic) objective is

an achievement and it is appropriate that it should be celebrated within the context of thelfinal performance.

We have become accustomed to the separation of ‘art’ from its means of production, which is a significant feature of the culture of advanced technological societies. In particular, in most bourgeois forms of dramatic art (the classical theatre, opera, ballet, musicals) the means of production are deliberately masked. As we sit, for example, watching a performance of an elaborate production we are kept unaware of the hard-nosed bargaining between the writer/composer/choreographer and the backers (state or commercial, it makes little difference) which has preceded its staging and which, in the case of non-established playwrights, has certainly determined and transformed what they wanted to say. It is one view of contemporary African theatre that a great deal of it is the result of, and a further contribution towards, the establishment of an artistic mode of production for theatre which requires university-trained specialists and elaborate facilities, and an elaborate system of state subsidies where such a theatre is inevitably not commercially viable.

The standard definitions of ‘drama’ and ‘theatre’ even within different social systems define it specifically as an art and ignore the way in which its organizational capacity has developed. This is not just because the organization of the established forms of theatre, and the study and production of drama both for live theatre and other media like radio and film, has been situated within the economic framework of the society. It is actually enshrined in the western theatre aesthetic. The definitions for western dramatic art derive from the model and precepts of Aristotle, the ancient Greek philosopher and teacher who formulated his analysis 2300 years ago. Aristotle’s critique concentrates entirely on the final dramatic product, the art manifest in a performance; and any socially coercive function for drama is based on this analysis of an aesthetic. It is the surviving portion of this critique, specifically on tragedy, which has been mediated by later European theorists of the art of theatre, through enormous commentaries on this text, most notably by the scholars of the sixteenth century. All this has coalesced today into hard and fast ‘rules’ for the successful and effective ‘play’. For example, a play has a beginning, a middle and an end (described as the ‘unity of action’); the central ‘tragic’ character always has a ‘tragic flaw’; the theory of katharsis sees tragedy as a ‘purging of the emotions’; the

Traditional performance in contemporary society 33

‘representation’ of an action follows certain patterns of probability; and so on. These rules help to consolidate the specialized and professional status of the dramatic arts without ever articulating how such a theatre and drama might develop in terms of its economic organization.

Even the twentieth century reaction to the Aristotelian notions of theatre tends to concentrate on the final artistic form. It seems that in defining theatre we are predisposed to look for an art form (which may follow certain rules or deliberately reject them), and in the process we ignore completely the way in which the production of that art form has been accomplished.

This has considerable significance for the definitions which are produced for African drama and theatre. The definitions generally come from the Aristotelian model for Western dramatic art, either absolutely, or as a modification of the Aristotelian ‘rules’. In the end, that which is absorbed by the students - becoming a critical orthodoxy over a period of time - is a system of categorization based on a set of rules. Students then want to be told by their teachers all the ‘right’ answers; and the dramatic works, the play-texts, which are said to constitute African drama, are reduced to such questions as: Is Soyinka’s play The Road a tragedy, or a comedy, or a tragi-comedy, or. . . .? Is Kurunmi in Ola Romtimi’s play of that title a tragic hero? What are the formal elements of drama in the traditional Nyau dance, and how are they used in Zambian plays?

A modification of the Aristotelian ‘rules’, which may even include opposition to Aristotle’s theories generally, is often the starting point for an attempt to relate the traditional arts of performance to contemporary African culture in terms of a redefinition of drama. This has been manifest, for example, in the continuing academic argument over whether ritual or festival (or both) is historically and in essence ‘African drama’. In the argument it is the final product, the ritual or the festival observed in performance, which provides a new definition of drama or an alternative method of categorization. This leads to such statements as:

This ceremony can serve as a paradigm for kings’ festivals not only in Yorubaland but much wider afield in Africa, especially in West Africa, for it contains several of the typical elements of the African ‘royal drama’. First there is a string of loosely connected events lasting for a few days, all in an atmosphere of general merriment. Then, there is a central event of a

historical and military nature which is usually mimed. The king may conclude the ceremony by dancing in full pomp and pageantry for the whole community.2

and:

The Chorus, called Akunyungba, was an essential part of the performance. During the early part of the development of the theatre when the masque-dramaturge was yet an officer at court the chorus was composed mainly of the women of the palace. Later, when the theatre moved out of court circles and the troupe had to travel about entertaining the general public, the masque-dramaturge had to rely on his younger players to play the chorus. . . .

. . . The importance of the chorus to any performance was never in doubt since without it the drama was fragmented, episodic, and incomplete.^

Both these quotations come from influential studies of the traditional performing arts as drama and theatre. They are primarily concerned with the aesthetics of the particular performances being studied. However, the description in each case does not indicate how a festival or ritual performance has achieved its present organizational level; nor does it suggest how its personnel may be able to change its basic mode of performance in order to depict the changes taking place in the society itself. Indeed, these social changes may have already rendered the festival or ritual meaningless in terms of present-day realities.

The present-day Kalankuwa performance in Bomo village might seem to be trivial, inconsequential, and even a corruption of tradition for it is changing from a harvest festival into a more satirical festival with licence to ‘break the rules’ for the duration. What we are observing is the usurpation of the function of a cultural activity - a festival - by the grass-roots elements in the society. The village is hard against the boundary of the university which is a major agent for change in the society, both locally and nationally. There is obviously a ‘hot-house’ effect with regard to social change within the village; and there may be other factors which make the cultural development in this village unique. The Bomo Kalankuwa is not, therefore, necessarily representative of the way ‘drama’ is developing from the traditional culture. Rather, it is intended to show how complex is contemporary performance even in its most modest form.

There is a final observation which perhaps needs to be made

Traditional performance in contemporary society 35

before we move away from definitions of ‘traditional drama’ and ‘traditional theatre’. Those academic critics, as well as ourselves who are readers, who talk of African ‘ritual theatre’ and African ‘festival drama’ as fixed entities or as the embodiment of cultural history, are nevertheless contributing to the transformation of an oral culture into a literary culture. And we are doing this organizationally. We do it through our careers in the universities, through our academic research, through publications, and through policymaking in arts councils and ministries of culture. The trouble is that this high-level reorganization of traditional art is rendered more or less invisible by its very rapid inclusion within the overall educational framework of the new nation-states. The paradox is that while we advocate social change for ourselves, who have benefited most from the educational system, and the establishment of a new society in which we will figure prominently, we also strive to keep the traditional culture intact and unchanging, and justify doing so by the ideology of cultural independence.

If much tradition-based critical analysis of African drama is limited by focusing exclusively on the artistic product and omitting its social and economic organization from the discussion, so too are a number of sociological and anthropological studies of African societies severely limited by their exclusion of the plastic and performing arts from their analyses. The sociologist’s definition of ‘culture’ has been narrowed down to include that which can be assessed scientifically: descent groups, lineages, kinship patterns, the functioning of magic and religion, the systems of kingship and other formalized social and political institutions. For example, a generally illuminating study of the Yoruba in western Nigeria"^ indicates the contrary tendencies of extensive urbanization of the Yoruba heartlands since the middle of the last century, and their diaspora throughout West Africa this century; but there is no discussion at all on the amazing popularity of the Yoruba travelling theatres amongst local and expatriate Yoruba communities during the last three decades. Research by the Yoruba theatre scholar, Joel Adedeji, whom I quoted above, has shown that these companies had a traditional and historical precursor in the Alarin-jo theatre: travelling groups of entertainers which grew out of the Yoruba court and cult performances of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Any sociological discussion of Yoruba urban consciousness should surely include the travelling theatres. These articulate this consciousness whilst being made economical-

ly viable by the very existence of towns. But the author of this sociological study is silent^ on the Yorubas’ ability to organize and present theatre, as well as on the aesthetics of the performances.

There is also an opposite tendency, which is to write at length on African cults, rituals and masquerades either anthropologically (and as reflecting social structures) or as adjuncts of the traditional plastic arts (and artefact remains). However, once again there is a growing silence when the use of cult objects, costumes and masks in secular public performance come into prominence. One such study, by Dennis Duerden,-"' specifically seeks to relate African traditional art (represented by masks, cult objects, regalia) to contemporary African literature (represented by a handful of West African novels and play-texts). But the study is silent on the actual dynamics of traditional and contemporary performances. The author, through a philosophical analysis, postulates a theory of aesthetics which binds the creative principle that lies behind traditional African art to the creative principle that formulates the content of modern African literature. The absence of any extended discussion on the art of performance in the specific context of a theoretical discussion of the relationship between art and literature in Africa reflects two crucial problems which are central to any process of trying to define theatre and drama:

1 Live performances - whether they be performances of dramas, songs, dances, music, stories - are the most ephemeral of all art. They vanish within moments of being brought into existence, and only remain as a memory.

2 It is very difficult for someone outside the specific culture to know what he or she is looking at and listening to during a particular performance: the very style of a performance is a shorthand of actual meaning which has been established jointly by artists (composers and performers) and their audiences over a period of time.

There is a common solution to each of these problems, but in each case I think it is sl false solution:

1 The live performance is recorded. It is generally recorded as a written text; though occasionally it is recorded on sound tape and on film. I would describe it as a false solution because what is being preserved is not the total experience of the actual performance but only one of its ingredients: that is, the final artistic product in

Traditional performance in contemporary society 37

itself, isolated from the social act of its performance which gives it its full meaning.

2 Traditional styles of performance are rendered exotic, which means that the incomprehensible elements - to an outsider to the tradition - no longer need to be understood, because they have been taken out of context, ‘cut loose’ as it were, and can now be accepted merely as ‘local colour’, framed by the more easily comprehensible international or inter-cultural style of the rest of the show.

There is another sense in which these apparent solutions to the ephemeral qualities of performance and the inaccessibility of traditional material and style can be described as false. In each instance the problem relates to the meaning of a performance. For many anthropologists and ethnographers secular performance seems to lack substance and appears not to have any great significance for their respective communities. It appears to have no meaning in the way, say, a ritual has a meaning. If a performance is transient, is its ultimate meaning transient as well? Obviously the text of a play, which has been written down, has a meaning, or meanings in its textual form; and this meaning may be enhanced by abstract reference to the text’s cultural background. But is it the same meaning that the play has for the audience collectively assembled at a performance of it? And is this meaning always the same for each performance, irrespective of the circumstances and of who constitutes the audience?

The answer must be no, for the meaning of each performance is tied up with the particular and unique experience of that performance. We are now beginning to set the objective meaning of a play-text in opposition to the subjective experience of it in performance.

The other problem, of the inaccessibility of traditional material, suggests that meaning is deeply embedded in forms that custom and repeated use have loaded with a detailed significance, which is now intuitively rather than consciously perceived. The crucial question is whether the meaning is now so culture-bound that it cannot be decoded to yield a more generalized meaning. To render these elements merely exotic avoids the real meaning.

We have not quite finished with the written analysis of the traditional performing arts. There are some studies of the traditional arts which do in fact address themselves to this central issue

of meaning where (1) there is no text; (2) the performance is secular; (3) the performance is a transformation of ritual and ceremony into entertainment; (4) the performance is a depiction of social realities, and, perhaps, (5) a satirical comment as well. Some of these studies also address themselves to the way the performance and its artistic quality have been organized.

J. Clyde Mitchell’s study of the Kalela dance on the Zambian Copperbelt in the 1950s^ showed that the organization of the societies that presented the dance in organized competitions at weekends was a response to the process of urbanization, and a further extension of the ‘joking relationships’ which had previously existed between rival ethnic groups. The competitiveness of these grass-roots dance groups amongst the mines’ labour force was a kind of metaphor for traditional animosities - in much the same way as some team sports are. There is another dimension to the metaphor which exists in the actual dance itself; its use of specific role-play, costumes and dance-steps, all suggested the colonial authority, so that the dance itself became a metaphor for the colonial presence.

These concepts were carried much further in T. O. Ranger’s study of the Beni dance in East Africa,^ based upon the research and observations of a number of people in Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi and northern Zambia of rural dance societies, which, in their evolving organization over the eighty years of colonialism first reflected, metaphorically, the colonial authority, and then later mounted a satirical critique of it. The dance itself was a dazzling stylization of the colonial brass band. The musical instruments were approximated out of scrap metal; the white tunic and short pants of the colonial DOs were parodied; and the dance’s choreography transformed the parade into an extravaganza of inventiveness, borrowings from traditional dances, and acrobatic embellishments. It was in no way like the high-stepping female bands of the American ball-games. Rather, the whole body of the dancer was used creatively and the performance was much closer to pure dance than to military marches. Since independence it seems that the dance societies have dissolved; and the dance itself has ossified into a less skilful and less interesting performance by ‘amateurs’ or old men.

The two key performance elements which were omitted from both Beni and Kalankuwa were (1) songs and (2) stories, and we need to note briefly some studies of these.

Traditional performance in contemporary society 39

Of the studies made of traditional songs in African societies two may be mentioned which are, in fact, quite different from each other. One is by Charles Kiel, who analyses the songs of the Tiv peoples in central Nigeria,^ and the occasions and ways in which the songs are performed. From this composite analysis, Kiel is able to show a deeper, metaphorical meaning that comes not just from the words, or the ‘texts’, of individual songs, but also from the nature of the occasion of an evening of song performances. The study is interesting, not least because it attempts to place song-composition and song performance in the context of social change; and it is relevant to lyoruese Hagher’s recent research into the Tiv Kwagh hir puppet theatre which we will come to in a moment.

The other study is by Andreya Masiye, a Zambian broadcaster, playwright and diplomat,who shows how songs were used by the Party in the struggle for independence, especially through the medium of radio broadcast. Songs were broadcast, through record request programmes, to the rural areas; and it took the colonial authorities who controlled the networks some time to realize the subversion which was going on under their noses. Like the Tiv songs, as Kiel’s study shows, these songs were heavily metaphorical in content (they had to be), as well as being metaphorical in the circumstances of their performance, such as radio dj record requests programmes which mixed real requests with fake ones that contained covert seditious messages.

What about the use of narrative in performance? Most societies in Africa have story-telling traditions. For example, the Akan in Ghana have the stories of Ananse the tricky spider. The Ijg in southern Nigeria have an epic narrative tradition, which requires many evenings for the saga to be told in its entirety.Very often, the story-teller is a lone performer (with, perhaps, some accompaniment by musicians) and his art lies in his ability to get his audience to participate in the telling of the story without the story-teller himself losing the ‘ownership’ of it. Some traditions have pairs of professional narrators who move about the countryside with musicians accompanying them. Some of these narrators, as in the case of the Hausa, are praise-singers as well.

lyoruese Hagher describes the Kwagh hir puppet theatre amongst the Tiv people as a story-telling theatre. “ Fie suggests that the Kwagh hir is a purely rural traditional art even though it appeared in its present highly active form only in 1961, in response to the Tiv riots of 1960 (which, together with the 1964 riots, he

shows to be linked to the earlier cult riots of the colonial period). Hagher sees the Kwagh Tiir as a modern - but rural and wholly indigenous - theatrical art of performance. It combines spectacle and performance. The spectacle derives from the plastic arts: the masks and figurines, of monsters and of humans, and relating to the Adzov and Mbatzav, spirits whose world images the human world. The performance milieu is that of the songs, dances and stories, all now transformed from their traditional mode of performance. Hagher indicates that the programme of ‘events’ or ‘turns’ or ‘stories’ during a night of performance is metaphorical, in terms both of individual ‘stories’ and of the entertainment as a whole. The stories and their presentation as spectacle are a metaphor for the Tiv world view. This involves the traditional beliefs in magic, and in the acquisition, by individuals, of ‘powers’ and influence, being secularized and commented upon in public: the dolls and masks, which were part of the cult world are brought out into the public gaze in a stylized but essentially non-affective way.

The owners of the Kwagh hir companies, which tend to have a lineage or kinship base, involve their companies from season to season in fierce competitions with other companies; and referees determine the best. Best in performance, that is. The referees who are drawn from within the competing communities judge the performances in their own terms: are the animated puppets (i.e. the dolls and the articulated limbs of the gigantic mask-figures) life-like? Do they embody in their actions and movements the quality which they visually present? Does the mask do, in the dance, what its introductory song announces as its potential? Are the proverbs and stories accurately interpreted in the spectacle of their performance? Hagher’s study indicates an extensive vocabulary in Tiv in which the aesthetic qualities of performances can be critically assessed. It opens up a new area for research which discovers within the changing rural society a performance dynamic which combines the various traditional artistic elements to depict that change metaphorically. The Kwagh hir lies in the interstices between the traditional and essentially rural arts inherited from the past, and the fully-fledged urban theatre performances of travelling theatre companies like the Ogunde Theatre company, which are grass-roots artistic products by urban folk for their own communities.

Before moving on to a discussion of these theatre companies I will try to summarize my argument so far:

Traditional performance in contemporary society 41

1 The phenomenon of African drama developing out of traditional art is complex, as the example of a modest village festival performance tried to show.

2 The various critical approaches to the sources of African drama generally involve research into the oral traditions and traditional performances, but often there are limitations manifest in the various methodologies:

a a great deal of research by theatre specialists concentrates almost exclusively on the final artistic product; and ignores the means of production. This research modifies or reinforces Aristotelian ‘rules’ for drama;

b some sociologists and social anthropologists use a measurable definition of culture, in their description of a particular society, which often excludes totally that society’s artistic production;

c other anthropologists and ethnographers tend to discuss traditional art purely in terms of its function, or its structure, or both, solely within the context of affective ceremonies and rituals.

3 This may be the result of two problems concerning the meaning of secular performance:

a performances are ephemeral; and their meaning is experiential;

b it is difficult for outsiders to ‘see’ and ‘hear’ a traditional performance, because meaning is established between actors and audience through agreed stylistic conventions in performance which have been established over a period of time.

4 A few studies are, however, concerned with the dynamics of performance, that is to say, with the way in which performances for entertainment are organized at the grass roots, and how this organization affects the development of the final product, which itself is subject to change.

5 The development of the use of metaphor, both in terms of the grass-roots reorganization of traditional art, and in terms of the transformation of content, is crucial in the analysis.

We have now reached the point at which we would need to consider a performance art in which the elements of traditional performance have been so transformed, and recombined in so many new ways, that it can scarcely still be called traditional -

even though it may so advertise itself. The most significant development here is th^ way in which story-telling and role-play have been combined into dialogue drama. We will look at this in terms of two urban travelling theatres: the Yoruba travelling theatres and the theatres of the black South African townships.

Urban influences on drama and theatre

Yoruba travelling theatres have been eclectic: the influence of Western dramatic modes has been combined with the Alarinjo theatre historically, described by Adedeji.^^ masquerades (particularly Egungun and Gelede) and the music traditions of the different kingdoms in Yorubaland exercised a great deal of influence especially at the formative stage of Hubert Ogunde’s company. Dialogue drama also developed through Ogunde: after 1945 his improvised plays caught the Yoruba imagination (though there had been a tradition since the middle of the nineteenth century in Lagos of dramatized Bible stories and religious plays). There have been a very large number of companies over the past twenty-five years; but the main ones have been those of Hubert Ogunde, E. K. Ogunmola, Duro Ladipo and Moses Olaiya Adejumo (alias ’Baba Sala’). We shall concentrate on Ogunde’s company; and I shall attempt to summarize the achievements of the other three in order to indicate the similarities and the differences. However, for the travelling theatres generally we need to establish three factors which contribute to the concept of them as part of the system of free market enterprise which goes some way to explaining the limitations of these theatres.

1 First of all, we are not dealing with a play-text, or a body of play-texts belonging to a particular author. We are concerned in the case of each theatre company with a ‘personality’. It is the personality of Ogunde, or the personality of ‘Baba Sala’, which actually constitutes the substance of their dramatic work. This notion of ‘personality’ involves two aspects: the character on stage - which is basically a fiction - and the public image of the man in real life. These two aspects are inextricably bound up with each other.

2 The second factor concerns the nature of each man’s company’s organization. The more successful the ‘personality’, the more detailed and complex are the business and commercial

Traditional performance in contemporary society 43

structures of his enterprises. These facilitate not only the production of more performances on tours, and on the radio and television, but also the production of records, magazines and even films - which, in turn, boost this ‘personality’. The performances of the plays become the occasion to market these other products.

3 The third factor is quite different and concerns the relationship between these theatre companies and the universities, especially the University of Ibadan. There were two units in the University of Ibadan which involved themselves with one or more of the popular theatre personalities, and attempted to shape their art. One was the extra-mural department which, through Ulli Beier, set up the Mbari Clubs; and the other was the school of drama, which eventually became the department of theatre arts, awarding undergraduate and post-graduate degrees in practical and theoretical theatre. The Mbari Club in Oshogbo first accommodated Duro Ladipo and his company, and then eventually became the embodiment of his personality. The school of drama brought in the late Kola Ogunmola to develop his art, according to Geoffrey Axworthy, then the head of the school, free from the commercial pressures of the day-to-day existence of his company. However opinions are divided over the measure of success of this experiment; and it could be argued that these theatre personalities are in fact sustained by the commercial milieu in which they flourish and through which their art is defined organizationally. It is quite possible that the social isolation of the university campus in Nigeria is inimical to their art. Thus, in one way or another, the University of Ibadan attempted to engage with some of these commercially successful enterprises whose theatre art was so popular in the towns throughout Nigeria wherever there were concentrations of Yoruba people. However, Hubert Ogunde, who was really the pioneer of this development, seemed largely to have kept himself apart, until quite recently, from the academics. Latterly Ebun Clark, of the University of Lagos, won Ogunde’s confidence and accomplished some painstaking and detailed historical research on Ogunde’s work over thirty-five years.

Hubert Ogunde

From Ebun Clark’s study it would appear that Ogunde’s theatre very closely reflected the prevailing mood of the people, especially in the West of Nigeria (the Yoruba heartlands) from 1946 to the

beginning of the Nigerian civil war in 1966. The style, the form, the content of his worl^ changed as the mood changed in the territory, which was itself responding to the changing political climate. This ability to key in to the main preoccupations of the emerging political leadership in Nigeria in the years before independence, and to give it expression in front of large Yoruba audiences, specifically defined Ogunde’s ‘personality’. He put his local audiences ‘in touch’ with the aspirations of those who were operating at a national level. What he did was to fictionalize himself in his own dramas, while appearing before the public in the flesh. In this way he was able to personalize and concretize issues - through characterization, story and metaphor - so that the audiences could engage directly with these issues.

Furthermore, the ability of Ogunde’s theatre company to travel all round Nigeria, and even beyond its boundaries, meant a wider circulation of these issues - which certainly made him a thorn in the flesh of the colonial authorities. This led to his theatre being banned in certain parts of the country, and his arrest and interrogation by the colonial authorities. Through this persecution his ‘personality’ was greatly enhanced.

For the sake of discussion we can probably identify four phases in the development of Ogunde’s theatre to the present time:

(1) The phase of cultural nationalism from 1944-50:

(2) consolidation of the company through independence 1954-

64; (3) post-independence party politics 1964-66; (4) the com-

pany since the civil war 1972 to the present day.

1 The period of cultural nationalism from 1944^50

Ogunde’s first plays were folk operas with titles like The Garden of Eden and Throne of God. They were presented for the Cherubim and Seraphim Church while he was still a member of the Nigeria Police Force. In 1945 his performances took on a political dimension. His play Strike and Hunger, for example, was an allegory that expressed the hopeless conditions of labour in colonial Nigeria which led to the general strike of 1945. In 1946 he gave up his job and established The African Music Research Party as a fully professional company with a play called Tiger s Empire which was another attack on colonialism.

The titles of both his theatre company and of the play indicate the direction Ogunde’s creative energy was taking at this time. He

Traditional performance in contemporary society 45

wanted to revive the Yoruba music which had been downgraded by the colonialists and to reawaken interest in the indigenous culture. At the same time he specifically saw his company as the means by which he could help establish the cultural independence of the Africans in Nigeria as a back-up to the growing movement for political and economic independence, or, as it was called, self-government. Both the content of his plays and the organization of his company would show that Nigerians could be ‘self-sufficient’ in the arts.

Even at this stage his art was eclectic. He took the old stories, enlivened them with songs which he himself composed, transformed Yoruba musical forms by mixing indigenous instruments with others from elsewhere in the country, and dramatized the story in such a way that it set forth an obvious political theme {Tiger s Empire) or social message {Mr Devil’s Money - an African version of the Faust theme of a man who signs a pact with the devil for money) which was highly appropriate for the times. His shows were both traditional and modern at the same time. They appealed to Yoruba audiences because they clearly reflected the desire for the creation of a modern state, independent of the colonial authority, on the basis of the Nigerians’ present achievements and collective abilities. There was no need to become more ‘civilized’: Ogunde’s plays framed the insult of colonialism for all to see it as such.

In 1947 Ogunde changed the title of his company to the Ogunde Theatre Company; and although the content of the shows continued to shift between overly political themes and more general social themes, the main form of his work had been established. The show comprised an opening glee - a lively musical number including perhaps the song which Ogunde had composed as the theme song for that particular play - and the play itself: an allegorical story with songs, dances and dialogue. There was also a closing glee.

The plays were moralistic. Even the political dramas were presented in the form of obvious moral issues: colonialism which Ogunde attacked in play after play, was shown to be immoral. Thus a non-political play like Half and //«//(1949), which tells the story of a changeling, half deer, half beautiful woman, is not a different sort of play from Bread and Bullet (1950), which was a play based on the Enugu coal-miners’ strike of 1949 in which eighteen miners were shot dead by the police. It seems from

accounts of the play that Ogunde overlaid the issue of the strike with a love story. And even the politics of the piece are construed in terms of an obvious good confronting an obvious evil. At the time this was appropriate enough. It inflamed passions and caused the performances to be banned in the North.

During this period Ogunde also established the Ogunde Record Company (1947) which recorded and marketed his songs; and he also extended his theatre company into a regularly travelling troupe. Both of these developments led to the consolidation of his ‘personality’ as an entertainer (singer, actor and musician), who spoke with the voice of the new nationalism. His various brushes with the colonial authority - the denial of a passport to travel to England, the banning of Strike and Hunger, the trouble over the tour of Bread and Bullet in northern Nigeria - all contributed to the projection of this ‘personality’. In the shows, the hctionalizing of his personality in the different roles situated it within a moral framework. Both his personal success and the roles he played embodied the aspirations of the people. It gave their rising expectations a specific form and a moral justification.

2 Consolidation of the company through independence: 1954-64

During the 1950s cultural nationalism gave way to a more specific process of political organization in the regions of Nigeria in anticipation of independence. Ogunde does not seem to have responded to this development directly; and the presentation of new plays tailed off towards the end of the 1950s. Perhaps it was less easy to see the political lobbying and jockeying for power in the simplified moralistic terms in which he framed his earlier plays about colonialism and social evils. He had worked out a formula for stabilizing the membership of his theatre company, for refining and modifying a repertoire of established plays and for executing extensive tours around Nigeria. This formula had proved successful, both financially and in terms of his growing popularity.

Clark, however, feels there was a change. She contends that Ogunde eventually gave up operatic work (a series of songs, dances and mime, without spoken dialogue) in favour of the style of the concert party from Ghana. She suggests that Ogunde was responding to a challenge from Bobby Benson in the early 1950s and that this led him to introduce such innovations as new types of songs, new rhythms and fashionable dance-steps into the existing

Traditional performance in contemporary society 47

repertoire of plays. The influence of American pop music produced a jazzy urban style. However, Bobby Benson didn’t really develop a touring theatre company; he didn’t share Ogunde’s enthusiasm of the earlier years for cultural nationalism; and eventually he turned completely to night club entertainment and to developing Nigerian pop music. His heirs are the contemporary Nigerian pop stars.

3 Post-independence politics: 1964-66

Ogunde’s most famous play belongs to this period: Yoruba Ronu (‘Yoruba - think!’). Ironically it has been performed much less than most of his other plays in repertory. It was first of all a song, composed by Ogunde, which deplored the increasingly bitter party strife in the western region of Nigeria. The play itself was written as a result of a commission from the break-away party of one of the political rivals in the territory. Chief Akintola. In fact the play was highly critical of Akintola, and Ebun Clark comments that he and his entourage walked out during its premiere performance on 28 February, 1964. The play had further performances in March and April and then Ogunde and his entire company were banned from performing in the western region. The Ogunde Concert Party was declared an unlawful society. The ban did a great deal for Ogunde’s public image but nothing for his pocket. It was lifted after the military coup of 1966, and Ogunde gave the military governor a command performance of his by now celebrated but little known play.

In 1966 Ogunde formed the Ogunde Dance Company, for the purpose of taking his shows on tours overseas; and those tours confirmed his position as an integral part of the Nigerian theatre establishment.

4 The Ogunde Theatre Company since the civil war: 1972 onwards

Hubert Ogunde is wealthy and successful. In 1980 a bbc film was made of him, his family, and his Theatre Company, and broadcast in Britain. The film showed Ogunde with his fans, his wives and his children; and the rehearsal of a play based on a folk tale. Shows I have seen in Zaria have been of older folk operas

recently revamped. Half and Half, which dates from 1949, was the most dynamic in perfornl^ance. The large audience almost entirely of university students and mainly Yoruba, greatly appreciated the comic techniques of Ogunde and his actors. They neither found, nor looked for, any significant content or deeper meaning in the play. There were one or two topical political jokes worked into the performance. It would seem that most of the political plays of the period of cultural nationalism have been dropped from the repertoire of the company. Following the assassination of the Nigerian head of state. General Murtala Mohammed, in 1976, a wave of deep regret swept over the country for the untimely death of the man who had given a much needed focus to Nigerian national life; and Ogunde produced a bland play, Murtala, which toured the country, but which encountered some opposition to its performance in the North.

Ogunde’s theatre company is Hubert Ogunde. His theatre is a Yoruba theatre, performed in Yoruba which embraces wit and poetry. The fans come to see and hear him; and to an outsider it appears that no member of his cast can steal the focus of the audience from him. This is the essence, it seems, of the most successful of the travelling theatres: the creation of a ‘personality’, a unique person, through whom Yoruba of all walks of life can find a central image of their contemporary world. Ogunde is the entertainer, the successful businessman, the cherished head of the family. He is now frequently described as ‘the father of Nigerian theatre’. It is probably more accurate to describe him more generally as a father-figure, an embodiment of success, and his art as a popular expression of Yoruba sensibility.

Other Yoruba companies: E. K. Ogunmola and Duro Ladipo

Both Ogunmola and Ladipo are dead - both died unexpectedly in mid career - but they had a memorial to their respective talents in the records of their work that resulted from their association with the University of Ibadan. There are written texts in Yoruba and in English translation; sound tapes of various productions and a film record of some of their work. However, this record of their work is seen as archival rather than as the means to accomplish more performances.

It was the opinion of many who saw Kola Ogunmola perform his plays that he was the most brilliant actor of the 1950s and 1960s.

Traditional performance in contemporary society 49

He greatly admired Ogunde; and Ebun Clark reports that Ogunde gave him financial help when he needed it most, after a long illness. There is a published text of his dramatization of The Palm-Wine Drinkard, Amos Tutuola’s novel. Apart from this his two best-known plays were Love of Money and Conscience, both in the style of Ogunde’s moralistic theatre.

His arts fellowship at the University of Ibadan was apparently an attempt to enrich his theatrical art; and The Palm-Wine Drinkard was the result of that collaboration. The adaptation was suggested by Geoffrey Axworthy, the head of the school of drama, and the eventual staging of it realized the best design and production talents in the school. But whereas Tutuola’s fiction was a quest for self, with a view of the world from a somewhat tilted point of view, Ogunmola’s play makes this serious work superficial, for it is set as the dream, or the nightmare, of the central character, Lanke, the ‘drinkard’. Lanke falls asleep in his armchair at the beginning of the play, after the supposed death of his favourite palm-wine tapper; and is awakened at the end of the play by his friends who tell him that his tapper is alive after all. This prosaic attempt at providing some sort of naturalistic credibility reflects a deep-rooted misunderstanding of the bizarre but significant world of the original.

By contrast, Duro Ladipo plays have a detailed structure of meaning through their imaginative dramatization of key Yoruba myths. For example, in his most famous play, Oba Kd So, different elements all contribute quite specifically to the play’s overall meaning, such as symbolism, both in the dialogue and the spectacle on stage, and the play’s formal rhythm through which characterization is established and the story unfolds. The play recounts how Shango, as King, is increasingly unable to curb the destructive influence of his two powerful generals. In the end he commits suicide; but in being transformed into the God of Thunder he negates his act of self-destruction: ‘the King does not hang!’ - the title of the play.

Although Ladipo toured with his company, performing his plays, he was never as popular with audiences as the other theatre personalities, and his plays were much more consciously artistic. The publication of his major productions as written texts will ironically establish him as a playwright, and the one most likely to be remembered from this time. His Yoruba version of Everyman, Edd is discussed at some length in Chapter 3.

Baba Sala ^

Moses Olaiya Adejumo, alias ‘Baba Sala’, his abiding stage name, is the most recent of the Yoruba travelling theatre personalities. According to his biographer and researcher, the playwright Tunde Lakoju^^ he claims to have been ‘made’ by his early appearances on Nigerian television. He won a Yoruba theatre contest on Ibadan television to find the best company; and the first prize was to be a sponsored tour abroad to Europe. However, although the referees agreed that in the Yoruba milieu in Nigeria, he was undoubtedly the best, his theatre would not be good for Nigeria’s theatre image abroad. So an agreement was cobbled together whereby he got the first prize and a television contract for weekly shows by his company; and someone else went to Germany. Moses Olaiya went on to become a very wealthy man. He too, like Ogunde, has established a number of successful enterprises and ancillary companies besides the main theatre company.

When he began his act he portrayed himself comically: his ‘personality’ was that of an enterprising fellow, often ingenuous, and way down the social ladder. As Baba Sala, his fictionalized self, he exposed, sometimes by accident, sometimes by design, the venality, devices and schemes of Nigerians on the make. ‘Baba Sala’ himself, caricatured in gigantic revolving bow-tie and funny hats, was included in the satire.

It is interesting to note that as the man himself has become well-off so has his fictional ‘personality’ Baba Sala. This development should be seen alongside the introduction of motion-picture inserts into the live performances of his plays. ‘Baba Sala’ has quite literally become a film star. (On tour the company carries the entire equipment necessary for a performance outdoors with them, including stage, cinema screen, a curtained-off back-stage area, and a generator.)

Thus, Yoruba audiences will be given the following ‘package’ at a performance, like, for example, the one I attended in the Railway Club Yard in distant Zaria.^^

As they arrive the audience can listen to records of performances of other plays - which are stopped at the critical moment so that people will want to buy them. Young members of the company move amongst the swelling audience selling them. To begin the play there is an opening glee^^ - a lively dance by the dancers in the company attired in skimpy costumes which repre-

Traditional performance in contemporary society 51

sent traditional dance costume. Then the cinema screen is draped over the back-cloths and we see the first film insert - in this example Baba Sala picking up a girl by the roadside in his Mercedes (his own car) after serenading her in a deliberate send-up of the Indian love-movie. The back-cloth is revealed again and Baba Sala arrives ‘home’, which is on stage, and the scene is acted live. It really does seem as though he has stepped out of the screen for he is in the identical costume.

And so the story unfolds, alternating between him and live performance, without the flow of the narrative being interrupted. This particular play showed Baba Sala as a well-off older man planning to take as another wife the young woman whom his son was intending to marry.

Baba Sala’s theatre is more eclectic than Ogunde’s. Anything which is likely to be popular with the audience is brought into the performances. The autocratic nature of Moses Olaiya’s rule over members of his company allows him to determine everything from touring schedules to the content and style of the plays to the detailed conduct of each performance.

Two things stand out in the work of Ogunde and Baba Sala: both have been dependent on the mass media (radio, television and newspapers) for the promotion of their ‘personalities’. Baba Sala established his particular ‘style’ and comic persona through both radio and television, while the newspapers projected Ogunde in the 1950s as an entertainer who was part of the political struggle. But although both have become wealthy neither halt their strenuous tours around the country in which they remain the ‘star’ of the show and the reason for it being on the road.

The large public performance provides them with an opportunity to market their other products. The fact that they continue to interact with their audiences directly shows that they recognize their ‘personality’ as the base of their commercial enterprises. The ‘fictionalizing’ of themselves through dramas based on the contemporary experiences of their audience creates the product, their travelling theatres, which they market so successfully.

The tradition of urbanization among the Yoruba, and also their willingness to travel in search of jobs and success, has undoubtedly provided a fertile ground for the growth of this sort of urban grass-roots theatre. The existence of a similar theatre in the black South African townships reinforces the idea that the scattering of populations in the context of urbanization for entrepreneurial

activity provides a collective experience at the bottom of the social heap to which theatre is uniquely able to give expression, while it paradoxically places severe constraints upon that theatre, through its economic organization, making it seemingly incapable of offering its audiences a valid critique of their increasingly disadvantaged position. The concept of the ‘personality’ enables the owner of the theatre company, who is also that personality, to exploit his fellow actors, his ‘workers’. The dramas produced can therefore be critical of obvious social injustices like colonialism or racialism which fit into a simple moral framework, but they are unable to attack the root causes of social coercion. Instead they provide an illusion of individual success once the obvious injustice has been removed.

Black theatre in Soweto

In an introduction to a collection of South African people’s plays, Robert Kavanagh^^ describes the development of black grass-roots urban theatre. He categorizes the popular theatre tradition into three groups which he describes as (1) ‘town theatre’, involving both blacks and whites in experimental and often highly political theatre; (2) ‘the theatre of Black Consciousness’ which involved the South African Students Organization and the Black People’s Convention who were concerned to develop the cultural dimension to the politcal struggle in which they were engaged; and (3) ‘township theatre’ (not to be confused with ‘town theatre’) which Kavanagh describes as being commercial, involving music and dance, and reflecting ‘the life and culture of the urban townships . . . created and performed in the townships, rarely emerging from them. . . .’ ^

The main theatre personality in the township theatre is Gibson Kente. In another article Kavanagh specifically compares him to Hubert Ogunde.^^ However, there seem to be differences which reflect the different political situations in Nigeria and in South Africa. Kente’s early theatre work was non-political but was transformed into a politicized theatre in 1974, according to Kavanagh, by unemployment and inflation and by the influence of the Black Consciousness Movement and of the more radical mixed-race theatre.

In his play Too Late (1975) Kente sets up a group of characters: a woman, her friend, her daughter, a young fellow who is a

Traditional performance in contemporary society 53

relative of the woman but now orphaned and homeless; some cynical young people who have chosen a life of petty crime rather than go to a Boer-controlled blacks-only university; a preacher, a doctor; and a policeman called Pelepele, and his associates. These people reflect the township milieu. The oppressive nature of the white South African regime is indicated by the constant harassment of blacks by the police. This is presented in a casual sort of way that makes the violence seem inevitable; and it is continually set forth in jazzy songs, dances and music. This tone is not contrived for a deliberate artistic or political effect; it is a direct depiction of the violence that is the norm for blacks in that society. It appears bizarre only to those of us who are outside it. For instance, the orphaned young man is on one occasion caught by Pelepele the policeman and is physically defended by his young female cousin - whom the policeman kills, deliberately, with a blow on the head! Furthermore, the most dramatic moments in the play are not to do with this wanton violence, totally unprepared for within the play, but with the non-arrival of a letter which causes a misunderstanding.

In fact the play’s story is tentative; the narrative is much more to do with the way in which this group of people cope, moment by moment, with the undertow of arbitrary violence which epitomizes apartheid for blacks. There is no beginning and no end to the play in the conventional sense. Between the start and the finish there are a series of crises affecting the characters, which are merely part of a continuing crisis throughout their lives. The woman is put in jail for running a shebeen; the cynical and bitter young men shop-lift and are remorselessly pursued; the woman’s daughter gets killed; the orphaned young man, who witnesses this, is put in jail for not having a pass and eventually he comes out. The play concludes with one of the characters asking the question which gives the play its title:

‘Can’t something be done to curb the bitterness in both young and old before it’s TOO late?’2o

Another township play in the anthology is uNosilimela by Credo Mutwa, a play which has profound significance for the revival of African culture in South Africa. It has considerable scope, involving in the experiences of the central character, uNosilimela, the daughter of a mythical princess, the destiny of all black South

Africans. The story-teller begins the play in the traditional manner of story-telling, with sorfgs and dances, creating an atmosphere in which all manner of things are possible. The beginning truly does have magical and mythical dimensions: he gives an account of star wars that result in the Earth-destiny of one of the victims, the princess Kimamereva. uNosilimela is the daughter of this princess of the stars, born in the present time:

Story-teller: Thus it was that Magadlemzini’s son, Solemamba, left the

land of his forefathers for Johannesburg. And in due course, after much pain and difficult labour, Kimamereva, voyager of the sea of time and queen of a thousand galaxies, gave birth to a baby girl and because she had had the habit of sitting outside each night during her pregnancy, staring fixedly at the Silimela constellation, the stars of Spring, which were her distant home, the child Kimamereva bore was known as. ... [uNosilimela stands dressed in the clothes and adornments of a young Zulu girl]

Song: uNosilimela!

Uyeza uNosilimela. . . . (uNosilimela is coming. . .

uNosilimela is a child of destiny. Her being is hedged by taboos which she breaks by having an illicit love affair. Then she strikes her earthly ‘mother’; and for this outrage she must be exiled. She moves deeper and deeper into urban South Africa, is corrupted and abused. She gains education only by being Christianized by some nuns; but in the townships she is utterly debased. Finally she is warned, in a vision, by the Earth Mother (not to be confused with her father’s wife whom she struck) that death is imminent:

Listen, death stalks you as a lion stalks an impala in the darkness. Leave Johannesburg at once. Go out to the pure open spaces where the truth about you and your people will be revealed to you. Now go!^^

She returns home; questions the ancestors about her destiny (and the destiny of her people); and witnesses a great conflagration in which white oppression is swept away and there is the promise of peace.

Like Ogunde’s plays, uNosilimela is concerned with the traditional performing arts - especially story-telling and music as a traditionally composite art - and their use allegorically in depicting the contemporary urban world. But Credo Mutwa differs from the Nigerian Hubert Ogunde in two respects. First, Mutwa is primarily a writer', and he does not run a professional theatre

Traditional performance in contemporary society 55

company to stage his plays. Certainly he is a public figure; but it is more as an intellectual than as a theatre ‘personality’.

Secondly, Mutwa is profoundly resentful of the urban milieu. uNosilimela is an attack on the city and all its values, and it advocates a return to the precolonial rural world which he has now romanticized. This romanticism of rurality is tied up with a political consciousness with which it sharply conflicts. In fact, as we will see in the final chapter, it is a critical problem not only for black South Africans in their revolutionary overthrow of the present racist regime, but also, in another dimension, for all Africans across the continent.

We have moved from the rural, traditional milieu to the contemporary, urban milieu, both of which are experiencing social change. We have seen the growth of traditional performing arts into drama and theatre as a phenomenon which is not easy to define. Drama is a process - a process of realizing a performance, a process of responding to cultural change to make some sense of it - rather than a categorization of parts and a series of limiting definitions. In many ways it actually helps to keep words like ‘theatre’ and ‘drama’ fluid, as indeed they are in reality, as the many conflicting attempts to define them show.

But we do need to understand the process of how actuality (that which happens) becomes drama, in a performance.

This process is not simply one which occurs every time a new play is devised. It is not merely the conscious techniques of the individual dramatist, although it may seem to have become this in the present time. Rather, it is much more significantly a historical process which stretches through time. Drama is unlike a poem, or a song, or a melody on a Fulani’s flute. It is not the response of an individual to an experience involving individual sensibility. Each drama is instead a corporate and social act reflecting a collective experience.

As such, the circumstances of a performance must needs be organized, whether it be the Lozi ceremony of Kuomboka on the flooding Zambesi, or a ‘first night’ at the Lagos National Theatre; and each performance will have a frame set about it, even though it may be unperceived through custom and familiarity, within which the spontaneous elements may emerge. Furthermore, the group’s collective experience of actuality becomes in time an

expression of its social sensibility, and ultimately of its history. Thus drama, as a recurring process from actuality to performance, stretches backwards and forwards in time beyond the lives of individual dramatists and actors who mediate it.

We must resist a reduction of this view into ‘content’ and ‘form’, as alternative categories within each dramatic work. We have to keep in mind (1) the process by which each ‘play’ is realized as such; (2) the process by which some plays become ‘great works’ (and others are irretrievably lost); and (3) the historical process, by which the collective recreation of life as art in the oral tradition, which was previously passed from one generation to the next, has become, ironically, the individual’s depiction of his or her individuality in the bourgeois theatre.

The following schema might be useful in approaching what is presently recognized as the main body of African drama, namely, the play-texts of contemporary playwrights. The schema has no other validity than as a formal attempt to situate the process of dramatic composition within the social processes.

ACTUALITY

1

STORY

i

SCENARIO

i

FORM

i

PERFORMANCE

i

[PLAY-TEXT]

Actuality is what is to be depicted. It is life, viewed by those who would seek to interpret it to their audiences through their art. The first step in the process of transforming life into art, into a drama or play, is to cast it in the form of a story.

A story involves particularization (a time, a place, characters) and causality (one event leading to another). However the story in itself is not the drama or the play. The story which particularizes life now needs to be transformed into a scenario.

The scenario gives the story its dramatic impact by its dramatically effective reorganization of the story’s events into scenes which cope with problems of time and space. Two other elements in scenario-making need to be mentioned here: (1) Some scenes

Traditional performance in contemporary society 51

develop in quite unexpected ways, and sometimes even the exact opposite to what one would imagine. Afterwards, however, the unexpected can be seen as curiously appropriate, and reveals a deeper truth which was previously hidden. This is irony. (2) Some scenes present us with characters who know less about what is happening to them than we the audience do, or other characters on stage do. This is called dramatic irony. Scenario is sometimes referred to as plot, but both scenario and plot refer to a part of the process which is specific to the story. The next part of the process is specific to the social milieu in which the performance of the drama or play will take place: this is the finding of an appropriate form.

Form requires that the writer or group making the drama take account of specific performance traditions and particular actor-audience relationships. It involves them in deciding what theatre style they are going to use and what performance conventions. It also, obviously, involves them in deciding what language and language registers they are going to use.

Performance is the presentation of the dramatic work to an audience. Although an audience is made up of individuals, the performance of a play usually invokes a collective response, even if that response sometimes divides into those w ho approve of what the play is saying and those who disapprove. Even a run of performances, which is generally before a different group of individuals on each successive night, achieves over the run a collective response (which may again divide into those who support the play and those who oppose it).

The play-text. Individual playwrights can, on the basis of a successful performance, realize a play-text. The play-text is, historically, performance in a finalized literary form. In the present economic organization of bourgeois theatre successful playwrights can submit a more or less finalized play-text to a theatre management for performance, and by virtue of their previous (commercial) success, insist on it being performed unchanged. New playwrights, however, are deceived if they imagine that they can present wholly autonomous texts for first performances. Powerful theatre managements of both the commercial and state-subsidized theatre, actually intervene at the form stage (in terms of this schema) and insist on changes being made in accordance with what they think their audiences will pay money to

see. The situation is in fact little different from what we have already observed with regard to the Yoruba travelling theatres.

This, then, is the process of depicting actuality (life) in plays for the theatre (art). However, we have not quite finished with the process, for we have to see it not only as a process which concerns each playwright every time he or she creates a new play but also as a process in time. Once the play-text is published in the form of a book, it can intervene between scenario and/orm in the continuation of this process. A new performance of a play-text which has come from an earlier age must take cognizance of the form of performance which is both possible in, and approved by, the new society; and this new form may actually change the original play’s meaning (i.e. the actual situation to which it once referred). But even as a new performance changes the original meaning, the play-text itself gathers an aura of ‘greatness’. As it passes from era to era, culture to culture, language to language, it gradually comes to embody ‘absolute truths’ which are not specific to any society; and although the form is continually changing (and changing the play) the play itself is paradoxically thought of as ‘complete’. One result of this is that a genuinely new theatre in a new society, which is trying to depict an unprecedented social reality, finds itself contradicting the established theatre which has already predisposed audiences to what ‘theatre’ ought to be.

In this chapter we have seen how the owners of contemporary grass-roots performances struggle to depict a new reality through the transformation of existing performance traditions. Inevitably they will be in the shadow of the literary African playwrights who have inherited the established theatre’s ‘great tradition’. The next chapter specifically considers this tension between the literary play-text and the indigenous performance traditions.

Chapters 3 to 7 analyse some of the published play-texts. For the framework for these chapters we must look again, briefly, at the story stage of my schema.

The story may be derived from 3 sources:

1 Myth, which is actuality from those closest to its source; and which is a model of actuality for playwrights in later times and other cultures, who treat it as a representation of actuality. Occasionally a playwright may attempt to approach a foreign myth

Traditional performance in contemporary society 59

directly, or through cultural comparison; but generally it is through an established play-text, a ‘great work’, which in its original culture approached the myth directly or through a non-dramatic source - such as existing rites of passage, rituals and affective masquerades.

2 History, which records actuality specific to a particular society; and which is verifiable, either from written records or from the oral tradition. This can also include existing festivals and ceremonies, and non-affective masquerades.

3 Fiction, which seeks to reach actuality through a fiction. Observation of contemporary society often provides the substance for fiction.

I have found it convenient to look at the body of literary African drama in terms of the source of the story. Chapter 3 analyses some examples of plays which return to myths already handled in plays from other cultures. Chapter 4 analyses examples of plays which turn to recent history - specifically the history of colonialism and of the struggle for independence. Chapters 5, 6 and 7 analyse examples of plays in which fiction attempts to discover a deeper reality.

As the chapters progress, the term ‘literary’ theatre gives way to the concept of the ‘art’ theatre. Broadly speaking the terms are interchangeable. More specifically, however, in the theatre which works directly from reality, fictionalizing it, meaning is seen as ‘artistic truth’.

The literary theatre of Africa is not accessible to the mass of the people but neither, on the whole, is the ‘art’ theatre with its own vision of the truth. The final chapter returns us to the people, both as the makers and consumers of drama and theatre, and to the need to indicate how drama, through a new creative and organizational dynamic, might itself be transformed so as to effect the transformation of social consciousness amongst the mass of the people.

Notes and references

1 Aboakyer, the annual deer-hunt festival in Winneba, Ghana, is also linked to a Lord-of-Misrule festival. After the victorious team has returned with the captured deer, the whole community, many of whom are in elaborate or bizarre costumes, makes

a procession around the town with guilds, clubs, age-sets and so on, performing satirical shows within the main body of the procession. This procession is more than a mile long and takes several hours, and the victorious group can ridicule the losers in any way they wish.

2 Oyin Ogunba, ‘Traditional African festival drama’, in Oyin Ogunba and Abiola Irele (eds.). Theatre in Africa (Ibadan: Ibadan University Press 1978), p. 15.

3 Joel Adedeji, ‘Traditional Yoruba travelling theatre’, in Ogunba and Irele, 1978, p. 43.

4 J. S. Eades, The Yoruba Today (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1980).

5 Dennis Duerden, African Art and Literature: the invisible present (New York: Harper and Row 1975, also London: Heinemann Educational Books 1977).

6 J. Clyde Mitchell, ‘The Kalela Dance: aspects of social relationships among urban Africans in Northern Rhodesia’, The Rhodes-Livingstone Papers, no. 27 (Manchester: Manchester University Press 1956).

7 T. O. Ranger, Dance and Society in Eastern Africa 1890-1970: the Beni Ngoma (London: Heinemann Educational Books 1975). See also, in connection with this, Margaret Strobel, Moslem Women in Mombasa 1890-1975 (New Haven: Yale University Press 1980).

8 Charles Kiel, Tiv Song (Chicago: Chicago University Press 1979).

9 Andreya Masiye, Singing for Freedom (Lusaka: NECZAM 1977).

10 Ozidi is the Ijg saga. It is discussed in Chapter 2 of this book.

11 I. O. Hagher, ‘The Kwagh hir: an analysis of a contemporary indigenous puppet theatre and its social and cultural significance in Tivland in the 1960s and 1970s’ (PhD thesis, Zaria: Ahamdu Bello University 1981).

12 Adedeji, in Ogunba and Irele, 1978.

13 Ebun Clark, Hubert Ogunde: the making of Nigerian theatre (London, Oxford University Press 1979). Some of the material was published previously in Nigeria Magazine, no. 114 (1974), and nos. 115-16 (1975).

14 The BBC, London, produced a film on Hubert Ogunde, made by Tony Isaacs: Ogunde: Man of the Theatre, which was broadcast on 7 September 1980.

Traditional performance in contemporary society 61

15 Tunde Lakoju, ‘Travelling Theatre in Nigeria: a study of Moses Olaiya and his Alawada Theatre International of Nigeria’ (MA thesis in preparation, Zaria: Ahmadu Bello University).

16 The play was Kase Karo (‘Remove your legs’); it was staged at the Railway Club, Zaria, on 29 November 1980.

17 For a discussion of this see Joel Adedeji, ‘Trends in the content and form of the opening glee in Yoruba drama’. Research in African Literatures, vol. 4 no. 1 (1973), pp. 32-47.

18 Robert Kavanagh (ed), South African People's Plays (London: Heinemann Educational Books 1981).

19 ‘Mshengu’, ‘After Soweto: people’s theatre and the political struggle in South Africa’, Theatre Quarterly, vol. 9 no. 33 (1979), pp. 31-8.

20 Gibson Kente, Too Late, in Robert Kavanagh (ed.). South African People's Plays, p. 122.

21 Credo Mutwa, uNosilimela, in Robert Kavanagh (ed.). South African People's Plays, p. 18.

22 ibid., p. 48.

2 Drama as literature and

V

performance

What is the relationship between literature and peformance? The relationship is complicated by seeing drama as a process of social development in the way we represent ourselves and our society to ourselves.

Our initial question then breaks down into three specific questions:

1 What is the relationship between the traditional performances and modern African play-texts?

2 What is the relationship between the traditional performances and modern African drama in performance (which may or may not be performances of those play-texts)?

3 What is the relationship between modern African play-texts and modern African drama in performance?

In attempting to answer these questions and discover these relationships, this chapter considers also the various ways by which the growing body of what is called African drama is evaluated: as play-texts, as performance, as cultural dynamics and as a social phenomenon.

We will approach these questions, initially, in the context of the following observations, namely: (1) the development of the study of drama in African universities; (2) the extensive influence of classical (Greek and Roman) and European forms of drama on African playwrights; and (3) the establishment of the play-text as the dominant mode of drama.

The establishment of university departments studying drama

From the establishment of the School of Music and Drama, at the University of Ghana, Legon, and the department of theatre arts at the University of Dar es Salaam in the early 1960s, and the subsequent establishment of the department of theatre arts, separate from literature studies, at the University of Ibadan,

Drama as literature and performance 63

Nigeria, a number of universities, at least in the anglophone African countries, experienced increased pressure to create distinct courses in ‘drama’ and ‘theatre’ studies. These pressures tended to come from recently created ministries of culture who were themselves giving expression to the rediscovery of the African personality, after the long years of colonial domination, through a revival of African culture; and also from the students themselves. Research into the culture was centred in the institutes of African studies, which a large number of universities set up under a variety of names, many of whom were able to support traditional performers and even whole performing companies.

The undergraduate curriculum was rigidly controlled in the early years of a new university by its founding university overseas. This was all right for those subjects whose content and methodology existed quite separately from whoever was studying them -such as medicine or engineering - but was less appropriate in the case of subjects whose content was related to the student - such as history - and quite disastrous in the case of those subjects which were creative and wholly dependent on the student: hne art, music, and drama or theatre. In the case of fine art and music there was no argument over their creative and practical character, only over the extent to which European techniques should be allowed to influence them. But drama and theatre encountered opposition straight away as to whether in fact, within the university curriculum, they were creative or practical at all. Wasn’t drama simply a part of the discipline of literary criticism? Wasn’t theatre to be studied historically? It was the usual argument over whether or not a university ought to, or even could, teach creativity but it was complicated by political pressures from governments on the universities to generate African creativity. The response of the universities has been muddled and often a compromise: a combination of theory and practice, often taught quite separately, a mixture of literary criticism, history of the theatre and some practical performance skills.

The influence of classical and European drama

The connection between the development of drama and theatre and educational syllabuses is extensive. On the one hand it stretches beyond the university through the whole system of secondary and primary schooling to basic literacy. On the other

hand it can predetermine the form and content of new creative work. Formal education is almost always seen as the key to personal advancement, and, where resources are limited, for economic or political reasons, it is competed for vigorously. A school syllabus can quite arbitrarily limit the extent of the study of drama because at a higher level of study it has not yet been defined. The course is geared towards a qualifying examination which has the effect of making the pupils studying it uncritical of its content. One result may be to divorce drama and theatre from the real cultural situation of the people and, in those societies where schools reinforce an elitist tendency, to make drama itself elitist. Another result is the perpetuation of uncomprehended, and therefore incomprehensible, information.

An example of the latter is the perpetuation in Africa of the analysis of a certain form of drama, tragedy, given by Aristotle, which I pointed out in Chapter 1. In writing about tragedy Aristotle was commenting on the texts of performances of Greek playwrights writing over a hundred years before Aristotle formulated his theory. He was not merely concerned to find a way to evaluate the ‘dramatic’ quality of these play-texts but to justify them as being socially corrective in performance. Those which could support his theory were analysed in detail; those which could not were either criticized or ignored. His theory of tragedy was ‘literary’ and schematic;^ it was part, a small and incomplete part, of his vast body of philosophical writings which in turn were part of a highly literate tradition of Greek thought which lay hidden in libraries while the Greek and Roman civilizations collapsed and Christianity and feudalism reorganized Europe. When the writing of the Greeks and the Romans came back into circulation in Europe, about 600 years ago, Europeans were interested in it as writings, as literature, and interest was awakened in play-texts as literature. In this context, Aristotle’s literary criticism, especially The Poetics, had considerable appeal.

There was, too, a feeling of cultural inferiority on the part of the Europeans in the face of the sophisticated and literary classical culture. Their response was to devise education systems based upon the surviving classical literature. Thus the influence of Aristotle, with his theory of tragedy, was perpetuated intellectually and at the expense of another sort of drama in England, namely the Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre which all strata of English society had helped to formulate.

Drama as literature and performance 65

Obviously cultural reactions to educational and social developments were more complex than a brief statement*like this would suggest. However, it serves to suggest two things. First, how Aristotle and the Greeks came to be part of syllabuses in African education systems, and, second, what their effect has been on the development of African drama. In the same way as the Europeans felt a sense of cultural inferiority when confronted with both a classical literature and a classical criticism with which to evaluate it, so also did African intellectuals accept initially the cultural implications of a foreign system of intellectual analysis through its educational structures. There is, however, a crucial difference between the two processes. The Europeans were not being colonized by the Greeks or the Romans when they came upon their culture. By that time the social formations of the Greek and Roman world had passed. But in Africa today, western colonialism and neo-colonialism has created a serious disjunction within the process of cultural development. Ruling elites criticize western acculturation whilst proceeding apace with it. This paradoxical situation serves to create a profound cultural uncertainty.

The influence of the Greeks on the development of African drama has been in two directions: (1) Greek plays have served as models for African plays; and (2) the theory of Aristotle has become a basis for dramatic criticism. An example of the former is the transposition by the Nigerian playwright, Ola Rotimi, of King Oedipus by the Greek playwright, Sophocles, into a play in a Yoruba setting (but in English) called The Gods are not to Blame. An example of the influence of Aristotle’s theory is the analysis by John Pepper Clark (a Nigerian critic and playwright) of the Ijg saga of Ozidi (which is extensively discussed later in this chapter).

In general, though, the main problem is that many African writers approach the Greek plays through Aristotle’s analysis of them, rather than responding to the text directly. The result is that the subsequent transposition into an African setting can frequently become socially prescriptive and mechanical, and not really a response to the actual social preoccupations of the audience. Almost without knowing it, the playwright finds himself using Aristotle’s theories to think about his own audience’s reactions; and this may be completely inappropriate.

Some African critics are aware of this, and desire a more intellectual response to Greek culture. Michael Echeruo, the

Nigerian critic and academic, makes the following suggestion in his essay on The Dramatic bimits of Igbo Ritual:

The Igbo should do what the Greeks did: expand ritual into life and give that life a secular base. That way we may be able to interpret and reinterpret that serious view of life which is now only dimly manifested in our festivals.2

In his support for the Greeks (and Aristotle) Echeruo seems to be suggesting that there should take place within the context of Igbo performance culture a process of turninginto literature, in the same way as the Greeks turned their oral and performance traditions into literature when they started to analyse in a written form the play-texts which had been written down. These play-texts had come to exist in the place of actual performances. We need to look at the process a bit more closely.

When Greek thinkers began to ponder the moral and social meaning of their legends and myths, they were actually seeking to expand the significance of their ancient traditional culture so as to reach a truth about their own contemporary social realities. In a similar way they began to question the moral and social purpose of recurrent and seasonal festivals. The dramatization of the myths and legends brings performance and the oral tradition together; and this dramatization becomes questioning and interpretative. This in turn leads to subtle changes in the myth or legend, and the emphases within it. The desire to give these performances at the festivals a semantic quality which is intellectualized and precise, requires that the new bits be written down, so that the ‘actors’ can learn it off exactly, word for word. That way there would be no confusion. There was no need to write down or record what was being used unchanged in the performance.

The written-out version of the play became the text for performance, and subsequently the text for literary analysis. The text was linguistically complete, though it lacked a record of all other elements of performance, such as a notation for the music, another type of notation for the choreography, and a description of the spectacle. It seems to me that this is the process to which Echeruo is referring: Igbo festivals should be used by Igbo thinkers as a basis for the generation of a literature.

The disappearance of traditional modes of performance

The Greek play-texts survived but the traditional performances

Drama as literature and performance 67

were forgotten. The texts survived the destruction of the societies in which they were generated, and they survived the passing of subsequent civilizations.

Why is this so? Why should a dance or a masquerade which is popular in conception and repeatedly performed be so easily lost, while a play-text which is the product of one mind and given only an occasional performance survive? If this is a general pattern of cultural development in civilizations, then we must expect masquerades like Egungun, dances like Nyau, story-telling like that of the Akan to disappear soon. On the other hand, the plays of, say, Wole Soyinka could outlast African society as we know it today and as we imagine it will become in distant centuries. Is it simply to do with the fact that one is written down and the other isn’t? If this were so then all that would be needed to preserve a masquerade or a dance would be some form of notation, a ‘score’. Indeed, today we can record such a performance on sound tape and film; but do we preserve the performance itself? Surely all we preserve is a record of the performance. The existence of a dance on film does not in any way guarantee that the dance will continue to be performed, while the existence of a play-text, in many instances, actually encourages subsequent performances, enabling that play-text to gather an aura of ‘greatness’ as it moves from one era to the next, contributing in the process to the establishment of a ‘great tradition’ in drama.

Performance is a social act. In an increasingly literate society live performances will continue to take place which attract enthusiastic and socially mixed audiences. This fact, however, does not guarantee that such performances will be approved of in the new social order. If performance is a social act, drama as literature becomes increasingly individualistic, as the society becomes more and more literate. This dramatic literature certainly does not have to be performed in order to find approval in the new social order. And by linking the development of drama with the education system through its various syllabuses, drama - even in live theatre performances - is likely to become less and less accessible to the ‘uneducated’ masses. Your reading this book on ‘African drama’ is an indication of how far this process has gone in contemporary Africa. In fact, the production of the book is a contradiction of what it is attempting to say.

It is ultimately impossible for you, the reader, to consider the relationship between performance and literature in the develop-

ment of African drama today, without taking into account your own contribution to the process.

Traditional performance into modern drama: a comparison between Ozidi and The Contest

The way forward at this point is, probably, to make a comparison between two play-texts (which have been published), both of which seek their inspiration in, and derive from, the traditional performing arts. In the process of making the comparison we will seek to evaluate the methodology by which we make the analysis of each play. The first play is Ozidi by John Pepper Clark. It was first published in 1966; and there has, subsequently, been quite a lot written about it. It exists primarily as a play-text, for there have been few performances of it so that little useful comment about it in performance can be made. However, and this is important, it is not to say that the play cannot be performed. I believe it can; but its analysis here will be literary criticism, that is, a close analysis of the text.

The second play is The Contest by Mukotani Rugyendo, a playwright who was born in Uganda but who now lives permanently in Tanzania. The Contest was first published in 1977 in a collection with two other plays by him in a volume called The Barbed Wire and other plays. It is not clear whether The Contest has ever been performed. However, it is impossible to analyse the text of this play as literature; it can only be evaluated in performance. This is one of the reasons for including it in the comparison; for I hope that at the end of the comparison the relationship between literature and performance will have been established not only in terms of the development of African drama but more specifically in terms of methodology for evaluating this drama.

Ozidi

Clark’s play derives from the traditional Ijg saga, or epic, centred on Orua in the Delta region of Nigeria where it is still told and enacted today. The saga has engaged Clark for most of his life. He first heard the story when he was 9 years old, a school-boy and far from home, narrated by a story-teller called Afoluwa, and it made a deep impression on him. Years later, after he had graduated from university and achieved various academic honours, he set

Drama as literature and performance 69

about rediscovering the story. Afoluwa had become a seaman on ships plying between Lagos and Liverpool, but when Clark finally tracked him down and got him to tell again the saga, to him and his friends in Lagos, it was a terrible disappointment. The man had forgotten it. He has subsequently disappeared without trace.

A much more successful attempt at getting the saga told in its entirety, with the intention of tape-recording it, took place in Ibadan. This time the story-teller was a man called Okabou, who, prompted by one Madame Yakubu, was able to tell the whole dramatized story - which traditionally took seven nights to relate - in the course of one long day and night. Okabou is now dead, but the whole saga as he told it was painstakingly transcribed, and the Ijg then translated more or less word for word into English. Clark published this in 1977 with the title The Ozidi Saga with his English translation alongside Okabou’s Ijg version of the epic. It is not to be confused with Clark’s own English language play, Ozidi, which we are presently going to consider, which was of course based on the saga.

Whilst making the Okabou transcriptions, Clark travelled with the film-maker Frank Speed, in 1964, to Orua, to make a film of a performance there of the Ozidi saga. It is important to note that the Ozidi saga exists, traditionally, in two forms: as a story narrated by a story-teller who assumes all the roles and who may or may not be accompanied by musicians; as a community performance, in Orua, in which certain members of the community take certain roles in the saga, according to tradition. What was filmed, therefore, in Orua was not the narration of the story but its enactment. The leading actor and organizer of the performance was Erivini. Clark comments that the linguistic quality of Erivini’s version was very thin - ‘although a fine performer, he had not the gift for w'ords’. The film was edited down to forty-five minutes and was issued under the title Tides of the Delta, in 1964. Erivini, too, is now dead.

There are also three long-playing records called Songs from the Ozidi Saga, released by emi for the Institute of African Studies, the University of Ibadan.

And, finally, there is Clark’s own play in English, Ozidi, published in 1966, which uses all the versions of the traditional saga. His involvement has been sustained for over thirty years, and reveals a two-fold commitment: first, to record the saga, and to preserve it, as accurately as possible, in its traditional narrative

and performance forms; second, to transform it into a modern work of art. v

How well has he succeeded in his first intention? He has made a record of the saga on cine film, on sound tape and on long-playing records, in written transcriptions of it in Ijg and translated into English. However, the means by which the various recordings were made were frequently inadequate - as Clark himself admits - both in a purely technical sense (the microphones were not sufficiently sensitive; there were not enough cameras) and in terms of the inevitable limitations of the actual media themselves, such as the need for the film to be as long as it is appropriate for a documentary film, rather than the actual length of the whole saga. Inevitably, some of the images photographed during the live performance in Orua were condensed or even discarded in the film. However, even if the recording were perfect, the experience of the saga for one outside the Ijg saga would be much less than for one who was a part of the tradition and familiar with its forms. It is perhaps in recognition of this ultimate limitation that Clark turned to a recreation of the saga in a contemporary English idiom.

To appreciate what he has done with the saga we would need to start with the basic story which I would summarize as follows:

A council of the warriors and elders of Orua gather together to select a new king - their previous kings having died almost as soon as appointed -and they choose an idiot, Temugedege, who is the elder brother of the all-powerful warrior Ozidi. It is the turn of Ozidi’s family to provide the king, and it ought to be Temugedege, because he is the elder. But he is an idiot, and Ozidi advises against this selection; his idiot brother accepts, and he is overruled. The warriors think that by this move they will retain their own power and autonomy, and they ignore King Temugedege whom they have created. When Ozidi insists on due recognition for his brother, the warriors band together and destroy Ozidi, and serve up his head to his idiot brother. Ozidi’s wife, Orea, is with child, and gives birth nine months later in the town of her mother, Oreame, who is a notable witch and an agent of Tamara, the ultimate godhead in that region, a female deity. Oreame rears the boy as an agent of vengeance, and turns him into a warrior full of strength and cunning, protected by very strong magic. He comes of age and learns his name: Ozidi. He returns to Orua with his mother and grandmother and slays his father’s murderers, one by one. However, this is not the end of it. He provokes further challenges, either deliberately or by virtue of his reputation; and seems unable to stop killing people. He even strikes down his grandmother, by whose power he thrives, by accident; but they have been forewarned of this eventuality