African Theater

I

Introduction

African Theater, traditional, historical, and contemporary dramatic forms in Africa south of the Sahara. Contemporary African theater ranges from sacred or ritual performances to dramatized storytelling, literary drama, or modern fusions of scripted theater with traditional performance techniques.

II

Traditional Drama

The diversity of performance traditions in Africa is a result of the huge spread of peoples and cultural traditions that form the cultural makeup of each country. National boundaries do not usually reflect traditional territories—in any one nation state there may be hundreds of different ethnic groupings and tribal languages. Many of these cultures have rich oral and ritual traditions, aspects of which have survived into contemporary society.

In the city of Oshogbo in Nigeria, the myth of the imprisonment of Obatala (the creator god) is performed annually. The Kalabari (Nigeria) perform the ikaki (tortoise) masquerade in which an entire village participates—-the European aesthetic divisions between dance, music, visual arts (in masks and costume), and dialogue, as well as the division between stage and auditorium, are not applicable in these performances. Traditional epics such as the Sunjatu of modern-day Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC, formerly Zaire) were performed by griots (bards), and praise singers dramatized the exploits of the Ancoli (Uganda) and Tswana (southern Africa) chiefs. The Alarinjo players are the first documented professional African theater troupe; they developed from the Egungun (ancestral spirit) masquerades and were performed from the 16th and 17th centuries in the Yoruba city-state of Oyo (Nigeria).

In recent decades, traditional performances have been used as a means of self-expression and empowerment by peoples facing hostile political or social circumstances. The Tiv (Nigeria) used traditional Kwang Hir puppetry to voice opposition to political victimization during the 1960s.

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III

Theater of the Colonial Period

The period of colonial domination in Africa was consolidated at the Berlin West Africa Conference of 1884 and 1885 when the European powers mapped out the division of Africa. Colonization led to the suppression and outlawing of many indigenous art forms, such as drumming and dancing. The colonial attempt to stifle indigenous African belief systems has been best dramatized by Nigeria’s foremost playwright and Nobel laureate, Wole Soyinka, in his play Death and the King’s Horseman (1975).

While Western missionaries sought to instill Christian values through biblical dramas and pageants (for instance the Roman Catholic Church’s vast medieval passion plays in Rwanda and Zaïre), Africans often adapted European dramatic forms to their own satirical or political purposes.

In 1915 the Ghanaian playwright Kobina Sekyi wrote The Blinkards, a full-length play that satirizes the Fante nouveaux riches of Cape Coast who “abjured the magic of being themselves” in favor of uncritical acceptance of European norms and values. Another Ghanaian, “Bob” Johnson, developed the concert-party performance tradition with the establishment of his troupe The Versatile Eight in 1922. Concert parties were characterized by long musical openings, stock domestic situations, and audience intervention. The form remains popular in French-speaking West Africa.

Known as the father of Nigerian theater, Hubert Ogunde founded the first Yoruba Opera traveling theater troupe in the 1930s. It performed biblical and later political dramas in urban areas; plays such as Strike and Hunger (1945) and Bread and Bullets (1951) took issue with colonial exploitation. This form became immensely popular and was employed by dramatists Kola Ogunmola and Duro Lapido in the 1950s. It was eventually incorporated into television drama.

African plays were produced in indigenous and European languages from the 1880s onward. The early years of British colonial education in South Africa involved the encouragement of European-style literary and theatrical activities by educated black men. Playwrights such as Esau Mthethwa wrote social satires about local life in the Zulu and Xhosa languages. In the 1920s teachers and pupils collaborated in devised theatrical productions at Marionhill School in South Africa while the William Ponty School (founded 1933) in Dakar, Senegal, encouraged the research and production of plays based on traditions of the pupils’ own communities.

IV

Theater of the Independence Period

The period after World War II ended in 1945 led to the struggle for and achievement of independence in many African countries. The new nation-states were often established along colonial boundaries and power was handed over to a bourgeois class who had been educated in Europe. The epoch-making era of nationalism produced a number of African playwrights who merged African theatrical traditions with European forms. These plays are still widely performed and read in many parts of the continent.

Nigerian playwright Wole Soyinka wrote his first plays in the late 1950s. Soyinka’s versatility can be seen in his prodigious output of plays from 1957 on. A Dance of the Forests was written for the Independence Day celebrations in Africa in 1960. It was officially banned for its veiled prophecy of internecine conflict. The Lion and the Jewel (1959) is a witty comedy set in rural Nigeria, while The Road (1965) explores the mystical connections between Yoruba and Christian religions. The Universities of Ibadan and Ife fostered a generation of playwrights, including John Pepper Clark, who was the first to make explicit connections between Greek tragedy and African ritual in Song of a Goat (1963), and Ola Rotimi, who dramatized a Yoruba version of the Oedipus myth called The Gods Are Not to Blame (1968).

In some countries independence spawned efforts towards radical social reform into which playwrights were (and still are) sometimes co-opted. In others, the new regimes soon inspired playwrights to use theater as a vehicle for political opposition and in some cases mobilization. Ghanaian playwright Efua Sutherland was associated with the socially reformist government of Kwame Nkrumah. She founded the Ghana Drama Studio and modernized the traditional form of Anansesem (spider stories) as a form of Everyman in Foriwa (1962) and the Marriage of Anansewa (1975). Her political leanings were followed by two other important Ghanaian playwrights, Joe de Graaft and Ama Ata Aidoo.

Raymond Sarif Easmon of Sierra Leone scathingly attacks ethnic prejudice and power mongering in his play The New Patriots (1966). Ugandan playwrights Robert Serumaga (A Play, 1967) and Byron Kawadwa sought symbolic, mythical, and abstract forms in which to express their opposition to the regimes of Milton Obote and Idi Amin. Serumaga founded the first professional theater group in Uganda and achieved international success with his play Renga Moi (1972). Contemporary Ugandan dramatists such as Alex Mukulu continue in this political “art theater” tradition.

The 1950s was a period of relative cultural freedom in South Africa and a number of successful collaborations between black and white artists and producers took place. White South African playwright Athol Fugard founded The Rehearsal Room, where he worked with a number of black intellectuals—including Bloke Modisane, Lewis Nkosi, and Nat Nakasa—on No Good Friday (1958) and King Kong (1961). The Union of South African Artists founded by Es’ kia Mphahlele produced both these plays.

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