African Theater in Postcolonial Politics - Essay Example

African Theater in Postcolonial Politics African theater is divided into three groups d after the different periods in the continent’s politicalhistory: pre-colonial; colonial, and; post-colonial which is also called anti-colonial. Although the categories were largely affected by the periods they were named after, they oftentimes overlap because performances which thrived in one period were often carried over to the next, like for example; indigenous performances which continued to thrive even after colonization. The African theater in the pre-colonial period, or that part of Africa’s history before European countries invaded it and subjugated African nations as colonies, was little known largely because Africans merely improvised their performances without written scripts. Most information of African theater during this time can be gleaned only from the accounts of traders and missionaries and researches of them by scholars. It is not surprising that during the colonial period, the African theater was dominated by European performers who enacted their country’s own classic texts and who made schoolchildren perform them in schools. It was during the post-colonial period, in the 1960s for many African countries and in the 1990s by South Africa, that the African theater was wrested back by the Africans. However, all throughout the different periods and the different categories of African theater, one theme has always prevailed: African theater did not only serve the purpose of entertainment but had been the focal point which sustained African communities as performances were the reenactment of the villages’ ethos of the time. In the pre-colonial times, performances were an enactment of the superstitious beliefs of villages, i.e. driving away an evil spirit from the village, and in the post-colonial era, performances were staged first, as a protest against their colonizers and second, when they finally gained independence, as “critical watchdog” of their new governments.1 African Theater has always been ritualistic and today, traces of the ritualistic aspects still remain in the postcolonial theater. Rituals in “celebration of birth, marriage, puberty, planting, and harvesting, its epic story-telling tradition of praising heroic and communal achievements, and its visual and auditory spectacle provided by dance and music” are enacted on stage making African theater largely functional. It is said that theaters in general are rooted in ritual, seasonal rhythms, religion and communication but the great distinction between European theater and African theater is that while the former is so distant from its functional roots that it is almost unaware of it, African theater continues to be directly and immediately related to these roots.2 Postcolonial African theater is presently engage in the search for its own theatrical traditions and besides looking up to European theatrical models, what currently emerging are improvised performances that touch on domestic concerns that mix comedy with seriousness accompanied by music and dance. This is reflected in the likes of the Hausa play Wasan Kwaikwayo from Niger, the Worker Plays of South Africa, and the Trios from Ghana – all of which are improvised skits. The use of masks and theater involvement, elements which characterized pre-colonial theater performances enhance these contemporary postcolonial plays.3 Thus, indigenous African theater forms part and parcel of postcolonial African theater, indigenous being characterized as having “a limited time-span, a beginning and an end, a place and an occasion of performance, a set of performers and an audience.”4 Scripted plays which adhere to the European models and are often the subject of research by contemporary scholars do not usually reflect the richness and variety of African theater which involves its audience interactively in performances.5 Thus, while African theater is relatively unknown in such places as the United States, theater is the most popular medium for story-telling that contains social and spiritual relevance to the local audience in Africa. This obscurity can also be attributed to the fact that, aside from the usual lack of scripts, African theater rarely travels outside of Africa largely because it is an art form that is based on time and embodied enactment. So while audiences in America may have heard of such African groups as Ladysmith Black Mambazo, a choral group which made an appearance in Paul Simon’s Graceland album, they may have less recognition of Wole Soyinka who is a Nobel Prize playwright winner from Nigeria.6 The works of Wole Soyinka are characterized by a curious mixture of African traditions and contemporary theater. There is an ongoing disagreement among scholars as to whether Soyinka is a satirist or a tragedian, a Yoruba traditionalist, a romantic individualist or a modernist whose works largely attracts the foreign bourgeoisie.7 Soyinka’s seeming chameleonic influences are not really surprising considering that he was born in Yoruba, Nigeria, an area located in West Africa which was heavily colonized by Europe until the 1960s. As previously discussed Europeans during the colonization period took over the African theater substituting African theatrical tradition with texts from their own countries. In addition, Soyinka received his education from the West, graduating with honors from a London university where he also worked as a play reader in a London theater.8 Yet despite his western education, the traditional African theater is always present in his works and is so melded with the contemporary aspect that the distinction between the two is blurred, forming a whole where the traditional becomes inseparable with the contemporary and the entire effect is an eclectic work with a character entirely its own. A case in point is Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman, a play considered by many to be his best and was based on a true account which happened in 1946 although Soyinka made alterations to a lot of the details. The Death and the King’s Horseman revolves around the character of Elesin, who holds the position of being the horseman of his king’s tribe. As per the tradition in their locality, a king’s horseman has to commit suicide if the king dies. The place’s belief is that the horseman has to prepare the way for the king in the afterlife and if the horseman fails to do this, then the king is left wandering around without peace and worse, bring harm to the Yoruba people. Elesin however, has second thoughts about taking his own life because he is very much attached to worldly things – women, good food and all the good things that life can offer. To make matters worse, Mr. Pilkings of the British authorities signified his disapproval of the ritualistic suicide as against British law. This development put the tribe in a state of worry and panic, as they believed that the consequences of the failure of the horseman to go after the king in the afterlife will jeopardize the existence of the tribe itself. The tribe took it out on Elesin as much as they regarded Pilkin’s interference as blameworthy because they saw felt Elsin was not really keen on complying with his obligation due to the fact that he seemed to be too attached with mundane things. It was therefore Olunde, son of Elesin, who took it upon himself to commit suicide on behalf of his father to redeem the family’s honor and put the king’s spirit at peace. Olunde studied medicine in Europe and seeing the state of things in Yoruba and his family’s disrepute owing to his father’s inability to go through the ritualistic suicide, sacrificed his own life. Unable to bear the thought that his own son took his own life to save him, Elsin took his own life in the end.9 The play, which like most Soyinka’s plays is an object of extensive debates and commentaries, consists of five acts. The First Act is a brilliantly lyrical and witnesses Elesin meandering, with his praise-singer, in the market where, he says, he intended to do his ritualistic suicide. He is very much at home in the place because of the presence of many women, whom he loves. He urges the mother of the market Iyaloja to marry off his daughter-in-law to him and finally succeeds but with a warning from the latter that his failure to comply with his obligation to commit suicide after the marriage is going to offset the state of things in the tribe. The Second Act is characteristically comic as Simon Pilkings, the British Administrator, and his wife Jane put on costumes confiscated from the Yorubas in preparation for a costume ball where the British prince is expected to make a surprise appearance. As they were preparing to depart for the ball they heard the calls of drums whose message they cannot yet unravel. Pilkings then sent his aide Amusa to depart ahead and investigate the matter. In the Third Act, Amusa, the Muslim subaltern officer, accompanied by British soldiers investigate the drum calls in the market nbut were being stalled by the market women. Elesin is still in the bridal room but he is expected to pursue with the ritualistic suicide shortly after the marriage. To stall the men, the women mimics the British soldiers and makes fun of Amusa and calls him a non-man and inferior to Elesin. The act closes with Elesin under the trance of the drums and the praise-singer’s chants as he is being prepared for the ritualistic suicide. The Fourth Act starts off in the palace where the British Administrator and his wife are attending the party. It is here where he learns that Elsin was taken into custody. Olunde, Elesin’s son appears for the first time. It is revealed that he has learned of the king’s death and he came home for the purpose of burying his father’s body anticipating that the latter would have committed suicide already to accompany the king in the afterlife. Olunde and Jane exchanges verbal tussle over the implications of ‘civilization’ and ‘primitivism.’ Finally, the soldiers drag Elesin into the scene. The Fifth and final Act, the tragic ending to the play, is a scene in the prison house where Elesin is being held with his young wife. Iyaloja makes a visit and delivers to him a mysterious package which turns out to be the body of his son Olunde who killed himself to redeem the family honor by substituting himself for his father in complying with the ritualistic obligation. When Elesin sees his son’s body, he strangles himself to death. 10 The play, according to many commentators should be viewed from a metaphysical rather than from a social or historical point of view. According to Katrak, the play is most concerned with the dramatization of the fear of death, a common fear by all people of whatever socioeconomic status or nationality and Soyinka’s aim is not to bring back the past for nostalgic reasons but to make it contemporary to the present.11 However, although the play seemed fashioned after the tragic Shakespearean plays and the tragic hero in the character of Elesin can be made parallel to tragic heroes as Oedipus and Hamlet, yet the play, which is distinctively and authentically African in its values, is not about individual loss but the “communal Yoruba values by which Elesin is found wanting, and condemned.” On the basis of this underlying theme, Elesin is not a tragic hero because he is compelled to renounce his own life to comply with his traditional obligation but he is one because he must be rejected unequivocally because his selfishness had made him unable to fulfill with his duty in accordance with the Yoruba traditions. In this sense, Soyinka has crafted a play that although conformed to the element essential in tragic plays yet at the same time rejected the ideology and aesthetics upon which norms of tragic plays are built. In this sense, Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman is authentically African and uniquely un-Western.12 A point of contention here is Olunde’s role in the play. It is largely questionable that a person as highly educated as Olunde will succumb to traditional beliefs where the taking of one’s life is important to comply with an afterlife obligation. The fact that Olunde studies medicine in a western country makes the question more striking especially that the study is concerned most with the preservation of life. Writer Brian Last justifies Olunde’s final act by declaring that the act should not be taken categorically or realistically but rather metaphysically: The problem arises as to whether an educated intellectual at the time would behave like this, but the argument fades into the background on consideration of the world of the play: it has a metaphysical design, not a realistic one. It may be that this did not happen in fact, but it happened psychologically, subconsciously, spiritually.13 It would seem that Olunde’s taking of his own life is a metaphor of self-sacrifice. It is symbolic of the self-sacrifice that African should make, as the Praise-singer say, “to maintain the integrity of the civilization at a crucial point in history.” The death of Olunde in his own hands symbolizes the desire and the hope of the African people for the continuity and the regeneration of their society.14 In this sense, Soyinka is true to the ideals of the African theater. Although the play is superficially steeped in the western convention of tragic plays, it never left the traditional indigenous African theater conventions where performances always reflect local concerns, traditions and superstitions. Olunde’s character also parallels Soyinka’s own: both are natives of the Yoruba nation; both are highly educated in western countries, and; yet, even with such westernized and modern education, both still conform to their tribe’s beliefs and customs. Much of the commentators’ views of the Soyinka play are influenced by the latter’s foreword to his own play which states to the effect that the would-be producers to the play should take heed that any future production of the play should not make the error of interpreting it in a reductionist manner where emphasis is placed on the clash of cultures between the west and the African, warning that the cultural color is merely incidental that was used to move the play forward but not central to it. What is far more of import to the play, is the fact of the balance between Elesin and the Yoruba perspective of the living, the dead and the unborn. The Europeans and the Africans are not of equal importance in the play but rather the “abyss of transition” of the Yoruba and Elesin’s failure to go through it, yet Soyinka also negated the uniqueness of the African culture in the play: Nothing in these essays suggests a uniqueness of the African world. man exists, however, in a comprehensive world of myth, history and mores; in such a total context, the African world like any other world is unique. It possesses, however, in common with other cultures, the virtues of complementarity. 15 Conclusion Although African theater is divided into three categories namely pre-colonial period, colonial period and post-colonial periods, these categories overlap with each other. The post colonial African theater, for example, which is the contemporary African theater, continues to exhibit the traditional and customary elements of the pre-colonial African theater notably the use of masks, the involvement of the audience and the use of themes which are close and related to local events. Pre-colonial African theater was mostly a celebration of births, deaths and other events happening in the community. It was also used as a vehicle with which the community enacted their superstitious beliefs like the driving away of evil spirits from the village. Post-colonial African theater, which had been influenced not only by the previously colonial stage where Europeans brought in their texts from their own country and staged them locally and had them staged in schools as well as the influences from modern western theater, continues to show traces of the origins of pre-colonial African theater. However, pre-colonial and post-colonial African performances were and are largely extemporaneous, improvised and unscripted which account for the fact that African plays are relatively unknown in such places as America. In addition, not much of contemporary and post-colonial African theater has been brought out of the continent. Wole Soyinka’s plays however, notably Death and the King’s Horseman, have received critical acclaim worldwide even garnering for the author a Nobel Prize in Literature in 1986, the first Black African to have been awarded with the much coveted and distinguished honor. Surprisingly but astutely, Soyinka, who is a Nigerian educated in London and a product of London theaters having worked as a play reader in one of the London theaters, is able to meld western style of theater with the traditional African theatrical style and came out with a distinctive and unique contemporary approach which can only be called African. While adopting the conventions of western theater, Soyinka at the same tine downplayed it by rejecting the very elements which characterized these conventions and substituting the unique African traditional play. In the Death and the King’s Horseman, for example, the tragic hero while superficially resembling the Oedipuses and the Hamlets of the western Shakespearian plays in his internal pathos and angst, was in a situation uniquely common to African culture only in the sense that his was not of the individual loss type but of the inability to be a part of the ‘transition abyss’ of his village. The tragedy of the play does not center on the internal conflict of the hero but rather on the fact that such a hero is a weakling as he does not have the guts to pursue self-sacrifice for the benefit, rightly or wrongly, of his tribe. References: Booth, James ‘Self-Sacrifice and Human Sacrifice in Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman’ Research on Wole Soyinka 1993 by James Gibbs, Bernth Lindfors, Africa World Press. Cole, Catherine ‘When is African Theater “Black”?’ Black Cultural Traffic: Crossroads in Global Performance and Popular Culture 2005 by Harry Justin Elam, Kennell A. Jackson, University of Michigan Press. Julien, Eileen ‘When A Man Loves a Woman: Gender and National Identity in Wole Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman and Mariama Ba’s Scarlet Song’ Africa After Gender? 2007 by Catherine M. Cole, Takyiwaa Manuh, Stephan Miescher, Indiana University Press. McLuckie, Craig 2004, Structural Coherence of Wole Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman, 7 January 2009 http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3709/is_200404/ai_n9344965/pg_1?tag=artBody;col1 Osnes, Beth & Gilll, Sam 2001, Acting: An International Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO Scott, Joyce Hope 2003, ‘Theater as Pedagogical Site in Post-Colonial Africa: Theatre de la Fraternite of Burkina Faso’ Camel Tracks: Critical Perspectives on Sahelian Literatures by Debra Boyd-Buggs & Joyce Hope Scott, Africa World Press. Sirayi, Mao ‘Indigenous African Theater in South Africa’, Pre-Colonial and Post-Colonial Drama and Theater in Africa, 2001 by Losamba Lokangaka & Devi Sarinjeive, New Africa Books. Soyinka, Wole 2002, Death and King’s Horseman, Norton. Whitaker, Thomas R. 1999, ‘Soyinka’s Road to the Abyss’ Mirrors of Our Playing: Paradigms and Presences in Modern Drama, University of Michigan Press. Read More