African Drama, West and South Author(s): Robert E. McDowell Reviewed work(s): Source: Africa Today, Vol.

15, No. 4, Realism and Romanticism in African Literature (Aug. Sep., 1968), pp. 25-28 Published by: Indiana University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4184936 . Accessed: 18/12/2011 09:16
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African

Drama,

West

and

South

Robert E. McDowell In "Toward a New African Theatre" (Home and Exile, Longmans, 1965) Lewis Nkosi expresses his bold views on the moribund state of modern
theatre. In theaters today ". . . a significant

amount of talk is heard about insignificant banalities of existence." The stage has, above all, ceased being theatrical; it has lost the old "magic," and ". . . now aspires to nothing more than a small place in the mean grubby corner of a cheap realin "the large gesture." For anyone who has seen African dramas performed, Nkosi's remarks serve as a forceful apologia for the best of African theater, and for the quality of imagination displayed by the best playwrights creating for Africa today. The sort of theatricality which satisfies Nkosi's demands is most readily observed in the works of Wole Soyinka of Nigeria. Soyinka, who objects fiercely to "anthropological data"-topless dancers, flashy costumes, a n d exotica-for-the-sake-of-exoticadoes, nevertheless, make use of fascinating devices in his own expressionistic plays: dancing, singing, miming, speeches in verse, flashbacks (sometimes covering eons of time), and characters from the spirit world. He employs techniques familiar at Nigerian festivals, and utilizes any poetic methods which enforce the emotional and intellectual impact of his dramas; in short, he has no slavish attachment to the merely naturalistic level of presentation.'
Soyinka-Beyond Negritude ism . . ." It fails to involve the whole community

years absence severed all understanding between reEman and his father. A play-within-the-play veals that Eman's father is one of the "strong breed" who performs the awesome physical feat of carrying the boat to the water for the tribe. Eman begins to understand his father's behavior (the flashback scenes are really comparable to a rapid association of events in Eman's mind), and, caught in the cruelty of the carrier ceremony, Eman comes to understand what strength really is. While Eman's father is a reasonably sympathetic figure, Jaguna and Oroge, who lead the hunt for the idiot boy, and end in using Eman in the ritual, are not: they represent a blind faith in the abstract value of superstitious ceremony. The behavior of these men, along with the alien Ifada, the Girl, roles of the social misfits-Eman, and Sunma-are grounds for indictment of any society. But if the play attacks servile attendance on unexamined rituals which lead to suffering, it also sugge6ts that man cannot ignore the past. As Eman's father declares, Your own blood will betray you son, because you cannot hold it back . . . You will use your strength among thieves . . . They will even lack the knowledge to use it wisely. Eman, indeed, lives out a cruel parody of the ritual he refused earlier to take over from his father. Ambivalent Respect for Thhigs Past What is the sum of the action? As usual, the Soyinka play is marked by ambivalence; but unwe learn of the complexity of questionably choosing, of the great difficulty in aligning our lives in relation to the past which impinges on our present, of the senseless waste in systems which find more benefit in theological abstractions than in concrete demonstrations of humane behavior. In strong contrast to the gloom of this plav is the rich comedy of "The Lion and the Jewel." Yet several things in the action remind us that we are once more dealing with Soyinka. Again the present matters most. And the Prufrockian schoolmaster, Lakunle, reminds us of the intellectualized Eman. While Lakunle fiddles, old Baroka the Bale burns for the pleasures of the beautiful Sidi. In an ingenious ruse, Baroka tricks Sidi into making love with him; when afterwards. Lakunle suggests that he will marry the "ruined" girl (his ultra-modern views on marriage), Sidi replies, Why, did you think that after him, I could endure the touch of another man? I who have felt the strength, The perpetual youthful zest Of the panther of the trees? . .. Out of my way, book-nourishedshrimp. Once again the over-cerebral mind has been
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Soyinka is a satiric playwright, not given to optimism. He is resolutely irresolute, as Martin Tucker argues in Africa in Modern Literature (Ungar, 1967), and seems always to be exploring a vast pattern of possibilities, knowing that there are no facile answers. He opp-osesrural and urban views, traditional values and intellectualized "modern" attitudes, past modes of existence and present life; but his conflicts are not solely the problems of Nigerians, for Soyinka is caught up in the infinite possibilities of the mind, and thus his writing touches the lives of all men. In "The Strong Breed" (Soyinka, Five Plays, Oxford, 1964), we readily observe how masterfully Soyinka fuses these social concerns with a dramatic technique. Eman, a not overly-welcome stranger, is serving as a teacher in a village. Ironically, by trying to save the grotesque boy Ifada from becoming the unwilling tool of a scapegoat ritual, Eman himself ends as the "carrier" of the community's sins. Other evils in the old system caused Eman earlier to turn his back on his home village; this we learn as Soyinka explains through flashback action how Eman became too intellectualized to participate in the rituals of his own community, and how twelve
AFRICA TODAY

denied a victory. Rather it is the more primitive mind, the vitality and the imagination of the old rnan which has triumphed. (One has a nearly identical reaction to Baroka's wily charms that he has to the cleverness of Soyinka's Brother Jero, the beach preacher in "The Trials of Brother Jero." The interesting machinery of these two plays, such, for instance as the miming in "The, Lion and the Jewel" and the play-within-the play of "The Strong Breed," are much in evidence, along wvith song, dance, and other spectacle, in Soyinka's most famous production, "A Dance of the Forests," a complex and often puzzling play. Most interesting here is Soyinka's reaching back to the dead court of Mata Kharibu and the satire on the impulse men have toward stuffing their ancestors. As its mvriad characters develop, we are convinced that man is unchanged over the generations. "A Dance of the Forests" attacks a blind reverence for things past, primarily through the depiction of Adenebi the political figure, Rola the whore, and Demoke the artist-carver. Instead of a grandeur called to mind by the name Chaka, or greatness suggested by the old nations of Songhai and Mali, the play exposes the same hideous sins demonstrated by the historical counterparts of these three contemporary figures. The "dead" characters, along with the living, display propensities toward violence, insensitivity, insincerity, cruelty, lust for power, hypocrisy, superstition. In light of the play's depraved action, the Forest Head, near the end, declares, Nothing is ever altered. My secret is my eternal burden---to pierce the encrustations of soul-deadening habit, and bare the mirror of original nakedness-knowing full well, it is all futilitV. Little wonder that "A Dance of the Forests" created a furor when it was produced at the Nigerian independence celebration, for Soyinka here, as elsewhere, is anti-conservative, anti-N6gritude, anti-romantic. anti-"soul-deadening habit." And vet, all this from a playwright who sometimes depicts the old humanity as superior to the new, native cunning as superior to the "educated" mentalitv, and the fathers stronger and surer of themselves than their sons! Soyinka poses a nagging, quLestioni:what qualities will serve best for the future? But the playwright does not answer this directly-indeed, no man could. The sum of his mythologv, then, is a deliberate ambivalence, a hig,hly-designed paradigm of possibilities. To say the least, Soyinka has managed to transcend the well-worn themes of anti-colonialism---all of his dramas are set in the rural scene devoid of white men. It is a curious paradox: here is the Nigyerian writer most concerned with purely African characters, yet the one who has most consistently escaped the limits of Negritude to deal with broad human values. Perhaps no other African writer succeeds so well in forcing the African to look hard at himself. Outsiders Hutchinson-.Condemned Alfred Hutchinson's "The Rain-Killers"l (Univ. o)f London. 1964) is a brilliant drama, reminiscent of the movring action of Soyinka's "The Strong Breed" (and, interestingly enough, of Wtilliam
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Faulkner's "Dry September"). Like Soyinka, Hutchinson commands a rich array of theatrical devices which are integral to the meaning of his play: lamentations, prayer meetings, animistic divining rituals, a chous, drumming, and dancing. Like all of Soyinka's plays, Hutchinson's has a rural setting-a village on a Swazi reserve--and revolves around primitive belief in the efficacy of a scapegoat ceremony. Mapule, a Mosotho girl visiting the community, and Mfundisi, a preacher who has resided only five years among the Swazi, are the two outsiders. While the most hysterical in the community hold that Mapule is responsible for bewitching them (and for killing the little boy and and the rain), Mfundisi comes to believe that his spiritual dryness, symbolized for him in his attraction to the beautiful Mapule (he is a great deal like the over-religious evangelist in Somerset Maugham's "Rain"), is tied up with the parched condition of the blasted land: The drought persists and it is evil deeds like mine that have brought God's wrath on us. I am a rain-killer. As the play rises to i ts shrieking climax, Mfundisi thus takes the sins of the community on himself, first engaging in a public confession, then hanging himself. The pressure of residual belief in witchcraft, and in the power of the mad witch doctor, Maziya, causes even Mfundisi to revert to a superstitious outlook: Perhaps I'm bewitched, for the drufs are playing at Maziya'sagain . . . And later, "I'm the witch. Me!" Logically enough, for the evolution of events in the play, rain does come. Except for the voice of Gran Shongwe at the end, the drama terminates in just one more crushing victory for irration ality: MA-HLOPE It's Maziya'srain. He defeated the rain-killers. MA-NKOSI You're wro n g, Ma-Hlope. It's Mfundisi'srain. He prayed for it. MAPULE It's God's rain, Ma-Nkosi. What does it matter? It's raining. GRAN Come, Mapule,we're getting wet. The s i m i I a r i t y of "The Rain-Killers" to Soyinka's "The Strong Breed" is quite marked. It is the "intellectual" outsider who takes the brunt of cruelty in the community; once again it is a man whose modern antipathy to the brutality of ancient rituals actually draws him into participation as the central figure of a scapegoat drama. And Gran Shongwe, exactly like Soyinka's Forest Head makes a sobering evaluation on the entire action: But nothing in the htuman soul dies. Things change but people are really always the same. A great deal of talk about the white man being responsible for the black condition is bandied about in Hutchinson's play; further, the plight of these reserve dwellers is seen as exa<ggerated by the absentee fathers who work in the mines. All this talk is a part of Hutchinson's attempt to turn the Africans to a mirror, just as Soyinka does. Mfundisi is most vocal in this regard, as he harrangues the crowd about their blind faith in the past, about their refusal

to be rational about the reality of their condition: You are hunting out witches! You are back in
the past! . . . And why is this scape-goat Mapule?

I'll tell you: because she's a foreigner. He then turns to the Chorus; proclaiming that they and he are the real witches, the real corrupters of their children. Hutchinson's play in general, and this last scene in particular, show a rare instance of a striking similarity between literary concerns in West and South Africa-the condemnation by playwrights of people who try to avoid present realities, present responsibilities. South Africans have for the most part spent all their literary energies damning their white oppressors and depicting blacks who are simply trying to join the march of the present. Nkosi-The Large Gesture In connection with "The Rain-Killers" and also in regard to Lewis Nkosi's criticism of modern drama, it is fitting to scrutinize Nkosi's own work, "The Rhythm of Violence" (Oxford, 1964). This second South African is as good as his own critical dicta, for his play is everything that sterile drawing-room drama is not. "The Rhythm of Violence" deals, admittedly, with the usual South African subject matter-racial hatred-but it hardly treats it in a stilted fashion. Most of its scenes depict young liberal South Africans of all races mingling intimately with one another, including some revolutionaries who have hidden a bomb in Johannesburg City Hall. A young black boy, Tula, is killed by the explosion when he rushes from the youth center to save the father of Sarie, a white girl. Uninhibited dialogue makes this a vigorous play: we hear the brutal tones of Afrikaner policemen, the debate of conscience among the revolutionaries over the efficacy of violence, and we hear the utter contempt of the youngster for any aspect of the barnacled establishment-political parties, the church, etc. As with Hutchinson's and Soyinka's plays, there is great vitality in "The Rhythm of Violence," and it has a resultant ability to captivate an audience. The quality of its appeal is largely explained in terms of Nkosi's technique (for the South African theme is familiar enough to us by now). The frightful ticking of the bomb seems to hang over the action reminding the watchers that time is all in a rush for South Africans. Throughout the drama, Nkosi utilizes j a z z rhythms to blend with or to pace the action-and thus the music becomes inevitably a part of the play's meaning. Further, the playwright incorporates into his production a kind of chorus (the mob at the African political rally), funeral drumming. dancing, a satire on a gospel meeting, sirens, flashing lights, sounds of explosions, and most fascinating, some dream-like sequences, played with trance-like rhythmic movements, suggesting that the-e people (even if in some cases subconsciouylv) all yearn for some other, better state of reality. Nkosi succeeds in weaving all this theatricality- aily e into the rhythm of the youthful lives he is portraying, so that everything blends into one total experience. His medium is his message. Clark-Unfair Punishment A man more heralded
AFRICA TODAY

either Hutchinson or Nkosi is Nigeria's J. P. Clark, well-known for his plays "Song of a Goat," "The Masquerade," "The Raft" (Three Plays, Oxford, 1964), and his long production, "Ozidi" (Oxford, 1966), the latter based on the Ijaw saga of Ozidi and "told- in seven days to dance, music and mime." Of these works, the first two are Clark's best. They are pastorals of pathos in which the central characters die. In "Song of a Goat" Tonye impregnates his brother's wife, Ebiere. This union comes about primarily at the urging of the Masseur who plays the role of "family doctor, the confessor and oracle" to Ebiere. Nearly all of the Masseur's speeches act to stir desire, as for instance this speech to the impotent husband: She has waited too long already, Too long in harmattan.The rains Are here once more and the forest getting Moist. Soon the earth will put on her green Skirt, the wind fanning her cheeks flushed From the new dawn. Will you let the woman Wait still when all the world is astir With seed and heady from flow of sap? Such comments by the Masseur agitate all the principal characters, and consequently Ebiere's desire overpowers Tonye. After the act is known, Tonye hangs himself and Ebiere miscarries. The grief-stricken husband, Zifa, walks into the sea and drowns. This same purging through death takes place in "The Masquerade," a sequel to "Song of a Goat." Tufa, a stranger in the village, has arranged to marry the beautiful Titi. But when it becomes known that Tufa is the offspring of Tonye and Ebiere (obviously Clark did not devise, these connecting plays at the same time, for

I~

~~~ft

/s

as playwright

than
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he has altered the original story, having a child result from the union, rather than a miscarriage), Titi's father, Diribi, imediately assumes that he must "cleanse the stream of corruption," and proceeds to murder the two young people. Ironically, Tufa himself has been ignorant of his parentage until the villagers inform him that he was
Born of woman to brother and for whom brother Drove brother to terrible death . . . Like the three playwrights discussed above, Clark commands an impressive theatricality: verse, song, drums, musical instruments, fights, a chorus, rituals, laments. Most of all, Clark is ilyrical-he has verse to burn. And strangely enough this is what seems to impede the effectiveness of his work as drama. His dramatic intelligence seems not to match his poetic powers. (No matter what Clark writes, he seems always to be the poet; on the other hand, no matter what Soyinka writes, whether poems, novels, or plays, he is everything and always the playwright.) As Anthony Astrachan has phrased it, Clark's ". protagonists are victims of punishment without cause, or punishment beyond their deserts,

whether from society, gods or nature."2Especially in "The Masquerade" where Tufa is ignorant of his incestuous ancestry, where the deaths are the result of his blood ties rather than anything Tufa does, one can only assume that Clark is attacking Tufa's destroyers. What, in short, these

two plays appear to represent is characters who deviate from the societal code or who are ignorant of it. If they are read in this way, "Song of a Goat" certainly comes closer to a meaningful experience than "The Masquerade" does-for in the first play the characters are not passive recipients of a tragic end, but rather, they participate in their fate. Clark actually c o m e s close in "Song of a Goat" to having something in common with Africa's best playwrights, in the universal concern with men struggling in their society. It is particularly interesting that Clark's Tufa, Soyinka's Eman, and Hutchinson's Mfundisi are all "unitiated" outsiders and thus characters who would understandably arouse the indignation of the conformists in a comunity. One should include in this Nkosi's urban young rebels who are also outside their society; they too conflict with the social code and suffer because of it. Perhaps the most noteworthy difference between the other three playwrights and Clark is his lack of interest in the change from older ways to modern ones. Their explicit concern over the agony of transition, involving as it does the "whole community", lends an added dimension to the work of Soyinka, Nkosi, and Hutchinson.
1. See article by John Povey, ian Drama" in Tri-Quarterly, 2. Anthony Astrachan, "Three Black Orpheus, No. 16. "Wole Soyinka No. 5. Plays by John and the NigerPepper Clark,"

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