hey there I'm Mike Rugnetta this is
crash course in theater and today we're
going to Africa
now Africa as you are probably aware is
a big continent it's like 20% of the
world's land mass it's made up of fifty
some nations that is a lot of theatrical
tradition can we cover all of it in one
episode absolutely not but we'll try to
briefly give you some sense of the range
of traditions and practices while
focusing more closely on the influential
Nigerian playwright wale soyinka what's
that well Yorick tells me that Soyinka a
Nobel Prize winner is still with us
we are talking about living writers
lights up and skulls up
[Music]
before we get going for real let's talk
for a minute about methodology here in
America we don't discuss African theatre
history a lot maybe it's because we
spend too much time on that bald eagle
Elizabethan dude in his rock and
pentameter or maybe it's because in the
pre-colonial period there were 800
spoken african languages but not many
written african languages so not a lot
in the way of written literary tradition
or performance documentation survives
it's also because when colonizers came
to Africa they kibosh t' a lot of native
performance culture colonizers ruined
things to put it lightly though
sometimes african artists responded by
creating plays that explicitly mocked
their colonial oppressors fare and a
perfect use for theater this is all to
say that we wish we knew more and talked
more both here specifically and in
general but the history of African
theatre and its diverse practices we
also wish that we were better at
pronunciation
so fair warning I'm probably gonna
mangle a lot of words in this episode
but we don't want that to stop us from
sharing a few examples of long-standing
African performance traditions many of
which are still in use today in Nigeria
for instance the Yoruba people
participate in an elaborate masquerade
called the a goon goon a festival held
at the beginning of the planting season
participants spend the night before in
prayer then emerge in costume from a
sacred grove accompanied by drummers in
Ghana storytellers specialize in Anansi
Sam or tails of Anansi the spider on
moonlit nights storytellers act out
these tales which are both entertaining
and educational designed to reinforce
the morals and practices of the
community in Sierra Leone among the
Mende group storytelling is also a
central part of the performance culture
stories called domme a are told at the
end of the harvest season with the
performance typically beginning in the
evening the audience sits in a circle
and the performer moves among them
occasionally integrating questions and
interruptions the audience participates
by clapping and sometimes dancing in
Mali the Bambara people perform a dance
called Catawba which mimics the spiral
of a snail and combines movement with
comedy other communities in Mali are big
into puppetry creating elaborate
Mormons as shown before planting and
before harvest most of the young men and
the unmarried women in the community
participate with female singers setting
the rhythm for the puppet dance in South
Africa the Zulu people practice several
forms of dance used in ceremonies and
initiation rites a performance called
the in Goma is danced by boys and girls
who wear seed pod rattles around their
ankles in la mu was traditionally a war
dance but is now performed at weddings
men performant wearing skins called
alma be shoe while carrying shields and
spears most african states won their
independence in the middle decades of
the 20th century during the colonial
period theater in Africa had mostly been
by and for white colonists but after
independence a lot of countries began to
support a burgeoning black literary
theater and organizations and community
theaters worked to bring theater to the
people in Ghana playwright afiyah
Sutherland founded the Ghana drama
studio in Accra and also helped start
university programs to research
indigenous storytelling and performance
she wrote plays about contemporary
Ghanian life and several plays for
children's theatre and she adapted some
Anansi sam into a 1975 play called the
marriage of a non-si wa which combined
elements of Western theatre with
traditional storytelling practices in
Kenya playwright Gujarati ongo helped
create the camera through community
educational and cultural center the
center staged his play I'll marry when I
want which is a fusion of dramatic
narrative with indigenous song and dance
but the Kenyan government shut down the
play and later destroyed the theatre
theatre as we remember from the Romans
and the Renaissance English in the post
Renaissance English and basically all of
history it seems is dangerous to those
in power the chemi read-through remained
a big influence on other radical African
theatre groups in Tanzania Zambia and
Zimbabwe artists worked to preserve and
celebrate indigenous forms of dance and
storytelling while also connecting them
to contemporary social and political
life in Tanzania which had a socialist
economy universities created a new non
imperialist performance style for a new
political climate in GaN Jarrah combined
verse and dial
with dance like gestures 1965 Zambia
created a national dance troupe that
integrated ancient games stories
religious rituals and initiation rites
into contemporary dance performance
Zimbabwe supported the growth of several
community theaters and its national
dance company is also interested in
preserving indigenous forms in Senegal
and the Cote d'Ivoire
the French government had sponsored
theater troupes and plays by black
playwrights even during the colonial
periods the plays were usually history
plays or theatrical versions of African
epics and they were created by students
at French run teacher training schools
and were written and performed in French
after independence France continued to
send theater professionals to work with
indigenous writers and performers a way
of keeping French culture going some
artists have embraced france's
involvement but others called for a
return to pre-colonial forms in South
Africa during apartheid black artists
created a form called the township
musical a fusion of jazz and stories
drawn from modern life meanwhile the
space theatre and the market theater
which opened in the 1970s specialized in
political work by white and black
playwrights the best-known South African
playwright Athol Fugard is white but
several of his best-known plays like C's
we bond C is dead and the island our
collaborations with black artists like
Winston Chona and John Connie the most
significant playwright to emerge from
post-colonial Africa is wale soyinka who
won the Nobel Prize for Literature in
1986
so inca the son of an anglican priest
was born into a Yoruba family in
Abeokuta Nigeria in 1934 and grew up
alongside a rich performance culture in
addition to indigenous performances like
the ago goon masquerades and
storytelling rituals Christian churches
also encouraged the performance of Bible
plays so anka was exposed to Shakespeare
and Greek tragedies at school and he
could listen to BBC transmitted radio
dramas he would likely also have been
familiar with Yoruba opera pioneered in
the 1940s by Hubert o Gundy which
combined choral numbers with satirical
sketches and is performed in Yoruba and
pidgin English so Inc I went to
university first in Nigeria and then in
England in 1959 he became involved with
London's raw
Court Theatre he returned to Nigeria and
in 1960 he wrote his first major work a
dance of the forest his plays are deeply
engaged with post-colonial Nigeria and
they often deal with the conflicts
between tradition and modernity and how
oppression impacts everyday life he
combined his writings with academic
research and activism while trying to
prevent Nigeria Civil War in 1967 he was
imprisoned he was released in 1969 after
22 months in solitary confinement two
years later he left Nigeria for a long
period of Exile Soyinka has always been
interested in the collision and
parallelism between what he sees as a
Western theatre aesthetic and an african
one he discusses this most directly in
his book myth literature in the African
world in 1973 he tested some of these
theories adapting your cooties ba Chi as
he saw similarities between the Yoruba
God o goon and the Greek god Dionysus
the synthesis of Western and African
traditions didn't always sit well with
other African intellectuals for closer
look at Zion castile and his attempt to
create a fusion of Western and Yoruba
aesthetics let's turn to his 1975 play
death and the Kings Horseman in a
preface Soyinka tells us that this play
is based on real events he says that he
realizes that the play risks being read
as a facile quote clash of cultures he
asks instead that the play be read as
largely metaphysical help us out level
as the play opens the Yoruba King has
died that means that his horsemen elacin
Oba has to die too
his death will help the king to the
afterlife and safeguard the community
elacin dances through the market saying
his goodbyes as the women dressed him
regally he sees a beautiful girl and he
asks iya loggia the mother of the market
for an introduction yes that is a
euphemism the girl is engaged to 'i
allow his own son but yellow juh can't
refuse a dying man so she says yes
she'll arrange an introduction the girl
is not consulted because of course the
girl is not
meanwhile Simon pill Kings the colonial
officer and his wife Jane are preparing
a for a costume party an officer arrives
announcing a license plan to suicide
pill kings sees suicide as barbaric and
he's ignorant of the rituals importance
to the village he orders elacin arrested
and then he goes off to his party is it
just me or did the men in this play have
weird priorities hey license son eluned
eat returns from medical school abroad
Oh lundi is pretty westernized and he
left without his father's permission but
when he learned of the King's death he
came home to help his father see the
ritual through so when he learns that
his father's dawdling and pill Kings
interference have prevented its
completion he's pretty mad good to know
the teenagers being embarrassed by their
parents is cross-cultural theologic um
to visit a lesson in prison and yell at
him for not completing the ritual on
time she tells him someone else had to
do it instead a large bolt of cloth is
unrolled revealing a Lundy's body the
lesen is so distraught that he strangles
himself with his chains just as pill
Kings rushes in and yellow Gia's like
happy now thanks thought-bubble
despite what so anka says this play is
in some ways very much a culture clash
the British and the Africans see death
and ritual differently and that
difference drives the tragedy though of
course it is worth noting that only one
group the British tries to impose their
own vision which makes it a tragedy of
imperialism and if we look beyond this
the play also fuses two styles the Gugu
masquerade and the western classical
tragedy into one whole and it explores
in both British and African communities
the use of ritual the ceremonial
suicides and the masquerade balls to
support social and cultural systems
probably we'll never know as much as we
want to know about African theatre
before colonialism but African theatre
after colonialism though hindered by
Civil War
and state oppression and systems like
apartheid it's flourished it often
creates deeply interesting dialogues
with old forms while pushing forward new
ones we'll see you next time for our
final episode of crash course theatre
it's the one many of you have
probably been waiting for it's an
all-singing all-dancing look at the
golden age of the Broadway musical we or
create a one skull kick line you're
gonna have to wait and see but my bet is
on yes until then curtain crash course
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