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NAME: Enebechukwu Favour Jennifer

Mat No: U2013/1805073


Course Title: African Theatre and Drama
Course Code: THA 216.2
Department: Theatre and Film Studies
Date: 10-11-2016
Course Leturer: Dr. I. C Krama, Dr. I. C Ohiri, Mr. Ikiroma Owiye S.

The origin of Indigenous Theatre


African theatre started to emerge in Africa continent when British came to make their affairs of
life imposed on Africans. They came with ideas; religion, education, business transaction,
making Africa a raw material place where their solid land was built up by it. Through this,
African lifestyle changed and wore another garment because of the predicament at the advent of
British. Though Africans had their normal dramatization (in form of folklore), their experiences
for the coming of British always feature in the African theatre that was inherited from Europeans.
The origin of African theatre based on traditional, history, and contemporary dramatic forms in
Africa which range from sacred or ritual performances to dramatized storytelling, literary drama,
or modern fusion of scripted theatre with traditional performance techniques.
The diversity in performances is as a result of massive spread of cultures and traditions in each
country. A lot of these cultures have rich oral and ritual traditions, aspect of which survived into
contemporary society. Thus, National boundaries do not usually reflect traditional territories.
Therefore, traditional performances have been used as names of self- expression and
empowerment by people facing hostile political or social circumstances.
Another important element of African theatre is its element that put in place in many play in
order to showcase values of African culture and tradition. Modern African literature have been
influenced to a remarkable degree by the continents long tradition of oral artistry. Before the
spread of literacy in the 20th century, texts were preserved in memory and performed or recited.
These traditional texts served many of the same purposes that written texts serve in literate
societiesentertainment, instruction, and commemoration, for example.

However, no distinctions were made between works composed for enjoyment and works that had
a more utilitarian function. Africas oral literature takes the form of prose, verse, and proverb,
and texts vary in length from the epic, which might be performed over the course of several days,
to single-sentence formulations such as the proverb. Wole Soyinkas Death and Kings Horseman
is written in Yoruba oral tradition. The collective body of oral texts is variously described as
folklore, verbal art, and oral literature.
Nigerian playwrights of the 1970s produced plays that were more specifically concerned with the
social and moral effects of dictatorship than those by their predecessors. Bode Sowande explores
the themes of corruption and exploitation in AfamakoThe Workhorse (1978) and Flamingoes
(1982). Babafemi Osofisan deploys Brechtian alienation effects as well as storytelling and roleplaying to introduce revolutionary potential into plots based on traditions or legends: Esu and the
Vagabond Minstrels (1991).
The history of theatre during colonial period cannot mark out in the origin of African drama and
theatre in relations to its influences in the African drama. Colonization led to the suppression and
outlawing of many indigenous art forms, such as drumming and dancing even believes in the
ancestral worship while Western missionaries sought to instill Christian values through biblical
dramas pageant, Africans often adapted European dramatic form to their own satirical or political
purposes.
During the early 1970s, a number of military and discriminatory regimes held power, among
them the dictatorship of Idi Amin in Uganda and the apartheid government in South Africa. In
opposition to then, apartheid policy in South Africa is another influence in theatre. Many
playwrights in South Africa played crucial roles to ensure that the situation of segregation appear
on the plays that comes up at that time. Playwright like Athol Fugard features the policy of
apartheid discrimination in his play titled Sizwe Banzi is dead to satirise the level of segregation
in the country.
This type of writing usually based on the protest against the racial policy by between white,
coloured and black. These regimes, playwrights turned to radical and propagandist forms of
theatre. Simultaneously there was a reaction against bourgeois literary drama; theatre companies
increasingly sought to speak to the urban and rural poor and to include them in their activities by
moving out of national theatre buildings and into the local areas. This is done in order to provide
avenue for aids, gender and development.
One of the most powerful and effective pieces of political theatre to be produced during this
period was I Will Marry When I Want (1977), a play commissioned by the villagers of Kamiriithu
in Kenya from two playwrights, NgugiwaThiong'o and NgugiwaMirii. The play focuses on
indigenous exploitation and was performed in Kikuyu by and for the villagers in a theatre they
built. In defiance of apartheid, black theatre artists collaborated with the white intellectuals in
South Africa to develop new forms of protest drama.
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.
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 theatre 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.
The early theatre in Africa (especially in Ghana) portrays conflicts between parents and children
in order to reflect the prevalent incident so writers come up with different view toward the
spasmodic incidence in the society. This reaction of many writers serves as a call to different set
of drama and theatre in Africa. Play like The Dilemma a Ghost by Ama Ata Adoo (1964), focuses
on the intercultural marriage, and as well as Joe De Grafts Son and Daughter (1963) disclose the
issue of conflict between parents and children which was a common thing among people in that
particular time.
Having discussed the history of African theatre, a deep look is going to be taken into some
African plays that portray the history of African theatre and the influences (including salient
points that they portray in the contemporary society), in order to reflect the issues going on in
society.Some of the plays to be looking at are; Tawfeek Al-Hakeems The Fate of A
cockcroach, AtholFugardsSizweBansi is Dead,Wole Soyinkas Death and the Kings
Horseman,Ama Ata AidoosThe Dilemmaof a Ghost, Femi OsofisansEsu and vagabond
Minstrels,NgugiWaTheogo and NgugiWamirisI Will Marry When I Want,TsegayeGabreMedhinsCollision of Altars and AthibYesin and Katedyacine Intelligent Powder. These are
awesome plays that can be used to trace the origin of African drama and theatre with deep look at
their salient elements rendered in those plays.
The Nature of Indigenous Theatre
African theatre is based on religion, folklore and mythology. Traditional African drama is a
kind of special performance as well as an aesthetic activity. It is difficult to categorize, because
there are over 800 languages spoken on the continent. All of the popular forms of drama exist:
ritual and ceremony, dance and mime, modern play, storytelling, puppetry and ritual drama. The
most popular appears to be ritual drama which incorporates actors, plots, dialog, rehearsals,
props, costumes and makeup.
The beginning form of drama or theatre was storytelling. Storytelling is a method of keeping
literature alive through instructing the young. It is often used to affirm socially acceptable
behavior, such as community and family loyalty, distrust of strangers, not stealing, lying, etc.
Common stories are told night after night in African villages, as a type of reward at the end of the
day, and passed from generation to generation. One person, the storyteller, plays all of the parts.
Many people question whether or not storytelling is really a form of theatre. It is! Storytelling
has an actor, a place to perform and an audience. Storytelling dwells on the particular morals,
customs and philosophies of the culture. African storytelling incorporates: narration, acting,
drumming and song. Animals in the stories are given human traits. For example, the elephant is

clever, the hyena is a coward, and hare and spiders are tricksters. It is not possible to talk of
much African theatre as if it fell into discrete historical or national patterns. Colonial boundaries
ignored cultural and linguistic unities, and ancient movements throughout the continent
sometimes motivated by trade (including the transatlantic slave trade), religion, or exploration
brought different ethnic groups into contact with each other and often influenced performance in
a manner that is still evident in the 21st century. It is also important not to divide the theatre into
traditional and modern, as the contemporary literary theatrepredominantly written and
performed in English, French, and Portugueseexists alongside festivals, rituals, cultural
performances, and popular indigenous theatre. The richness of theatre in Africa lies very much in
the interaction of all these aspects of performance. The broad subheadings under which theatre in
Africa is considered should, therefore, be seen as an aid to access rather than as representing
definite boundaries.

References;
Encyclopaedia 2009
Exam focus literature, 2006-2010
BimpeAboyades Wole Soyinka and Yoruba Tradition in Death and Kings Horseman

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