Modern African Drama

This paper was published in my book, "The Theatre of Wole Soyinka - New Frontiers in Performance Theory and Postcolonial Discourse", 2nd edition (Ilori, 2017. Leeds: Universal Books). The author examines "The Road" and "Death and the King's Horseman" as Soyinka's problematisation of cultural protagonists as wishful postcolonial thinkers whose originality and literality, contradicting the traditions prevailing in their world, lead to a tragic impasse for them and their communities. It is argued that myth and ritual are the envelope for the profound liminality that permeates their acts of self-iteration, and Death (as a form of metaphysics or traditionalism) seals this envelope in a way that binds their communities to self-asphyxiating forms of postcoloniality. As a result, postcoloniality becomes a construct reared, arguably, on the restrictive discourse of power and knowledge inducted within the acts of Soyinka's tragic heroes.

The polemics of Michel Foucault (1998), the French postmodernist whose notions of power and its politics rest on the concert of cultural idealities which assail the traditional bases of power in social actors and structures help to form a critical scrutiny of death as a ritual of power and alienation in the acts of Professor and Elesin Oba; death as a form of postcolonial discourse in the communities encountered in both plays; and death as a trope of Soyinka's “fourth stage” – as the embodied subjectivity of disembodied stage characters.

Femi Osofisan has a prodigious output of drama, poetry, and critical essays. His plays are regularly performed in Nigeria, and in other parts of Africa, Europe and the United States.

Although there are many dissertations and scholarly articles on Osofisan's drama, full length studies are somewhat few and far between, despite his stature as a major African playwright.

In my forthcoming book, The Theatre of Femi Osofisan, I examine in-depth the world of Femi Osofisan's characters, underlining not just their main pre-occupations but how Osofisan's craft and politics impact upon their world.

The current essay is a critical summation of my exploration of Femi Osofisan's theatre.

Wole Soyinka won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986. In Wole Soyinka - Postmodernism & Liminality, Kemi Atanda Ilori explores the interjunction between postmodernism, myth and ritual in Soyinka’s theatre and connects it to postcolonialism. The analyses are emboldened by perspectives from the notions of abjection by Julia Kristeva, Subject-Object categories of self-reflexivity and self-representation by Michel Foucault, and “otherness” (alterity) by Emmanuel Levinas. The paper also explores Soyinka's “fourth stage” approach to dramatic practice as illustrating the performative sensibilities of his art. Overall, there is an in-depth exploration of the staging mechanics of Soyinka's plays. In particular, Barthes's poststructuralism, Foucault's notions of power, and core aspects of performativity and intertextuality, alongside Soyinka's "fourth stage" become the main theoretical grounds for this study.

Subversion is one of the perennially discussed issues in literature. The sustained interest in the concept by writers and literary critics is a reflection of the fact that subversive elements exist and have, disturbingly, witnessed a dramatic increase in every stratum of the human society. In African literature, studies have been done on subversion in many African literary texts. However, little or no research attention has been given to the study of subversion in Efo Kodjo Mawugbe’s In the Chest of a Woman, and Esiaba Irobi’s Cemetery Road despite the copious instances of subversion in both texts. This study fills this gap in scholarship. It examines the catalogue of subversive incidents and characters in In the Chest of a Woman and Cemetery Road, and how these subversive incidents and characters are contained in the dramatic texts; that is, how the subversive incidents and characters are effectively controlled in the storylines.  Using Stephen Greenblatt’s subversion-containment dialectics for the analysis and a comparative analysis of the two texts as methodology, the paper observes that the plots of the plays are strewn with subversive actions and characters such as Kwaku Duah 11, Nana Yaa and Ama Ekyaa in In the Chest of a Woman, and Mazeli, Hazel and Douglas in Cemetery Road. The subversive incidents propel the plots of the plays, and add verisimilitude to the plays. The subversive characters in the plays are quite interesting and memorable. Hence, subversion in African dramatic texts is creativity.
Key words: Subversion, Reading, African literature, African dramatic texts.

The symbiotic relationship between theatre and society, especially, in the striking effects of reflection and refraction of actual acts of social life, as dramatised or staged in the symbolic-aesthetic worlds of theatre, is the germ of this paper.

This paper is published in my book, The Theatre of Ola Rotimi: Power, Politics and Postcolonialism (Ilori, 2017. Leeds: Universal Books). It is an in-depth study of Rotimi’s theatre. It constructs a critical discourse on culture, history and identity politics as a theoretical framework for probing the themes of power, politics and postcolonialism in Rotimi’s major plays. Additionally, the author furnishes the reader with insights into the mechanics of Rotimi’s theatre. Rotimi’s profile as an acclaimed African playwright, theatre director and scholar is the dynamic sub-text of this study.

A common notion among the audience is that a good performance must be explicitly faithful to its text. Studies on African dramatic texts and performance have illustrated the points of convergence between dramatic texts and their stage performances. However, few of these studies have investigated the reasons for the deviations of the stage performances from the dramatic texts. This study was, therefore, designed to examine the points of divergence between selected African dramatic texts and their stage performances with a view to foregrounding the reasons for the deviations of the dramatic texts from their stage performances. Stephen Greenblatt's New Historicism was adopted as the theoretical framework of the study. Two Anglophpne African plays, Efua Sutherland's The Marriage of Anansewa and Toyin Abiodun's The Trials of Afonja were purposively selected due to their African regional representation and the demonstrable deviations between these texts and their stage performances. Close reading of the dramatic texts was done. The video recordings of the stage performances of the two plays were reviewed. Data were subjected to literary and performance criticisms. Four divergent features were identified. They were rupturing of the sequence of incidents, coalescing of scenes, addition and removal of scenes and characters, and the infusion of songs. Directors of stage performances deliberately and pragmatically deviate from dramatic texts without prejudice to the storyline nor the historicity of the text. Hence, the divergence between text and performance is creativity.

Sample course outline and handouts. This undergraduate course ran from January 2018 to May 2018. FYI: this course outline includes a few word choice errors; I occasionally refer to 'novels' in the supplementary documents, which were adapted from a previous course. I no longer possess the source documents, and as I am unlikely to teach this course again, these errors will not be corrected.

The Burning of Rags by Francis Imbuga focuses on the cultural conflict between the existing cultural forces and the emerging: a clash of modern and traditional. Denis, a young professor is in a dilemma : he is required to participate in a cultural activity-the initiation of his son into manhood:, even if the rudimentary practice of the circumcision is contrary to his modern beliefs. Agala, his old father refuses to compromise the old existing tradition to suit his son's " civilization ". Denis also hides his past (being formerly married and having a child) from his mistress because he feels that that belies him, unknown to him his mistress Hilda, has a similar story to tell. Burning of Rags is an African drama, reflecting the ongoing culture conflict in the society: a theme which comes closely after the theme of the collapse of colonialism and as such a consequence of new lifestyles. The language use should reflect this conflict. The language of African literature itself has controversies of its own. Isaiah Ilo (2006) classifies the emerging controversies into two schools: the Nativist/ Essentialist school of African Language in Drama and the Hybrid school of African Language in Drama. Those who belong to the Nativist school , believe that drama and other forms of literature be written in the native language and not English. Frank Fanon (1952) asserts that an essential part of subjugation is embodied in language use. He believes that a man who has taken up the language of the colonizer has accepted the world of the colonizer. According to him, " the worst assault on a people's consciousness is its linguistic colonization ". Wali (1963) affirms that African literature be written in African languages, only then can it be a suitable revolution against neo-colonialism. Popular Kenyan writer, Ngugi wa Thiongo felt his best after he staged Ngachika Nchenda (I Will Marry When I Want), which was his first time to use his native language to write.

This paper is published in my book, The Theatre of Ola Rotimi: Power, Politics and Postcolonialism (Ilori, 2017. Leeds: Universal Books). It is an in-depth study of Rotimi’s theatre. It constructs a critical discourse on culture, history and identity politics as a theoretical framework for probing the themes of power, politics and postcolonialism in Rotimi’s major plays. Additionally, the author furnishes the reader with insights into the mechanics of Rotimi’s theatre. Rotimi’s profile as an acclaimed African playwright, theatre director and scholar is the dynamic sub-text of this study.

Wole Soyinka won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986. In Wole Soyinka - The Man, The Myth & The Meta-myth, Kemi Atanda Ilori argues that Soyinka’s authorial signature is his acumen as a dramatist and focuses on how Soyinka manipulates the constituents of theatrical performance, particularly, the structure and meaning of the aesthetic-symbolic world purveyed in his texts, the iconicity of his characters and the intuitive polysemous language with which he imbues their acts. The paper seeks to interpret the liminal world discoverable in Soyinka’s dramatic texts and how this is framed within his deployment of myth and ritual on the one hand; and on the other, how these components of his theatrical gest help us to understand liminality, postcoloniality and the tropes of traditionalism, modernism, postmodernism and metamodernism in Soyinka's plays. Overall, there is an in-depth exploration of the staging mechanics of Soyinka's plays. In particular, Barthes's poststructuralism, Foucault's notions of power, and core aspects of performativity and intertextuality, alongside Soyinka's "fourth stage" become the main theoretical grounds for this study.

Wole Soyinka won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986. In Wole Soyinka - Modernism & Liminality, Kemi Atanda Ilori argues that the watermarks of modernism evince liminality; that modernism and liminality become the chassis of Soyinka’s dramaturgy in A Dance of the Forests and Kongi’s Harvest. The paper also explores his “fourth stage” approach to dramatic practice as illustrating the performative sensibilities of his art. Overall, there is an in-depth exploration of the staging mechanics of Soyinka's plays. In particular, Barthes's poststructuralism, Foucault's notions of power, and core aspects of performativity and intertextuality, alongside Soyinka's "fourth stage" become the main theoretical grounds for this study.

Femi Ososfisan is one of the foremost playwrights in Africa. His Marxism, married to the aesthetics of the folktale and oral poetry, contributes significantly to the grammar of his theatre. Whilst the script betrays the usual stage puns and devices of Femi Osofisan, Esu in performance is a grandiose tableaux of dramatic episodes knitted together by the theme of cruelty versus compassion, survival versus social extinction.

This paper is published in my book, The Theatre of Ola Rotimi: Power, Politics and Postcolonialism (Ilori, 2017. Leeds: Universal Books). It is an in-depth study of Rotimi’s theatre. It constructs a critical discourse on culture, history and identity politics as a theoretical framework for probing the themes of power, politics and postcolonialism in Rotimi’s major plays. Additionally, the author furnishes the reader with insights into the mechanics of Rotimi’s theatre. Rotimi’s profile as an acclaimed African playwright, theatre director and scholar is the dynamic sub-text of this study.

This paper examined the representation of supernatural forces in Ola Rotimi's The Gods Are Not To Blame. The play is an adaptation of Sophocles' famous Greek classic tragedy 'Oedipus Rex' but with an African traditional background. Its artistic framework including the plot preoccupation, style, characters, and setting of the play is particularly rooted in the African-Yoruba traditional worldview. The Deconstruction theory was adopted as the theoretical framework for the study. The work presents an objective text-based analysis of supernatural forces in the play with the knowledge of the Yoruba societal worldview and belief system. Findings of the study revealed that the thematic notion of destiny and fate embodies the manifestation of supernatural forces in the text. The Ifa priest, Ogun priest, and others like them are portrayed in the text as mouthpieces of the gods. Their role in representing these supernatural forces is limited to speaking or reporting for the gods. Also, deified supernatural forces such as Ogun, Obatala, and Orunmila, among others, are also represented in the text and ascribed different roles in the dramatic universe of Ola Rotimi's play. The study concluded that the representation of supernatural forces in Rotimi's play is a testimony to Rotimi's immense knowledge of African culture, his skillful and unique transmogrification of Sophocles' Oedipus Rex into a completely well-woven African drama with a deeply rooted Yoruba traditional worldview. It also acknowledges the superiority and inevitability of fighting against these supernatural forces and their indomitable significance in traditional African society. It was recommended among others, that an understanding of the roles and significance of supernatural forces in the play can help people generally to understand that it is good to seek guidance, hide warnings, and most importantly, teach young people of nowadays that every action has a consequence and thus it is important to exercise patience and think things through in every situation before taking any step(s).

This paper is published in my book, The Theatre of Ola Rotimi: Power, Politics and Postcolonialism (Ilori, 2017. Leeds: Universal Books). It is an in-depth study of Rotimi’s theatre. It constructs a critical discourse on culture, history and identity politics as a theoretical framework for probing the themes of power, politics and postcolonialism in Rotimi’s major plays. Additionally, the author furnishes the reader with insights into the mechanics of Rotimi’s theatre. Rotimi’s profile as an acclaimed African playwright, theatre director and scholar is the dynamic sub-text of this study.

This paper appraises the travails and marginalization of the African woman in the throes of patriarchy and her struggle for emancipation. Feminism signifies a measure of activism that wants to change what happens to women because of the social structures of gender. It is a politicized discourse which uncovers the symptoms of oppression, diagnoses the problem and offers alternative versions of livable realities. This paper attempts to look at how Tess Onwueme in her two plays, The Reign of Wazobia and Broken Calabash achieve the agitation for women’s rights in an African society albeit without the attendant uproar that constitutes such agitations in other climes. It tends to establish through the plays under study that the African feminist ideology differs from its western counterparts. The paper reveals the position of the African woman as one who merely wants to be ‘shifted for’ and accommodated in a society in which she regards herself as an important participant.

This paper is published in my book, The Theatre of Ola Rotimi: Power, Politics and Postcolonialism (Ilori, 2017. Leeds: Universal Books). It is an in-depth study of Rotimi’s theatre. It constructs a critical discourse on culture, history and identity politics as a theoretical framework for probing the themes of power, politics and postcolonialism in Rotimi’s major plays. Additionally, the author furnishes the reader with insights into the mechanics of Rotimi’s theatre. Rotimi’s profile as an acclaimed African playwright, theatre director and scholar is the dynamic sub-text of this study.

The Burning of Rags by Francis Imbuga focuses on the cultural conflict between the existing cultural forces and the emerging: a clash of modern and traditional. Denis, a young professor is in a dilemma : he is required to participate in a cultural activity-the initiation of his son into manhood:, even if the rudimentary practice of the circumcision is contrary to his modern beliefs. Agala, his old father refuses to compromise the old existing tradition to suit his son's " civilization ". Denis also hides his past (being formerly married and having a child) from his mistress because he feels that that belies him, unknown to him his mistress Hilda, has a similar story to tell. Burning of Rags is an African drama, reflecting the ongoing culture conflict in the society: a theme which comes closely after the theme of the collapse of colonialism and as such a consequence of new lifestyles. The language use should reflect this conflict. The language of African literature itself has controversies of its own. Isaiah Ilo (2006) classifies the emerging controversies into two schools: the Nativist/ Essentialist school of African Language in Drama and the Hybrid school of African Language in Drama. Those who belong to the Nativist school , believe that drama and other forms of literature be written in the native language and not English. Frank Fanon (1952) asserts that an essential part of subjugation is embodied in language use. He believes that a man who has taken up the language of the colonizer has accepted the world of the colonizer. According to him, " the worst assault on a people's consciousness is its linguistic colonization ". Wali (1963) affirms that African literature be written in African languages, only then can it be a suitable revolution against neo-colonialism. Popular Kenyan writer, Ngugi wa Thiongo felt his best after he staged Ngachika Nchenda (I Will Marry When I Want), which was his first time to use his native language to write.

This paper is published in my book, The Theatre of Ola Rotimi: Power, Politics and Postcolonialism (Ilori, 2017. Leeds: Universal Books). It is an in-depth study of Rotimi’s theatre. It constructs a critical discourse on culture, history and identity politics as a theoretical framework for probing the themes of power, politics and postcolonialism in Rotimi’s major plays. Additionally, the author furnishes the reader with insights into the mechanics of Rotimi’s theatre. Rotimi’s profile as an acclaimed African playwright, theatre director and scholar is the dynamic sub-text of this study.

The study of myths has generated critical attentions as scholars have attempted to discern encoded meanings behind the different codes designed to pass on messages, secular or spiritual, across generations. This paper, through the examination of Efua T. Sutherland"s The Marriage of Anansewa, situates mythic tendencies and reveals mythographic meanings in the lives of Ghanaians (Africans). The findings show that encoded in the work are the beliefs accrued from past experiences of the Ghanaian (Akan) people to be used in all facets of their lives: not only for the present but also for the future. The symbols and encrypted messages, which are decoded with the use of the archetypal model, are found and shown to have, and still have impact, on the lives of Africans in general, and Ghanaians (Akans) in particular.

This brief study of Wole Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman stems from my conception of Nigeria’s literary drama as a conjunction of dramatic literature and performance. I am interested in a method of criticism which will be adequate to the textual basis of this drama and provide an analysis of those key social referents which underscore dramatic action and character. Do you think this paper is on the right track? Is ti contributing something new and significant? Many thanks for your feedback.

Society has always been developed by conservatives and the progressives under differing ideologies. Usually both hold to diverse mythic traditions which influence their world-views. This is extremely reflected in 'Zulu Sofola's Wedlock of the Gods. The two main characters (and a few others) become epitomes of an ideology wanting development while others demand maintaining the status quo. This struggle becomes depicted in the mourning archetype and the mythic taboo-breaking issue that nearly tears the people apart along with far-reaching implications for the individuals and the community. Heroism is accessed by the record-breaking but negatively regarded actions of the heroes. Each character becomes a mythic symbol in this examination of a community's struggle for development superimposed on the positioning theory. This paper adjudges that a society can progress when individuals make personal sacrifices through the acting out of their beliefs thereby effecting changes in mythic stories, symbols and meanings to reflect and affect on-going sociological realities.

This paper is published in my book, The Theatre of Ola Rotimi: Power, Politics and Postcolonialism (Ilori, 2017. Leeds: Universal Books). It is an in-depth study of Rotimi’s theatre. It constructs a critical discourse on culture, history and identity politics as a theoretical framework for probing the themes of power, politics and postcolonialism in Rotimi’s major plays. Additionally, the author furnishes the reader with insights into the mechanics of Rotimi’s theatre. Rotimi’s profile as an acclaimed African playwright, theatre director and scholar is the dynamic sub-text of this study.

Critical opinions on Femi Osofisan " s Women of Owu are largely stereotypical. They lament the plunder of Owu and compare it to that of Troy, drawing some parallels between Euripides " The Trojan Women and Osofisan " s adaptation of it. There is a clear effort to assume some kind of historical and cultural affinity between the women of ancient Owu and Troy. But most of these assumptions are apparently contrived. It seems that there has been no attempt to consider Osofisan " s play in its own right. This study is an endeavor in that direction. It adopts the Reader-Response approach as a methodology to conduct a phenomenological analysis of Osofisan " s Women of Owu in order to discover the extent to which it truly reflects the picture of the Owu war of the 17th century and portrays the cultural identity of the women of Owu. It also compares Euripides " play with Osofisan " s version in the context of their individual historical backgrounds to examine how each play captures the realities of its specific cultural milieu. The conclusion of this paper is that in an attempt to find parallels to the source of his play, Osofisan has inadvertently extrapolated the cultural essence of a society that had little regard for women into the cultural history of an African community, where women had a lot of respect, and in the process, has demonized womanhood and given impetus to some flawed assumptions and misinterpretations of history. The recommendation of this paper is, therefore, that African dramatists should be conscious of the peculiarities of cultures and the danger in attempting to find contrived affinities between African and Western cultures in an effort to lend some kind of credibility to their creative endeavors.

Wole Soyinka won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986. In Wole Soyinka - Metamodernism & Liminality, Soyinka's theatre is explored against the theoretical and social premiss of metamodernism in Soyinka's A Scourge of Hyacinths and From Zia, with Love.  In addition to considering the dramaturgical sensibilities of Soyinka's plays, there is an in-depth exploration of the staging mechanics of these plays. In particular, Barthes's poststructuralism, Foucault's notions of power, and core aspects of performativity and intertextuality, alongside Soyinka's "fourth stage" are the main theoretical grounds for this study.

Oppression of man by man has been a common phenomenon from time immemorial. This subjugation has
mostly been subtle, insidious and debilitating, especially of the oppressed and the common people. This paper examines
the apartheid South African world in Sizwe Bansi is Dead, and exposes tacit, discreet but mythically destructive avenues
that Athol Fugard, Wiston Ntshona and John Kani opine oppressors have always archetypically drawn from. The paper
allows that freedom is possible if the oppressed are introspective, creative, focussed, and do not get themselves lost in the
‘dangerous dreams’ of their oppressors. They must, like Styles, Sizwe and Buntu in the examined text, be able to create,
archetypically too, like their oppressors, new songs, new myths and new weaponry and strategies to unchain themselves.
Keywords: South Africa, Athol Fugard, apartheid, mythic, archetypal, freedom, oppression.

This paper draws on the recent experience of Kenya and Zimbabwe to demonstrate how power-sharing has played out in Africa. Although the two cases share some superficial similarities, variation in the strength and disposition of key veto players generated radically different contexts that shaped the feasibility and impact of unity government. Explaining the number and attitude of veto players requires a comparative analysis of the evolution of civil-military and intra-elite relations. In Zimbabwe, the exclusionary use of violence and rhetoric, together with the militarisation of politics, created far greater barriers to genuine powersharing, resulting in the politics of continuity. These veto players were less significant in the Kenyan case, giving rise to a more cohesive outcome in the form of the politics of collusion. However, we find that neither mode of power-sharing creates * The authors would like to thank Andreas Mehler and the participants of the 'Power-Sharing Agreements in Africa' conference (Hamburg), Gabrielle Lynch and the participants of the 'Democratization in Africa' conference (Leeds), Jocelyn Alexander, Owen Elliott, Susanne Mueller, Brian Raftopoulos, Timothy Scarnecchia, and two anonymous reviewers, for their insightful and helpful comments.

In agreement with Frederick Jameson’s “Form itself is but the working out of content in the realm of the superstructure,” this initial paper is concerned with a critical assessment of the confluence of art and revolution in Kole Omotoso’s two published plays The Curse and Shadows in the Horizon; concerned with the artistic mediation of the revolutionary will, its expression in specific theatrical experiments, or, merely, its adjuncts in the verb and the visual within or outside the mainstream aesthetics and social vision of the “committed” dramatist.

Wole Soyinka won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986. In Wole Soyinka - The Ends of Myth, Ritual & Postcoloniality, Kemi Atanda Ilori argues that liminality presents in Soyinka’s theatre the physical and mental constructs of the lived world of his characters as concurrent experiences of cultural rootedness and displacement. The paper also explores Soyinka's “fourth stage” approach to dramatic practice as illustrating the performative sensibilities of his art. Overall, there is an in-depth exploration of the staging mechanics of Soyinka's plays. In particular, Barthes's poststructuralism, Foucault's notions of power, and core aspects of performativity and intertextuality, alongside Soyinka's "fourth stage" become the main theoretical grounds for this study.

This article examines the ways in which two prominent Nigerian playwrights, Wole Soyinka and Esiaba Irobi, re-envision common perceptions of the Nigerian armed forces as portrayed in literature. Despite nearly two decades of often-tumultuous democratic rule, Nigeria is yet to attain full membership of the league of democratic nations. In The Beatification of Area Boy and Cemetery Road, Soyinka and Irobi respectively look at the ways in which authoritarian regimes have sought to repress and subjugate hapless indigenous populations. The country increasingly finds itself between two psychological dispositions: the traumatized psyche occasioned by the military in the past, and the democratic dispensation which represents the present. Soyinka's artistic commitment is ostensibly demonstrated in constant questioning and an accusatory historicization of the role of the military in the tragedy of Nigeria's decadence in his play, The Beatification of Area Boy, while Irobi dramatizes the weaving together of the historical massacre of the peasants of Bakolori by the army in Northern Nigeria. The important question raised by this article is: How does the Nigerian nation-state atone for the evils of brutality, torture, forceful evacuation and displacement perpetrated by the military on its citizens, especially the Ilaje 'Maroko evacuees' and the Fulani victims of the 'Bakolori massacre'? The article concludes that Soyinka's and Irobi's deft appropriations of historiography have been utilized to explore the inherent complexity of the interplay of Nigeria's political anomie for the interrogation of military dehumanization of defenceless Nigerians in The Beatification of Area Boy and Cemetery Road.

The key text in this highly entertaining piece is the man-woman crisis so familiar in rich homes that can afford the luxury of any house help. If it is a male, the story quickly makes it round that he is giving the “madam” all the works, or it is a female and it is oga who is having all the fun. Ekiye does not go so far as to present a real crisis in this direction; what his comedy thrives on is the suspicion and narrow-mindedness that creeps in to undermine the shaky morality and actual hypocrisy of rich families.

When the Arrow Rebounds is Emeka Nwabueze's dramatic recreation of Chinua Achebe's novel, Arrow of God. A critical engagement with scholarly opinions on the play reveals a near-stereotypical proclivity towards formalism. There seems to be more interest in the socio-cultural implications of the play rather than its contents. This contrasts with the critical activity on the source novel, Arrow of God, which is more expansive and revealing. For instance, among the critics of Nwabueze's When the Arrow Rebounds, there is hardly any interest in the dynamics of characterization, especially with regard to Ezeulu, around whom the story of the play revolves. The result is that the profundity of Ezeulu's character as well as the psychological depth and implications of his thoughts and actions appear to be of no consequence. This paper provides an insight into the character of Ezeulu, with emphasis on the mental conditions that frame his thoughts and actions. This is accomplished through a close reading of the play and references to it, the source novel, and significant psychopathological views. The conclusion of this paper is that the psychological tragedy of Ezeulu is a manifestation of Paranoid Personality Disorder which he inherited from his mother.

Studies on gender discourse have mainly focused on patriarchal tendencies pervasive in most societies. Literary scholarship has focused on the concept of male dominance buttressed by cultural ideologies inimical to the female gender. One of the distinctive aspects of Wole Soyinka's dramaturgy is his ingenious adaptation of Shakespearean and Euripidian drama. This paper explores Wole Soyinka's reconfiguration of gender in his adaptation of Euripides' The Bacchae in his The Bacchae of Euripides: A Communion Rite. Despite the two plays being separated by more than two millenniums, the article shows how Wole Soyinka's transposition of the Euripidian play speaks to African traditional and contemporary realities. Reading the plays from the standpoint of Greek and African notions of spirituality, the paper highlights the multifaceted portrayals of women in the plays and shows how aspects of spirituality may engender marginalisation and also empower female characters to contest patriarchal structures.

Identity-politics refers to the way in which a specific section of a given society agitates for equal rights, increased recognition and greater opportunities based on the specific ethnic , religious, gender or other characteristic that simultaneously binds it together as a social group and sets it apart from other groups. This essay looks at the changing nature of identity-politics in the drama of the contemporary Nigerian dramatist Ahmed Yerima. It argues that the playwright traces crucial shifts in relationships that obtain between and within the individuals and social groups depicted in his plays part of his overall concern with the nature of society.

In Marxist analysis, society is broadly divided into the bourgeoisie and the proletariat on the socio-economic spectrum; and the proletariat are conditioned and dominated by the bourgeoisie through (undesirable) ideology. Notably, undesirable  ideologies are employed by the bourgeoisie to promote  repressive  political  agenda and,  in  order  to  ensure  their  acceptance  among  the  citizenry,  pass  these agenda  off as  natural  ways  of  seeing  the  world, (Nayar, 2017).  Ideology works where a particular group of people, endeavours to dominate another group, by emphasizing its own ‘natural’ superiority via skin pigmentation, via gender or and the like African drama is replete with denunciation of these ideologies.

This article analyses Githa Hariharan's "I Have Become the Tide" from the Foucauldian perspective. It employs the concept of power-knowledge and discourse given by Foucault. It examines how truth is constructed and moulded by the powerful. Truth becomes a gamble at the hands of the mighty.It also sheds light on how the Dalits are treated as the "other', the way the insane were treated in the age of Reason or are regarded in this modern era.

All of Olu Obafemi's writingsplays, poems, novel, and articles-are channelled towards societal advancement. While scholars have pointed out this fact, little effort has been geared towards examining the dimensions to societal transformation that Obafemi's works present and the strategies that are prescribed in the texts. This study therefore examines two plays-Running Dreams and Dark Times Are Over? using the Marxist theory to underscore the strategies for societal transformation advanced in both plays. The election of credible, radical and seasoned leaders; effective and conscientious management and distribution of resources; unity amongst the masses and the application of the same set of laws for all citizens of the nation are proposed in both plays as catalysts for the much-desired societal transformation, not only in Africa but in every continent with developing countries.

How does the director communicate with the actor? In my experience of non-African theatre demonstrating was always taboo. Talking and discussing – in other words, the process of eliciting understanding through words and ideas, and improvisations and exercises are the default methods. Yet in the fields of advertising, communication and applied art forms a lot of research is going into non-verbal or emotional communication. Theatre is communication and theatre workers, including directors, need to recognise the possibilities of communicating with their actors beyond the intellectual and verbal. I believe this is already being done in African theatre.  I believe many an African director employs and has experienced alternative non-verbal forms of communication with their actors. There is not only one way. If we in Africa find that we as directors communicate with our actors differently, let us not doubt ourselves but instead continue with our practice – and then also write our own theory.

Olu Omo is a quasi-historical and quasi-mythical play on the Dahomean inroad into Egbaland in 1864. The play telescopes the bitter divisions within the Egba leadership based at Abeokuta and the determined efforts of one woman whose honesty of purpose and vision turned the table against the invaders and their allies in the Egba army.

Stella Onome Omonigho’s first play, Ada, Story of an Orphan, shows features of a talented young playwright who has worked assiduously towards bringing out a remarkable work of art. As the title of the play indicates, Ada is an orphan who suffers the pain of a motherless child raised by a selfless grandmother. It is a Cinderella story in the sense that this orphan young girl later becomes a princess by marriage after refusing to marry early; this is despite the fact that it is the king who wants to marry her. This is an intriguing play and in many ways ironical and paradoxical: the Igwe’s desire to marry this young girl, her resistance to heed his call, and later marrying the Igwe’s own son, Prince Enueze. At one fell swoop, Omonigho transports the audience/reader from traditional African village life to a contemporary urban family of professionals. One can see the details of the daily grind of traditional life with the young girls going to the village stream in a group to fetch water for domestic chores; the exception to this, Chioma, who goes to the stream alone, drowns.
  The story of the play involves three generations—the grandmother, the protagonist Ada now a doctor and her husband, Prince Enueze an Engineer, and their two children, the male Okpueze and the female Ododoeze. The play begins with a prologue of the modern city children, five and seven respectively, asking to know why their parents who are medical doctors are also prince and princess; the woman marrying into royalty to be a princess. This beginning offers theatrical possibilities of suspense and flashback that help to drive the story with excitement. The main story therefore is a flashback to educate the young ones how their parents came to be what they are: prince and princess in addition to being medical doctors. The play assumes folkloric essence as it goes on from the prologue to explain as in a myth how things became what they are and again as in a folktale it proffers a lesson of how persistence and hard work can lift the poor to a high position—not just a princess but the young orphan girl becomes a medical doctor. In the play there is a continuum flowing from the rural village to the urban household, from the far past to the present; a link that is realistic and practical from the events that feed the story.
The play is divided into a prologue, four acts, and an epilogue. It begins with a prologue and ends with an epilogue—starting from the present and ending in the present. The four acts are set in the past in which Ada’s struggles and the fortuitous appearance of the prince changes what appears to be a hopeless opposition to inflexible traditional mores. The early acts detail the traditional life of an orphan girl living with her grandmother. She starts with elementary school, doing daily chores such as fetching water from the village stream always in a group. Later she enters secondary school. Ada’s group of friends includes Chioma who is not interested in education and will rather like to be out of school with a man. She already has an eye on a school teacher. However, ironically, Ada, who is very interested in pursuing her education to the highest possible level, is “called” to the palace. This is a signal of the Igwe’s desire to marry her and abort her ambition of continuing her education. She refuses to heed the call to the palace in the subsequent acts and that refusal causes consternation and reprisal from the villagers who have not witnessed a girl refusing to obey the “call” of their traditional ruler. Ada and her grandmother are virtually ostracized and both can feel how lonely and awkward it is to live alone in a communal society.  Ada’s refusal to marry the village ruler is interpreted by the villagers to be responsible for her friend Chioma’s sudden drowning and death in the river. Rather than blame Chioma for going to the stream alone, they feel the supernatural forces are punishing the entire community for a single individual’s stubbornness and they expected more retributions from the deities.
  The Igwe who wants to marry Ada, a studious secondary school student so many years/decades younger than him, has a son who has gone to town for higher education. He comes back to the village and gets to hear about this girl, first by meeting her by coincidence by the river and later taking an interest in her. Once he learns that his old father is interested in this young girl, he works to make sure that the father gives up the fantasy of marry this girl-child. In the end, the prince and Ada fall in love and the king gives up his desire to have her and blesses his son and her as couples. The play brings us to the present with the children now understanding their culture, their parents’ journey to the present, and by so doing know their own identity.
Thus the story is an attempt to explain why the children’s parents are not only doctors but also prince and princess. The characters are physically and psychologically realistic, the dialogue enriched by the subtext of Igbo language, and location, whether of village or town, very concretely realized. In this play Stella Omonigho conflates three generations of characters into a human story that continues to have resonance in the lives of contemporary Nigerians/Africans in the march from village to urban and the traditional to the modern. The playwright shows that a play can entertain, tell our story, and also teach indelible human lessons of a focused life of persistence and stubborn determination towards higher goals.

Tanure Ojaide, Ph.D., NNOM
Frank Porter Graham Professor of Africana Studies,
The University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Methodologies in the criticism of African drama are broadly sociological, freighted by a certain exegesis which seems to value the drama mainly as a social outgrowth whose being reflects directly on society, and refracts its structures both in artistic (aesthetic) categories and in the aspects of society it chooses to mirror. In this unpublished paper, I ruminate on Marxist and non-Marxist traditions in the critical canons of African drama and theatre.

The Nigerian nation is a country enchanted with the glitterati of new ways without much introspection. The excitement with which Nigerians embrace new ideas and new styles is very amazing. But the repercussions that result from the renunciation of hitherto familiar ways usually leave much to be desired. All too often, the Nigerian people realize that the attraction to novelty and the expected promises of innovation/change were all a fluke after all. This usually results to collective discontent and a sense of nostalgia for the forsaken days of yore, but without any real effort to let go of the new ways, which, usually leads to mental dilemma. This has been the lot of the Nigerian nation and people from Independence in 1960 to the present day. This dilemma has seen the country through hard periods of mismanaged civil leadership, a terrible civil war, and agonizing years of military rule. Soyinka parodies this state of affairs with the metaphor of the bicycle, which draws the attention of the common people, in The Beatification of Area Boy in most extraordinary ways. This paper adopts a postcolonial perspective on the play to interrogate the perpetual sense of disillusion and alienation that has always attended the ordinary Nigerian as a result of the wrong economic and social policies of successive Nigerian governments. The conclusion here is that Soyinka has effectively used the bicycle in the focus play, as a formidable metaphor, to lampoon a situation that is at the core of Nigerian underdevelopment.

Postcolonial cultures feel the loss of the past communal self--and its uncanny return--in specific ways, caught between the postmodern lures of global capitalism, the modernist inscription of national identities, and the premodern heritage of tribal communities.  This postcolonial "betweenness" has been explored by Wole Soyinka, through his revision of violence in ancient Greek drama.  In his play, The Bacchae of Euripides: A Communion Rite, Soyinka returns to the roots of both European and African (Yoruba) theatre, combining Dionysian and Ogunian rites of communal passage, to involve a postmodern, postcolonial audience in the ancient sacrificial offering.

Adaptation of literary works, most especially classic plays is a tricky business that tasks the writer. Adapting a well-known Shakespearean play like Hamlet to fit the Ijebu culture in Yorubaland, Western Nigeria, West Africa would have been an arduous task for a neophyte writer, but for a mature writer like Babafemi Osofisan, it is an opportunity to experiment. This paper explores the innovative techniques Osofisan used in transplanting a global tragic play into an African setting and soil. It also examines the various innovative themes and ideas introduced into the adaptation making it different from other adapted plays. The paper finally registers the challenges the playwright must have faced in localizing a play like Hamlet while exploring global issues like the impact of tobacco companies on less developed countries (LDC).
Keywords: Adaptation, Osofisan, Wèsóo Hamlet, Hamlet, playwriting, LDC