7 African and Caribbean Theatre – An Overview

Prof. Ipshita Chanda

Outline of the module: To provide an overview of the historical development of the theatre in English speaking areas of the Caribbean and African continent by enumerating the interactions of various local and global sources, and to locate the various genres of theatre now practised in these areas as resulting from these interactions.

Purpose: To give the student a framework for reading individual texts by different writers , by equipping her to understand the roots of form and content unique to theatre written in English in Africa and the Caribbean.

‘Anglophone’ Theatre in Africa Colonial cultural policy and resistance to it by the colonised, created a situation of tension and confrontation between indigenous artistic resources and imposed colonial culture. The indigenous theatrical resources (enumerated below) interacted with colonial influences, leading to different theatrical genres flourishing in Anglophone Africa. Anglophone African theatre can hence be called ‘post’colonial, i.e. following colonial contact and not after the departure of the coloniser. The reasons for this are: first, the language and form of this theatre was introduced by the colonisers, and second both indigenous and foreign influences were equally important in moulding new forms of theatre in a non-African language, i.e. English. This situation was possible only after colonial contact.

Anglophone Caribbean TheatreThree different races inhabited the Caribbean and their varied legacies and social positions were reflected in the drama as in other verbal arts (See Module 1 and 3). The natives of the islands were almost wiped out by the coming of the European colonisers. The Europeans and Asians in the Caribbean had come in pursuit of wealth or employment in plantation agriculture. They came of their own choice and could leave when they wanted to, as they had their own ‘homes’ on other continents. Even those who came as indentured labour were in a better position than the Africans who were brought forcibly as slaves. In the plantation economy, they were dehumanised instruments of wealth-production. They did not have the privilege of returning home and were forced to remain in the islands. Like all art forms, the theatre in the Caribbean originally reflected the racially stratified hierarchical society of the islands (See Module 2 and 3).

Sources of Anglophone African theatreThe sources of theatre on the African continent belong to two broad areas: the indigenous local sources and those that were introduced by the coloniser through the control of the education system and the formulation of colonial cultural policy.

Among the local indigenous sources, two different streams may be identified: traditional rituals related to religious worship, seasonal cycles and community festivals on the one hand and the local pre-colonial performance forms related to orally transmitted verbal art and traditions, practised by professionals in courts and community gatherings.

Errol Hill has also pointed out that ‘ritual’ performances address the gods and the supernatural, but ‘secular’ performances address other human beings. Joel Adedeji has explained the process by which ritual theatre becomes festival theatre, and festival theatre fragments into professional and amateur productions of secular theatre. Over time the religious purpose may diminish but the seasonal enactment would continue because people have become accustomed to it as a traditional event. Thus we have conditions for festival theatre.

However, these traditions of performance were not considered as theatre by the makers of colonial cultural policy or by theatre critics of the colonial period, because:

•  The ritual, festival and community performances and oral art forms, accompanied by dance and music, with little ‘dialogue’ in the western sense, were unlike the scripted, dialogue laden ‘well-made plays’ of the British theatre.
• Indigenous forms of performance were not enacted in auditoriums, using proscenium and curtains – rather the performers and audience were on the same level, without barriers between them, and the performance was open to the entire community, not only to a ticketed audience.
• The ritual and festive performances went on for days unlike western theatre, a social occasion for which one had to dress appropriately, go to a auditorium and purchase tickets to get in.
• These performance traditions were part of community life and had a deeper significance and relevance to the community than entertainment that was the aim of the western theatre.

As part of their mission to civilise the ‘savage’ natives of the African colonies the colonial policy makers introduced English literature, of which drama, especially ‘well-made plays’ and Shakespeare, were integral parts. They also sought to institutionalise this concept of theatre by introducing festivals, competitions, playhouses and habits of theatre-going peculiar to the western urban societies, inducing the English educated Africans to emulate and participate in these practices.

Much of Anglophone African theatre that emerged during the anti-colonial nationalist struggle and after decolonisation, was fueled by a desire to replace or remake colonial institutions and theatre practices with ‘African’ forms and institutions, thus using the indigenous resources to articulate problems, insights and solutions to the dilemmas left behind by the colonial policies and exacerbated by the vagaries of post-independence societies. This forms a common thread in Anglophone African theatre across the continent, regardless of the location of playwright and audience.

Sources of Theatre in the CaribbeanThe ritual and the festival theatres of Africa influenced the customs related to agricultural cycles and the Christian traditions introduced by the colonisers. For instance, the carnival may have been transplanted to the region by European settlers, but once adopted by the Afro-Caribbeans, it was transformed into an expression of surviving African traditions, coloured by local experience. Other festivals associated with the vegetation cycle, such as Crop-over in Barbados, or with the liturgical calendar such as the Christmas Jonkonnu in Jamaica, the La Rose Flower Festival in St. Lucia, or the Tramp in Guyana, all colour European implants into the agricultural colonies with strong traditional expressions drawn from Afro-Caribbean life.

Storytelling and pantomime were other residues of African performative and oral arts preserved in memory and refigured to reflect the realities of the life of slavery on the plantations. Besides this, there was the influence of the colonial culture. The western forms were assimilated into the African memories and practices. This occurred in two stages, the first of which was the appropriation of forms like the minstrelsy and the Camboulay (in America and the Caribbean respectively) by people of African origin. Even though these forms denigrated blacks, they also had an enormous indoctrination potential. So effective was the indoctrination, in fact, that even when the forms became eventually appropriated by the slaves, they introduced only a little variation to its practice. The Caribbean version of Camboulay practised by the people of African descent, was a little different from the minstrelsy in the sense that the objective was no longer to caricature blacks but to publicise the yoke and agonies of slavery and the various responses that blacks had to make under this condition. This altered orientation of the Caribbean Camboulay provoked hostility from the same white critics who lavished applause on the form when it was used by whites to denigrate blacks.

In the second stage, the Caribbean artists trained themselves in the arts of the colonial cultures to such a level that they were charged with mimicry (see Module 2). Finally, a synthesis occurred between African influences and European influences, producing a theatre that was rooted in the history and the life on the islands.

‘Anglophone’ theatre in Africa and Afro-Caribbean theatre: Common characteristics Despite the similarity of sources and a common colonial legacy pointed out above, the theatre of the Anglophone areas of Africa differ according to ethnic groups because of the difference in language and in indigenous performance traditions. This directly influences the form and structure of modern theatre in Anglophone African societies. This may be seen as a primary characteristic of Anglophone African theatre. For example, the Yoruba and the Igbo nationalities were part of the British Protectorate of West Africa, and now are parts of a single nation, Nigeria. Both were influenced by the colonial theatre of England which was taught and practised in English medium schools and universities as part of the civilising mission of the colonisers.

Despite the heterogeneity of the Caribbean slave communities, Africa was a unifying factor across the islands. The role played by African traditions in Caribbean drama as in all Caribbean literatures by writers of African descent, was that of a symbolic marker of the past, of a common home. Finally a Caribbean aesthetic emerged, independent of both African and Western paradigms, but combining both with the lived experience and history of the islands.

There is thus a commonality in types and forms of traditional performance arts which have been adopted as part of the modern Europhone theatre in Africa and the Caribbean. Some examples of these commonalities are

1.  The masquerade: Masks are used for different purposes, the most important being to facilitate the passage of the spirits into the human world their performances are scheduled at certain dates, periods of time and venues, just as dramatists perform in theatres, masquerades, at village squares or arenas specially marked out by the people. The human performer embodies a particular ancestral spirit, and hence acquires great social and spiritual power when he dons the mask. He is no longer a mere human being. An example may be found in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, when Okonkwo wears the mask and becomes the vehicle of the spirits.

This form of role playing has been called the ‘theatre of complicity’—though the spectators know and recognise the human being behind the mask, they believe that he has supernatural powers and abilities while he is masked. So the complicity of the audience in the performance is a key feature of the masquerade. Since the masks are always supported by a chorus, and the masked dance or masquerade is accompanied by music, the theatrical elements are pronounced. The masquerade as a dramatic device can be found in Soyinka’s Dance of the Forest and The Road. In Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman the fear of desecrating the mask by using it as a mere disguise or fancy dress shows the power of the mask and its potential to elevate performance above the mundane.

In the Caribbean, the carnival retains the use of masquerades as a symbol of tremendous power for audiences that harbour a belief in the efficacy of gods and spirits. The Trinidad Carnival has produced a number of traditional masquerades, each with characteristic oration, gesture, mime and dance facilitated by the choreographer Beryl McBurnie.

2. The influence of local oral genres: Many ethnic communities on the African continent have similar forms of orally transmitted and composed verbal art, which differ by language and custom, but are occasioned by similar geographical location, beliefs or social systems. Examples include the hunters’ songs among the Yoruba (ijala) and among the Igbo (egbenuoba), songs of praise and insult, like the oriki among the Yoruba or the izibongo among the Zulu; invocations and prayers to various gods; the animal tales common among different groups, the characteristics associated with the animals varying according to the status of the animal among the community In the Caribbean, some of these features survive : for example, the Trinidad pantomime’s 1949 production of Brer Anancy, the popular folk character of Ananse, the spider who lives by his wits, whose stories are common among the Akan-speaking peoples of West Africa.

3. Influence of Christian churches: The European civilising mission in Africa was spearheaded by the Christian missionaries who were the first to set up schools for the colonised and thus became the pioneers of colonial education, which was later taken up by the colonial state. The church actively opposed indigenous performances – dance, masquerades, ritual performances and orature were all forcibly banned, and an alternate civilised culture was manufactured to put in its place. The contours of this civilised culture has been discussed earlier (See Modules 2 and 3) and how theatre was affected by it is discussed below. Here we will look at the influence of the church on the performance traditions and the resultant effects on theatre. In Child of Two Worlds, Mugo Gatheru remembers from his childhood the difference between African forms of worship including song, dance and music and the sober services of the Christian church. As African converts grew in number they gradually transformed the various Church offices in which they participated. The nature of worship changed and the use of music increased. Finally indigenous theatrical forms were used to propagate the faith, all the while keeping within the parameters of performance allowed by the church.

The first professional theatres in Nigeria were companies created by Yoruba actor- managers like Hubert Ogunde, Kola Ogunmola, and Duro Ladipo, who were teachers involved in dramatizing. Bible stories in African Christian churches. For example, Ogunde’s first production was The Garden of Eden (1944), staged in the Church of the Lord, in Lagos.

In the Caribbean too, among those who worked hardest for slave liberation were people prominent in demanding the suppression of the so-called slave culture, and for the same reasons : they obstructed the progress of civilization and were derogatory to the dignity of free-men. These attacks served only to alienate the slaves and to stiffen resistance to any form of control.

4. The influence of English education: Universities and schools set up for the education of a class of Africans (see Modules 2 and 3) played a very important role in the development of ‘post’colonial theatre in Anglophone Africa. This phenomenon has been described by Ngugi wa Thiong’o in his prison memoir Detained where the playwright remembers the school productions of English playwrights ranging from George Bernard Shaw to Noel Coward, the use of lengthy dialogues, elaborate sets and the proscenium box stage, i.e. raised stage with three sides closed and a curtain. Ngugi’s view is that these plays were introduced to counter the upsurge of anti- colonial and patriotic local forms of performance in the local languages, which were more easily accessible to the people in general. They attempted what Ngugi has called a colonisation of the mind by creating an English educated class who could serve as functionaries of the colonial state as required by Indirect Rule.

But this also exposed the Anglophone African student to what the western world termed ‘theatre’ and prompted many now established playwrights; to attempt a convergence between the stage conventions of western theatre , the resources of the local performance forms and rituals , and this characterizes the work of the first generation of Anglophone African playwrights, like Wole Soyinka, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Ama Ata Aidoo, Efua Sutherland, J.P. Clarke ,Ola Rotimi etc.

In the Caribbean, western education provided the only means by which former slaves (after the emancipation of 1834) and their descendants could attain elitist status and gain acceptability as well as respectability. The assimilation of western forms occurred in the era of literate blacks and was a function of indoctrination relating to Western textual and aesthetic paradigms. This indoctrination was sociologically conditioned. The language and form of this induction were also western. The earliest plays in the Anglophone areas were thus part of the ‘Art’ theatre, imitating the British.

5.  The influence of ‘world’ theatre: Shakespeare was an important part of the civilising education offered in the English colonies, and formed part of the syllabus for school certificate examinations in various English colonies. But as Kole Omotoso points out that it was not until the high school student reached his post-graduate years that he learnt to connect the literary texts of Shakespeare with performed drama – and this also enabled him to understand the dramatic resources that existed around him in traditional community life and discern the similarities and differences between the cultural and social economy of the proscenium stage and the indigenous performance traditions. This was simultaneous with the valorisation of colonial cultural formations, which English education was supposed to instill . This dynamic was foundational to the establishment of Anglophone African theatre, as pointed out above. However, the works of Shakespeare and gradually ‘classical’ European playwrights were translated, adapted and refigured in indigenous languages using indigenous forms – effecting what Omotoso calls the domestication of foreign knowledge, by casting it into local languages and forms. Besides translations, adaptations of Shakespeare in English using indigenous forms were written in the Caribbean and in Africa. Also world classics of theatre, like Oedipus Rex (J.P. Clark), Euripedes’ Bacchae, (Soyinka), Efua Sutherland, Joe de Graaft were adapted in English using indigenous forms . The adaptation of foreign material led to a discussion about whether the ethos of the text should be changed to suit the local audiences or simply be translated : and this was a way of connecting emerging African theatre in Europhone languages to ‘world’ theatre.

The early Caribbean artists by virtue of their plural roots and access to diverse cultures, were “natural assimilators”, knowing (and somewhat imbibing) “the literature of Empires, Greek, Roman, British through their essential classics” (Walcott 1970, p. 2). This ability caused them to be branded, among other uncomplimentary sobriquets as “traitors” (Walcott 1970, p. 9) by later artists. The criticism of Caribbean life and aesthetic potential in Eurocentric discourse as well as the criticism of early Caribbean output by Caribbeans themselves was one of the factors that forced a formulation of Caribbean aesthetics.

4. ‘Total Theatre’: This is the principle of integration of theatrical elements—vocal, choral, musical, visual and kinetic – common to African performative arts. It led to the creation of what Brecht would have called ‘total theatre’ —amenable to performance outside the proscenium stage, in the centre of the community as was common in traditional performances.

The most notable instance of Caribbean integrated theatre is the Jamaica Pantomime, first introduced by the Little Theatre Movement in 1941 in imitation of the English version.

Theatre Genres in ‘Post’colonial Anglophone Africa1.  Syncretic theatre: Traditionally, in western and Southern Africa, ceremonial theatre for entertainment was provided by travelling players like the Alarinjo in Yorubaland, consisting of music, dancing, drumming and acting. In contemporary times. Syncretic theatre, inspired by local forms and western influence, like the South African dance-drama form malipenge, emerged from these traditional entertainment theatres . Examples in both local languages and in English include the Nigerian Concert Party, e.g., the theatre of Herbert Ogunde and Duro Ladipo, the Ghanian story-telling theatre of Efua Sutherland , the travelling South African musical theatre of Gibson Kente or the Sierra Leonian dance-drama form in Krio.

2.  Literary Theatre: Dramatists exposed to western theatre practices as well as local performance forms and educated and writing in the colonisers’ language. Akinwande Oluwole Soyinka, Ama Ata Aidoo, J.P.Clarke were the earliest practitioners of this type of theatre . Dramatists writing in this genre have increasingly moved closer to the local performance forms : Femi Osofisan, Bode Sowande, Tess Onuwuyeme, all Nigerian dramatists, attempt to mould both language and form learnt from the coloniser with speech rhythms , oratures and performance forms of their communities. Onuwuyeme is Igbo and Osofisan and Sowande are Yoruba.

3.  Theatre for Development / Community theatre: This was begun through the pioneering work done by Alec Dickson in the former Gold Coast, now Ghana, in the 1940s. Being an educationist concerned with mass education, social welfare and community development programmes, Dickson used dramatic techniques to popularise these issues without being aware of the import of drama. His aim was to change the social atmosphere and empower the local people. Many like Zakes Mda in South Africa, Robert Serumaga in Uganda and in the Rural Arts programme in Eritrea, have followed this model, using theatre to raise awareness.

The Laedza Batanani popular theatre program in Botswana fused extension work with the performing arts. Laedza Batanani, which in Setswana means ‘The sun is already up. It is time to come and work together’, started in the northern Bokalala region of Botswana. In the mid-1980’s following the scheme of improvisation practised by the Botswana group, started the Theatre for Community Development project in Lesotho’s National University attempting to involve the communities in urban and rural areas and prison populations to create awareness about development issues.

4. Protest Theatre: The township theatre in apartheid South Africa, as well as the Hit and Run theatre in Zambia may be seen as examples of this genre: these are shaped in form and content by the situation which gives rise to protest. In South Africa the ideology of apartheid operated in the theatre as everywhere else: black Africans were not allowed to congregate, whites and blacks could not act on stage together and breaking of these laws invited severe punishment. Hence playwrights like Athol Fugard could not perform in his own country because he had a mixed company.

South African workshop plays like Woza Albert share similarities with Fugard’s work which is more literary in language-use but minimalist in form – the actors’ bodies are often the only props, since the performance space where blacks and whites appear together in both stage and audience, is always under state threat and must be easily dismantled in the event of a police raid. The difference between Fugard and agit-prop, an accepted mode of protest theatre, is that Fugard performed in theatre halls across the world, while agit-prop is supposed to be performed in the midst of the audience. The ‘hit and run’ theatre in Zimbabwe is conducted in the public sphere, the oppressed classes striving to keep protest and resistance hidden from authorities. This is another form of agit-prop and formally inspired by the Theatre of the Oppressed of Augusto Boal.

5.  People’s theatre: Ngugi wa Thing’o’s project at the Kamiriithu Cultural Centre, aiming to write and produce plays in Gikuyu instead of English, with the participation of the local community at every stage, introduced a new form to African theatre. These plays were performed in Gikuyu, using the oratures and performance forms of the community which was the audience and the producer, but published in both Gikuyu and in translation.

Characteristics of Indigenous Theatre in the CaribbeanTheatre that grew out of the synthesis of European and African elements, and located in the Caribbean had some broad characteristics, shared across the islands, but varying according to the specific coloniser and the imposed culture, as well as the specific history of colonisation. Among these characteristics are:

Representation of Africans: the complicated blend of desire and repudiation that Caribbean ideologues have shown toward England and English writers, the gendering of national and racial discourses, the evidently natural association of Creole languages with “folk” or working class “authenticity”—might appear from the vantage point of the latter half of the nineteenth century.

The European and American theatres typified Black characters as subordinates, often villains; and occasionally as romanticized noble savages. The first step on the road to a truly indigenous drama was for Caribbean dramatists to write and perform plays about black people as central rather than peripheral figures in the stage action. The dramatic pageants of Marcus Garvey staged at Edelweiss Park in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1930, and the drama about Toussaint L’Ouverture, the slave who led the Haitian revolution, written by the Trinidad historian C.L. R. James and performed in London in 1936 are among the earliest examples of this development in the Anglophone Caribbean theatre.

Genre: Caribbean playwrights overturned the prevailing view in the imported Western theatre that the concerns of black folk were most suited to comedic interpretation by choosing issues that were part of the common experience of the folk and, without removing comedy, to give these concerns the serious consideration they deserved. The 1938 drama Pocomania by Una Marson, showing the impact of a Jamaican religious cult on a staid middle-class family, is an early witness of this development.

Language: Vernacular expression was first employed in drama as a way to ridicule peasant or working-class characters who could not use what passed for standard English speech. Creole was used as a marker of authenticity in depicting the lowly status of the speaker. It was used by people of African descent, marking them as inferior, and claiming authenticity in the process. This attitude contributed further to a widening of the cultural gap between the educated upper layer and the broad base of Caribbean society. The colonial emphasis on the value of ‘good’ English was rejected by local playwrights in favour of the vernacular to present the real lives of the Afro-Caribbeans, bringing language into the arena of anti-colonial politics, attempting to decolonise theatre, as also other genres (See Module 2)

Role of audience: This is an element related to the African performance traditions, especially oral story telling in which the audience participates in the performance through the call-response device.

Salutation and closure: Since the plays are not performed on the proscenium stage, instead of a curtain or lights to mark the beginning and end of performances, specific oral forms of salutation and closure are used.