Drama

The influence of classical literature and mythology in the development of African drama is evident mainly among numerous west and South African playwrights, whose identities range across the ethnic and racial spectra and include white, black, Afrikaaner, Yoruban, Ijaw, Ghanaian, Congan, and Cameroonian. Greek drama and mythological sources have been used in modern African drama for means quite different from the causes ofimperialism and colonialism that they have sometimes served in the literature, art, and music of nineteenth - and twentieth-century Europe. Some African dramas

Derived from classical sources, almost all of which are tragedies, explore political issues relevant to colonial and postcolonial society, while others touch upon issues pertinent to tribal Africa and feature religious and folk rituals. These plays are written in languages such as English, Afrikaans, French, Zulu, Xhosa, seSotho, Yoruban, and Tamil and explore all types of relationships between various characters who emerge as complex and fragmented figures. They are hybrid dramas that reflect not only their postcolonial and classical origins but also the split identities of their authors.

2.1 Political drama

The second half of the twentieth century gave rise to the birth and development of political drama as a genre on the African subcontinent. Greek and Roman literature and mythological sources are used in modern African drama for the expression of a range of political viewpoints. These dramatists adapt the storylines, themes, motifs, and characters of classical literature and history in order to deal with political issues involving power, freedom, and justice and to expose their opposites of powerlessness, oppression, and injustice. Many African dramas derived from classical sources constitute both an explicit challenge to established political authority and a form of political protest and resistance in societies whose writers have composed their works in a climate of political oppression and injustice. Some of these plays also serve as a type of political and social protest against colonialism and neocolonialism, while others promote political ideologies and nationalist causes. While some of the dramas discussed below preserve the broad outlines of particular Greek plays, others incorporate classical motifs and elements without reproducing the narrative details of a particular classical drama or myth. An example of the latter is the Congan Sylvain Bemba’s L’enfer, c’est Orfeo (Hell, it’s Orpheus, 1970), which evokes the tale of Orpheus in its title, main character (Orfeo), and quest motif to deal with the period of Portuguese decolonization in Guinea Bissau.

2.1.1 Antigone. The themes of Sophocles’ Antigone resonate broadly in several modern African dramas featuring themes of political oppression and resistance, racial and cultural prejudice, social and economic injustice, and the triumph of the human spirit in the face of overwhelming odds. The most well known of the African dramas derived from Sophocles’ Antigone is The Island (1973), by the South Africans Athol Fugard, John Kani, and Winston Ntshona. The Island incorporates the Antigone mainly in the performance of a short and radically adapted version of the original. In The Island Creon, played by Kani, embodies the oppressive power of apartheid, while Antigone, played by Ntshona, represents individual freedom and human rights. Fugard, Kani, and Ntshona also weave into the fabric of The Island themes drawn from or coincidental with Sophocles’ Antigone - the theme of conflict between the state and the individual, for instance, and the distinction between human law and divine justice. But The Island is primarily a political drama that has appropriated and adapted a classical form to explore the human costs of a particular form of political power. The evil of the political power exercised is in the form of apartheid and embodied literally in the cruelty of the prison guard Hodoshe, who victimizes the innocent prisoners. The fate of Winston, who is serving a life sentence for burning his passbook, mobilizes the feelings of the reader against the system of apartheid, which dehumanizes and attempts to suck the life force out of its victims. The performance of The Island constituted a political act because the regime recognized that it was not merely a damning portrayal of apartheid but also a call for resistance and action against it.

The main theme of Odale’s Choice (1967), by Kamau Brathwaite, a Caribbean dramatist who lived in Ghana for many years, is the defiance of tyranny, symbolized by the figure of Creon, whose name provocatively remains European although he is an African; the names of the other characters adapted from the Antigone are Africanized. Odale must choose whether or not to challenge Creon’s tyranny and to bury her brother Tawia (Polynices), who has been captured in battle, slain by Creon, and denied burial. Odale refuses to accept Creon’s oppression and, as Antigone does, gives her brother a rough burial in accordance with African and Greek customs. Creon decides to banish rather than execute Odale; she rejects Creon’s pardon, however, until Tawia can be buried, whereupon Creon sentences her to death and orders her body to be laid next to her brother’s corpse. Odale’s choice is to die in the process of resisting tyranny rather than to submit to it by accepting Creon’s pardon without the burial of her brother. Because of its lack of application to a specific country or culture, its message of resistance in the face of political oppression is applicable to any number of African countries.

The Nigerian Femi (Osctfisan’s Tegonni: An African Antigone (1999b) is set in northern Yorubaland at the end of the nineteenth century, a period of British colonialism. The main theme involves the confrontation between oppressive tyranny and racism, represented by Lieutenant General Carter-Ross, the British colonial governor of Nigeria, and the oppressed who courageously defy tyranny, represented by Tegonni, a Yoruban princess. As in Sophocles’ original, two brothers warred over who was to succeed their father and died. Oyekunle, the rightful heir, has died along with his brother Adeloro, who was backed by the British in his attempt to usurp the throne and is granted a burial with honors. Carter-Ross has ordered Oyekunle’s body to be displayed in the market square as a warning to all those would defy the British, but Tegonni manages to give Oyekunle a minimal burial. The governor decides to pardon her if she apologizes for her action, but when Tegonni refuses to conform, he orders that she be sold into slavery; in the resulting melee Tegonni is shot. (Osctfisan not only uses Tegonni to explore issues of colonialism, imperialism, racism, slavery, and capitalism, but also connects these issues to modern Africa, especially Nigeria, where military oppression and a lack of political freedom continued long after the departure of the colonial powers. The related issues of political oppression and economic exploitation, therefore, are not simply or even ultimately attributable to race: even indigenous Africans cooperated with the Europeans against their own people because of the political and economic benefits. Ultimately the choice of whether to resist tyranny, as Antigone does, or submit to it is an individual choice.

Silvain Bemba’s Black Wedding Candles for Blessed Antigone (1990), the fourth African drama based on Sophocles’ Antigone, is a translation of Bemba’s 1988 play entitled Noces posthumes de Santigone (Posthumous weddings of Santigone; 1995). Melissa Yade, the fiancee of President Titus Saint Just Bund of Amandla, a fictitious African country, is a black student at a university in Birmingham, England. During the course of her dramatic performances, Melissa does not merely play Antigone in Sophocles’ Antigone but gradually merges her identity with Antigone, which prefigures her role as an agent of justice later in Bemba’s play. Meanwhile back in Amandla, Titus is killed in a military coup. Melissa returns to Amandla and is treated as her husband’s widow. Transformed completely into Antigone by this stage, Melissa denounces the oppressive regime that has replaced the government of her husband and declares her intention to have a public funeral for him. She is led away and boards a plane out of her country, which plunges into the sea, killing her along with the other passengers.

2.1.2 Orestes. A few South African anti-apartheid productions are based upon the story of Orestes. In Orestes (1978) Fugard conflates the situation of Orestes to the predicament of John Harris, a white South African who as a form of political protest against apartheid in 1964 left a suitcase filled with dynamite near a bench marked ‘‘For Whites Only’’ in the Johannesburg Railway Station; it exploded, killing a little girl and burning an elderly woman. Harris’s deed raises the questions of the extent to which violence is justified by an honorable cause and whether Orestes’ killing of Clytemnestra falls into the same category. While Orestes at least had recourse to a homicide court on the Areopagus that ended his family’s blood vendetta, there seemed to be no politically effective way for Harris to express his anger at the injustice of apartheid; nor in such a system did he have the chance, as Orestes did, of absolution, and he was subsequently executed.

The story of Orestes and its application to apartheid South Africa are further explored in The Song of Jacob Zulu (1993) by Tug Yourgrau, a white South African-born playwright raised in the US. Yourgrau was impressed by the similarity in circumstances between Orestes and Andrew Zondo, on whom his main character Jacob Zulu is based. Andrew Zondo, the black teenage son of a Zulu Christian minister, became an ANC guerrilla and planted a mine in a garbage can that caused the deaths of 5 men and injured over 50 others shortly before Christmas, 1985. In developing the story of Zondo’s trial and execution for the stage, Yourgrau (1993: viii, x) was particularly inspired by Aeschylus’ Oresteia and Sophocles’ Oedipus cycle. The Song of Jacob Zulu rejoices over the end of apartheid and expresses hope for a system of true justice in a similar vein to the Oresteia. As in Aeschylus’ trilogy, the trial of a young man becomes the backdrop against which a humane legal system can emerge from a destructive cycle of blood violence and vengeance.

Mark Fleishman and Jennie Reznek’s ironically entitled In the City of Paradise (1998a, 1998b) examines the problem of howto stop the cyclical pattern ofviolence and revenge in the postapartheid era. Fleishman and Reznek’s production is based mainly upon the story of Orestes and Electra in Aeschylus’ Oresteia, Sophocles’ Electra, and Euripides’ Orestes and Electra. After Orestes and Electra avenge Cly-temnestra’s murder of their father, Agamemnon, by killing Clytemnestra and Aegisthus, they are put on trial for matricide and convicted. As the chorus begins to attack Orestes and Electra, the herald announces that the judges have decided to grant amnesty to them and all others who give a truthful account of their deeds so that the cycle of violence and vengeance is broken. Tyndareus and his wife Leda refuse to accept the decision, however, which casts a shadow over the proceedings and suggests that national reconciliation will remain an elusive goal until South Africans are ready to forgive the perpetrators of violence and abusers of human rights under apartheid.

2.1.3 Medea. The South Africans Guy Butler, Mark Fleishman, and Jennie Reznek detect an allegory of their country’s political situation in the story of Medea. Butler’s Demea (1990) transposes the main characters, setting, and time of Euripides’ Medea to the Eastern Cape of the late 1820s, prior to the time of the so-called ‘‘Great Trek.’’ At the time of Demea’s conception in the late 1950s, it seemed to Butler that the English speakers in South Africa, represented by the figure of Jonas (an anagram of Jason) Barker, were voting for the racist Afrikaner nationalist party, symbolized by Johannes Kroon (an adaptation of Creon), at the expense of the colored and black population, represented by Demea (an anagram of Medea). Jonas, a trader and former British officer, intends to lead a party of racially mixed trekkers north, but instead decides to join a group of white trekkers led by Kroon, who is an advocate of racial separatism, and to marry his daughter. Butler portrays Jonas's abandonment of his wife Demea, a Tembu princess, and their two sons as a betrayal of the black and colored community by Anglophone South Africans. In a scene reminiscent of the end of the Medea, Demea arranges for her sons to be in Kroon's laager of the trek party, which she knows will be attacked by African warriors and lead to their deaths. Demea’s motivation is based not only on her desire for revenge against her desertion by Jonas but also purportedly to save her children from racial abuse.

Fleishman and Reznek’s Medea (1994a, 1994b) is based mainly upon the Medea of Euripides, and to a lesser extent also upon Seneca’s Medea, Apollonius’ Argonautica, and Valerius Flaccus. The postapartheid production draws parallels between Jason, driven by his ambition to become king, and those who abused their power under the aegis of apartheid, and between Medea, the exploited barbarian, and the marginalized nonwhite races. After Medea joins Jason, she attempts to integrate herself into the Greek social order for his benefit but is pushed aside by a society that has never really embraced her. Sacrificed by an ambitious Jason and banished by Creon, she seeks revenge against her oppressors by staging the murder of their sons. Medea's act is given the motivation of saving her sons from the abuse and humiliation she has suffered. The human cost of Jason’s single-minded pursuit of power is given graphic illustration through the deaths of the sons that Medea has borne him, a loss that applies within the context of the modern production to the circumstances of both the oppressor and the marginalized under the apartheid system.

2.1.4 Dionysus/Bacchus. Two African dramatists use the figure of Dionysus to comment on the abuse of power and political freedom. The Nigerian Wole Soyinka has adapted in spirit and in its treatment of Dionysus the Bacchae of Euripides in his

The Bacchae of Euripides: A Communion Rite (1973). While the main episodes of the Greek original are retained in broad outline, the chorus is Africanized, as in other African dramas inspired by Greek tragedy, in this case with slaves whose leader, Soyinka recommends, should be wholly negroid (Soyinka 1973: xiii). Soyinka makes Euripides’ treatment of oppression and religious conflict relevant to the African context by transferring his setting toward the end of the Peloponnesian War to the postcolonial period. Pentheus is likened to an African military dictator through his position as general and oppression of his people; the Greeks are linked by the slave chorus to their masters in the form of colonial oppressors; and Dionysus is identified with the political power of the marginalized, who are embodied in the chorus of slaves. Soyinka transculturates the Greek tale of Pentheus and Dionysus into a story of a confrontation between an African tyrant and a revolutionary who strives to free his people from the yoke of political and religious oppression.

In Bacchus in die Boland (1954) the Afrikaans playwright Bartho Smit uses Bacchus to satirize the complex political circumstances of South Africa. There are clear allusions to the subject of Euripides’ Bacchae, although most characters in the drama have names of South African historical figures. Bacchus comes to Boland to confront Willem Adriaanse, a Boland wine farmer who maltreats his works and neighbors. Willem challenges Bacchus to a wine-drinking contest and passes out from drinking too much wine. In Saturnalian fashion Bacchus rehabilitates Willem by compelling him to hand over his farm to his servants and to play the role of a colored worker. Eventually Bacchus restores the old social order, whereupon Willem resolves altruistically to divide up his land with his subordinates, whom he has come to view as his fellow men. But his servants reply that it is against the law and that they would rather work for their pay. In exasperation over the failure of Bacchus, Willem Adriaanse, who has to deal with an even more difficult situation than before, chases Bacchus off his farm. The political reality of South Africa in Bacchus in die Boland is manifest: the victims of apartheid must be ready to embrace transformation as much as its perpetrators. It is not merely the oppressor who must change, but the entire lawbound community, which is not yet ready for the sort of solution attempted by Willem Adriaanse. Until the mindset of the victims of apartheid changes, the old order will remain in power, just as it does at the end of the drama. At the end of the play Willem tells Bacchus that he will have to come back later and try again, words that would eventually prove prophetic when, 20 years after the publication of Bacchus in die Boland, South Africa finally took the first step toward fulfilling Bacchus’ vision of an equal society when it elected its first government aspiring to the principles of democracy and nonracialism.

2.1.5 Oedipus and the Trojan women. African playwrights use the stories of Oedipus and the Trojan women to draw attention to the ruinous consequences of political and military conflict. The Nigerian Ola Rotimi transfers a Greek model of tragedy and the Oedipus myth to a Yoruban setting in The Gods Are Not to Blame (1971). The play, whose plot structure roughly follows that of Sophocles’ Oedipus

Rex, features Odewale (Oedipus), king of Kutuje (Thebes); Ojuola (Jocasta), queen of Kutuje; Aderopo (Creon), son of Adetusa (Laius) and Ojuola; and Baba Fakunle (Teiresias). Odewale is made king for arriving in Kutuje and freeing the people from the Ikolu tribe. Adetusa’s bodyguard reports that Adetusa was slain by robbers at the crossroads between Ede and Oshogbo, but a flashback reveals that Odewale killed Adetusa when the latter tried to take over his land and insulted his ethnicity. The duel between Odewale and Adetusa not only exemplifies the intertribal tension and ethnic prejudice of Africa but also serves as a dramatic parable for the internecine conflicts in various regions of the subcontinent, including the Nigerian civil war, during which Rotimi’s play was composed. The title of the drama and the final scene suggest that it is the African rulers and people, not foreign powers, who must assume responsibility for their problems. The Cameroonian Jacqueline Leloup also adapts the myth of Oedipus to an African context in Gueido (1986). This play commences with the birth of a long-awaited son (Gueidio) to a chief. A soothsayer discovers by interpreting a sign on the wrist of a child that he is afflicted by a curse and will kill his father and commit incest with his sister; subsequently the village exiles Gueidli along with his mother. Eventually Gueid(i confronts and supplants the chief, then marries his daughter. After Gueidlo discovers that he has fulfilled the curse, he drinks some poison and dies.

Femi (Osiofisan’s The Women of Owu, first performed in 2004, is an adaptation of Euripides’ The Trojan Women. Set in southwest Nigeria in 1821, the play starts the morning after the fall of Owu, a city that had been besieged for seven years by Ife and Ijebu forces in alliance with Oyo mercenaries. Although the pretext for the war was to free the economically prosperous market of Apomu from the control of Owu, a strong personal motivation is apparent. Iyunlowe, wife of Okunade, had been abducted by an Owu prince. The Women of Owu highlights the senseless nature of war and its destructive effects, especially upon innocent women and children. Nor are the conquerors to be spared, since Orisaye, a Cassandra-like figure, prophesies that they will wander from one battle to another before dying, a prediction that recalls the wanderings of Odysseus on his return journey to Ithaca.

2.1.6 Tyrants and generals. A few Afrikaans dramas derived from the classical world dealing with political issues feature important historical figures who were tyrants or generals. These plays end with disastrous consequences not only for their protagonists, who are unable to rise above the challenges presented by their political dilemmas, but also for their numerous victims, who are defenseless against the misuse or nonuse of power. D. J. Opperman uses the figure of Periander, a tyrant of Corinth in the early sixth century bc, in his verse tragedy Periandros van Korinthe (1960, first published 1954) to examine the relationship between poetry and power. The subject recalls the role of poetry in Greek society explored in Plato’s Apology (22a-b), Ion (530a-542b), and The Republic (376e-403c, 595a-608b). The combination of political and artistic power is shown to be particularly dangerous, since Periander as a poet explores the limits of human wickedness and as king has the power to put his designs into action. This idea is reminiscent ofPlato’s idea in the Republic that poetry is positively harmful to morality and is capable of transmitting evil (376e-403c passim). As an exploration of a political theme, Periandros van Korinthe upholds the cause and principles of democracy, but an intertextual reading of the play with Opperman’s Vergelegen (Hinterland, 1956), which defends segregation and Afrikaner nationalism over integration and civil rights, suggests that Opperman is advocating a form of democracy with participation limited in scope, the type of government that existed in South Africa under apartheid.

N. P. van Wyk Louw’s Germanicus (1956) is based upon figures prominent in Tiberian Annals 1-3, such as Germanicus, his wife Agrippina, Livia, Piso, and his wife Plancina. Set early in the reign of Tiberius in the second decade of the first century AD, the play examines the consequences of political passivity and inaction. The various characters of the play, especially Piso and Tiberius, attempt to involve Germanicus in the pursuit and maintenance of power - for themselves and for Rome. While the inaction of Germanicus is attributable to his belief that the goal of ruling justly does not justify the violent means required to gain power, the basis of his passive acquiescence in his own demise, which is contrived by Livia, Tiberius’ mother, is the Stoic belief that one gains the ultimate freedom through death. The despairing portrait of power in the Germanicus seems to preclude the possibility of achieving a just and political order free of corruption without resorting to inhumane means to achieve it. On the surface a reader could be tempted to apply this to the situation of indigenous blacks under apartheid, where the perpetration of violence formed an important part of the struggle for freedom and justice. During the 1980s, the South African authorities had an increasingly difficult time in containing an upsurge in political violence across the country. Tiberius reminds Germanicus of the difficulty of maintaining power in the face of hydra-headed resistance (Scene 6, pp. 71-2). The circumstances of the Roman empire under Tiberius and Germanicus, who after quelling one rebellion in the empire must immediately turn to suppressing another, resemble the situation under apartheid. Tiberius’ grim conclusion about stumbling further into the filth until they sink and the waters wash over them resonates with relevance for South Africa.

Caesar: ’n Drama (1961) by Andre Brink is a reenactment of the conspiracy and assassination of Caesar on the Ides of March, 44 bc. The drama deals with the issue of whether the use of violence is justified as a means of preventing tyranny and the loss of freedom. Numerous historical characters such as Caesar, Calpurnia, Cleopatra, Antony, Cicero, Brutus, and Cassius are present throughout the play. Obstinacy and pride, along with an excessive desire for power, lead to Caesar’s downfall. The conspirators, who associate the Republic with the concept of freedom, fear that absolute power will enslave Rome to the will of Caesar and result in the loss of political freedom. On the Ides of March the conspirators stab Caesar as he enters the senate house, whereupon he falls and dies ironically at the statue of Pompey, the figure of republican liberty that he had defeated at Pharsalus. The publication of Caesar: ’n Drama coincided with South Africa’s declaring itself a republic. Since there are several passages in which characters speak about the freedom of the republic and democracy, the play seems to constitute a criticism of the South African regime. Cicero declaims to Caesar on the people’s love of freedom, sentiments that could be applied to the situation of politically aware black Africans under apartheid. The subsequent murder of Caesar is portrayed as a blow struck for freedom and democracy, but to Caesar the perceived advantages of democracy - the freedom to speak, worship, and vote as one pleases - are deceptive. There is also a description of the loss of political direction, the anarchy and political vengeance that can result when ‘‘freedom’’ is finally gained. While Caesar exposes the trappings of democracy as illusory, his murder suggests that violence may be necessary to bring about political change. There is a potential application of the words and action of this play to apartheid South Africa, where many whites viewed democracy with suspicion and some black activists considered violence a transformative tool.

2.2 Nonpolitical drama

Some African dramas adapted or inspired by plots and characters of Greek drama are concerned with religious and other nonpolitical subjects. The Ijaw Nigerian J. P. Clark recalls the ritualistic origins of Greek drama in The Song of a Goat (1964), a play about sterility and fertility. The Song of a Goat forms the first part of a trilogy of plays that features the working out of a family curse, a Nigerian version of the Sophoclean Oresteia. Zifa, a fisherman and part-time ship’s pilot, has become impotent after the birth of his first son. His wife, Ebiere, upon the advice of the crippled village Masseur, who serves as the local oracle, encourages Tonye, his younger brother, to take over Zifa’s matrimonial functions. Orukorere, a Cassandra-like figure, prophesies disaster but is disregarded as a raving woman. Ebiere and Tonye engage in intercourse not only without the approval of Zifa but also without the sacrifices necessary to make it acceptable in the eyes of the gods and ancestors. During the sacrifice of a goat Zifa discovers his misfortune. As a result Tonye hangs himself, Ebiere miscarries, and Zifa drowns himself, an event that takes place off-stage in the customary Greek manner.

The plot of Ghanaian Efua Sutherland’s Edufa (1967) is reminiscent of Euripides’ Alcestis and includes the standard chorus of Greek drama. Sutherland provides a detailed account of the circumstances in which Ampona becomes a victim of the calculating materialism of her husband Edufa. After Ampona is tricked under false circumstances into declaring her love for Edufa, thereby unwittingly ensuring her own death through the charm her husband is wearing, she takes vengeance by giving him beads that will deprive him of his fertility. Notwithstanding the ambiguous portrayal of Ampona, Sutherland draws particular attention to the contrast between Edufa’s facade as an emancipated, civilized man who rejects traditional culture in the form of sacrifices and omens but yet consults diviners when approaching death fills him with fear. Edufa ultimately seems to argue for a sensible balance between and application of modern and traditional beliefs.

Although South African playwrights have been mainly concerned with political matters in their dramas, some deal with religious and other issues. The Demetrios (1943) of the Afrikaans writer D. F. Malherbe is based upon Acts 19:23-8, which tells the story of the silversmith Demetrios. The play, which is set in Ephesus, features the exploitation of people’s religious beliefs for financial gain by Demetrios and other silversmiths, who sell small silver temple shrines of Roman Diana. The struggle for religious power sets the worship of Diana and the wisdom of the Greek philosophers against the new Christian gospel as proclaimed by Paul, which is rapidly gaining ascendancy in the hearts and minds of people throughout Asia Minor. Athol Fugard’s Dimetos (1977) has its ultimate origin in a work of Phylarchus, a third-century bc Greek historian, although Fugard’s version is derived from the myth of Dimoetes in the Narrationum amatoriarum libellus (Little book of love stories) of the first-century bc poet Parthenius. Fugard’s drama highlights forbidden love and the latent human passions of its characters. Dimetos has a secret love for his niece Lydia, a Phaedra-like figure. Danilo, in Dionysian fashion, suddenly appears on the scene. He attempts to seduce Lydia, who then hangs herself. Later a corpse washes upon the rocks, which as it decays almost causes Dimetos to have a mental breakdown. Even African dramas that are not heavily classical sometimes contain many such elements, an example being Douglas Livingstone’s radio play The Sea My Winding Sheet (1978), which contains a large range of Greek gods and heroes.