Week 1: Chapter One: Definition and Background

Specific objectives

- Define drama
- Tell the relationship between drama and culture
- Explain how oral narratives can be classified a drama in African context

Development

What is Theatre and Drama?

Theatre and drama are delicate terms because of their multiple meanings. For example,
according to The Oxford Companion to the English Language, the term theatre comes from the
Latin ‘theatrum’, Greek ‘theatron’ from ‘theatshai’, meaning to behold. It is a place where
drama is performed. The term, like stage, is metonymically is extended to drama itself, and is
regarded as presentation rather than text.

This clarification implies that the meaning of the term theatre was broadened to mean drama.
As a result, drama is conceived as a logical extension of theatre.

The Routledge Dictionary of Literary Terms states: “as a form of literature, drama has been
studied for centuries – ‘a poem written for representation’ (Ben Johnson). In other words, it has
been judged primarily as a poem, and all that peculiarly belongs to the stage – acting,
production, scenery, effects – have been subsumed under the vague term ‘representation’. The
alternative is to invert that position, and stress the representation before the poem. In the theatre,
the poet’s art is only one among many, and it is not an essential one: indeed, words at all are
not essential. In Greek the term meant simply to act or perform, and the definition is still valid;
all others are derivative (Childs and Fowler 2006: 63).

Aristotle in his Poetics defines drama as the imitation of action and he lists six parts which are
indispensable to it: plot, character, diction, thought, spectacle and melody. Aristotle thus sees
drama as representation and goes on to say: “representation is natural to human beings from
childhood. They differ from the other animals in this: man tends most towards representation
and learns his first lessons through representation. Also, everyone delights in representation.
An indication of this is what happens in fact: we delight is looking at the most detailed images
of things which in themselves we see with pain” (Aristotle Poetics 1, 14447a in Norton
Anthology of Criticism and Theory).
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Drama and Cultural Performance

There is an intrinsic relationship between drama and cultural performance. Every theory of the
origins of drama, either in Ancient Greece or in African early civilizations associate drama to
cultural performances, religious ceremonies, rituals and myths. Drama is thus inherent to
peoples’ cultures, traditions and religious life. Mzo Sirayi asserts:

I approached several elders who were and are still revered and respected for their knowledge of
cultural performances and history… The common frequently repeated notion is that precolonial
theatre has existed for as long as Africans have been in Africa. It is as old as the history of
African people (Sirayi 2012: 5-6). He gives among other examples the wedding ceremony
performance among the Ndebele, the Xhosa and the Zulu where ceremonies are painted with
dances, chanting, and scenery demonstrations.

In Togolese context, traditional festivals which are celebrated in every regional community
contain dramatic elements in several ways: dance, music, acrobatic demonstrations,
masquerades, invocation of the supernatural, audience, actors, etc., are elements that sustain
dramatic aspect of these performances.

1. Background to African Anglophone Drama: an Overview

If by theatre one means a performance in an appointed place with a playing audience and paid
actors, with scenery, costumes and make-up, well-rehearsed and adequately publicized, it can
justifiably be said that drama has always existed in Africa. Myths, legends, epic poems and
stories correspond in Black Africa to the peak of African wisdom. Theatre finds its subject
matter in mythology, history and customs. Bakary Traoré contends that the first manifestations
of Negro-African theatre are in religious and cosmic ceremonies. The Negro-African theatre
could not escape the religious imperative which dominates every institution in Black Africa.
Among the Bambara, Mousso Koroni, the first created female, rebelling against her husband,
is the central figure of the performances which took place after harvesting. In Dahomey and
Nigeria, the cult devoted to the orishas and the voodoo is an occasion for productions where
song and dance mingle in order to relive and imitate the passions, wars, and noble achievements
of the ancestors.

These ritual acts are at the same time ritual songs and recitals in which certain achievements
related to the family, tribe or the divinity are recounted. Pierre Verger speaking from the
perspective of Yoruba rituals and recitals, compares this with the medieval epic poem. These

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monologues, recited with great feeling by the actors and accompanied by the griots with
appropriate gestures and mimes already verge on the theatre properly speaking (Verger 1982).
Verger also sees in these ceremonies the seeds of drama and considers the traditional priests as
stage directors and the griots as the leaders of the orchestra. In the same way, myths which try
to explain the origins of man, the creation of the world, the essence of life, are presented during
the merry evenings of social intercourse as mimed legend, with guitar accompaniment, as in
the case of Fulbe of Senegal. Some popular legends draw the crowd around the griot actor, a
spectacle which generally takes place either in the village public square or in the compound of
a family chief of the village. In the middle of the large central area, a circle dimly lit by a wood-
fire is formed around the story-teller. A guitar, which the actor plays all through the recital,
sustains the action. And the guitarist from time to time stops playing only to sketch a few dance
steps or mimic a gesture.

1.1. Oral Narratives in Performance

Oral narratives are piece and parcel of African cultural life. In every traditional setting, there
are various ways by which the strength of human perception, intellect, knowledge and potentials
for logical reasoning are tested. Story telling have always integrated various components of
dramatic flavor: archetypes, myths, legends, folktales, proverbs, riddles and jokes. These oral
elements enjoy a long tradition of oral performance in African traditional setting, by either
talented personae like griots, praise-singers in royal compounds or elders during initiation
ceremonies, or during evening after work recreational sessions. The components of dramatic
performance are there: the narrator (s) playing the role of actors, the audience, the stage, the
setting usually in a village square. The stories have plot, characters and setting. But what attracts
our attention as African drama scholars is the fact that these oral narratives follow a certain
theatrical convention of performance. The story or tale proper may suffer passive reception but
the introduction techniques has a drama performance outfit of the beginning of a play:

i. Calling the audience’s attention

During performance, the storyteller takes bodily postures, mime his character’s voice or actions,
create emotional tension in the receptive audience by overemphasizing tragic or comic episodes

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of the story and finally achieves catharsis when spectators purge their emotions. All these
elements lend dramatic tone to the African oral narratives.

1.2. Ritual Drama

The term refers to what are seen as the traditional origins of African theatre in ritual
performances which co-exist today with contemporary drama. But there is a debate over it,
because other scholars claim that African theatre is of colonial origin. The advocates of
ritual drama assert that the priest plays the role of the actor, the people witnessing the ritual
the spectators. The ritual dance is the performance itself.

1.3. Festival Drama

This term is suggested by the Nigerian critic Oyin Ogunba to describe the traditional African
performance modes which occur at traditional festivals. Every tribe or ethnic group in
Africa celebrates a traditional festival of its cultural environment. During these festivals,
there is abundance display of song and dance, rhythmically performed in musical
accompaniment of drums, flutes, guitar, gong, etc. Masquerades and acrobatic dances are
displayed in a dramatic manner to exhibit by so doings the exploits of the heroes of the
tribes. These episodes are colorful and rich in dramatic styles. These are also often moments
of emotional tension and the recollection of old memories of the gathering of the tribe, a
link of common ancestry. The theorists of African drama of cultural expression argue in
favour of the acknowledgement of African festival as a rich dramatic expression.

One may wonder if all that constitutes a theatrical performance as we understand the term today.
Insofar as most myths and legends were acted, we can deduce that the seeds of theatre were
present in Africa as in ancient Greece. Where one needs to clear doubts is that with the
introduction of European education in African drama moves progressively from its
fundamentally religious and ritual nature to take an aesthetic form. Drama, hitherto grounded
in the mythical world of the African cosmos needs to be demystified in order to serve a larger
social purpose: that of entertainment, relaxation, social education and mass sensitization. Art
cannot be dissociated from the society, and drama is there to serve the fundamental recreative
needs of the people.

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Not only myths, legends, and stories, but also customs, manners and the observation of day-to-
day events have been a source of inspiration for satirical comedy and the comedy of manners
in which the Mandingo theatre has excelled. The plays are generally very simple: they consist
of dialogues acted to the accompaniment of songs and dances to which a chorus made up of the
audience lends its voice. The plot is also simple: it may be the story of the kola merchant who
has fallen in love with a coquettish woman who exploits him, or that of the hunter who returns
with an empty bag from a day’s hunting; the belief in the latter case being that the fault lays
with the wife who must have been unfaithful. The hunter begins to watch his wife and ends up
catching her in the act. Theft is another recurrent theme: for example, the popular theme in
Senegal of two young blind men caught red-handed in a millet field. This comedy is close in
many respects to Greek comedy, notably that of Athens, in its alternation of dialogue and
chorus. While lacking the depth or more especially the variety of Aristophanes’ plays (a Greek
comic playwright -450-386 BC), its down – to- earth approach and its bantering spirit are
representative of the mass of the people.

With this in mind, let us note also a genre peculiar to the Negro-African theatre: the recitative,
which is the recounting of the valorous deeds of a family’s forebears and the eulogistic dramas
in which the sagacity of the griots come into play in the reconciliation of two warring families
or clans. There are actors who specialize in this genre. Among the Bobos there are organized
theatrical troupes with poets, minstrels and mountbanks, who travel about the country. The
leader is generally a talented historian at the head of a troupe consisting of both men and
women. The performance takes place at night before a large and attentive audience. The eulogy
is declaimed by the leader and the rest of the troupe replies in song.

Exercises

1. Explain what drama is and give examples of dramatic performances in Africa.