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Forms
of Black Drama
by Femi Euba, Professor of Theatre and English, Louisiana State
University
In the midst
of library scholars and intellectuals, who have all the literary resources
of University institution at their fingertips, what I’m about
to say regarding black drama may be very familiar. If so, I tender
my apologies. However, black drama and theatre has not often been given
its proper place as a genre. For instance, its identity has often been
placed under the generality of drama courses. There is nothing wrong
about that. But by doing so, its foundations, especially within the
context of Western, or World theatre has not been made very clear in
theatre history books. Yet, in trying to reconstruct and acquire some
physical experience of the ritual origins of theatre, which seems to
have faded in Western memory, Western scholars (such as Richard Schechner
and Victor Turner) and theatre practitioners (such as Peter Brook)
have researched in countries that still have their traditional practices
intact, such as in Africa and Asia. There is still plenty of room for
researches to be made in this ritual area. While I do not wish to dwell
on the research aspect here, my contention is that Western origins
and black origins of drama and theatre are relative, and one could
be used, not offhandedly but comparatively, to understand the dynamics
of the other. At any rate, before one could do this, one should understand
what constitutes black drama and forms of it.
When we talk about black drama, we encounter a vastness that is
at first intimidating. For we are trying to identify forms of drama
that can be found in black cultures not only in black Africa, but
also those, in the diaspora, that originate from the cultures of
Africa. Furthermore, these plays, although can be identified as black
drama, cannot just be grouped together because they display shades
of different characteristics from culture to culture, characteristics
that are motivated by certain conditions and influences. Even African
drama cannot be taken for granted, for there are characteristics
that differentiate them, however slightly, from culture to culture.
For instance, we can talk about West African drama as opposed to
East African, or South African, or plays found in the Arabic cultures
in North Africa, even though they all have a common African bind.
When we move to the cultures in the diaspora, we can talk about,
of course, African American drama, as opposed to Caribbean, Latin
American or, as it increasingly becomes evident, British black drama.
These are the main distinctive groups, each of which can be given
a course treatment on its own; but I’m sure there are other
existent black cultures around the world, for instance in the South
Seas, waiting to be researched.
Two distinctive conditions can be said to have influenced black
dramatic writing in general. One is colonization, and the other is
slavery. In Africa we can talk about the colonization of African
cultures by various European cultures British, French, Portuguese,
Dutch in the main. Each of these European colonial powers have made
profound cultural, religious and social impact on the relative African
culture of their colonization. In West Africa, we can talk about
the Anglophone and the Francophone cultures. Although there are similarities
in colonial impact and development attributive of both groups of
cultures, there are also differences. In a similar way, East African
and South African cultures share some similarities in colonial impact,
but they also describe differences depending on the colonial culture
that established its power, sometimes more than two in a culture.
But in the main, the defining impact between West Africa, and East
and South Africa seems to be attributed to the length of colonial
hold. For instance, the geographical and climatic conditions in West
Africa made it impossible for the colonizers to project an extensive
stay. The hot climate, and hazardous, mosquito-infected tropical
rain forests of the region made the thought of any lengthy stay impossible.
And so in these cultures, much of the traditional elements, some
of which were tolerated by the colonizers, remained intact during
the colonial regime. This condition affected the dramatic writing
of these so-called non-settler states, their drama dealt more with
social problems, infused with traditional features. A significant
example is Wole Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman.
East and South African cultures, on the other hand, are settler
states. The tolerable and conducive conditions of climate and geography
made the region a home for the colonizers, who therefore imposed
their culture, insistently, to stifle African cultural precepts.
The most extreme form of this colonial impact was, of course, the
apartheid system of South Africa. The repressive conditions eventually
led to a long drawn struggle for freedom, which affected the underground
political plays that came out of these African states.
Now, the colonial conditioning of East and South Africa, especially
South, bears some affinities with the conditioning of slavery in,
say, North America. We must bear in mind that the transplantation
of the African cultures in America imposed a minority status on the
black cultures in a settled white location. As such, the traditional
imperatives of the black were in danger of extinction. Consequently,
the black response to slavery, in terms of struggle for freedom,
tended to be political. This is expressed also in their drama, as
exemplified by most of Amiri Baraka's (Lerois Jones') plays.
On the other hand, when we look at plays from Latin American and,
to a certain extent, Caribbean cultures, such as Brazil and Cuba,
we will find that their drama bears some affinities with that of
some West African cultures. In these plays, we will find an attempt
to explore African traditional values. This inclination can be traced
to their respective mode of slave experience. French and Spanish
absentee planters in South America, and the tolerance that their
absences caused, allowed the slaves more retention of their traditional
values. For instance, the various gods brought by the slaves assimilated
well through syncretization with Catholicism. Some of these gods,
in their syncretized embodiment are often dramatized with the themes
of the plays from these regions.
One last thing I should mention is some of the dramaturgical categories
one could apply to drama. In my own teaching, I usually identify
about five, although I must emphasize that these categories are by
no means clear-cut. They tend to overlap, and it is possible to identify
more than one in a particular play.
The first category emphasizes Ritual aspects. Sometimes the plays
in this category are simply a dramatization of the passage rites
of some god or ancestor. In fact, Wole Soyinka calls ritual drama, "the
drama of the gods." There is a classic example of two such plays,
an African and a Brazilian, dramatizing a passage rite of the same
god, Obatala, the Nigerian (Yoruba) quintessential god of patience
and endurance. In Brazil, aspects of syncretization have also modified
the name Obatala to Oxala.
The next category emphasizes the Political, such that we find in
South African and African American drama.
Then we have the Historical, which often focuses some historical
aspects of resistance to colonization, or of nation building.
The fourth and fifth categories are Humanistic and Satiric expressions
respectively. The Humanistic is sensitive to human concerns and values
within the family and society. The Satiric exposes the dangers in
human intoxicated drives, such that possess megalomaniacal black
leaders. A good example the Satiric (which, as matter of fact, also
applies to the Historical) is Aime Cesaire’s The Tragedy of
King Christophe. Such plays are analyzed by a concept of satire I’ve
proposed in my book Archetypes, Imprecators and Victims of Fate:
Origins and Developments of Satire in Black Drama. The concept is
based on an African trickster god of fate, Esu (Exu in Brazil), the
good and evil complementarity, and, by extension, is the ironic and
satiric dynamic.
There are other categories. Plays written by black women are receiving
an overdue attention, and the category can be a course topic on its
own. There are also black authors with a large body of work that
can stand on their own as topics, for example, the Nigerian Wole
Soyinka and the African American Amiri Baraka, or August Wilson.
There are lots of analytic and critical contributions to black drama.
Not many on aesthetics, and hardly any on comparative. So, as you
can see, there’s plenty of room for research. As such, the
Alexander Street Press project on black drama is in the right direction
in making more demanding researches possible.
Femi Euba, Professor of Theatre and English
Louisiana State University
e-mail: theuba@lsu.edu
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