Omololu Taiwo Abe
Theatre Arts Department,
College of Education,
Ikere-Ekiti, Ekiti State, Nigeria.
Abstract
Every dramatic
production is a breaking down of a big job into smaller parts, and the process
placed under the enigmatic personality of an artistic director who
aesthetically designed and reflectively supervised the collective creation of
other artistes. At the top of this group of artists is the playwright whose
work serves as the determinant for the other artistes’ creativity. However, the
questions of effective mode of interpretations of dramatic writings have
continued to be very contentious in dramatic criticism. Most of these critiques
are determined by the level and nature of dramatic representation projected by
the playwright and sometimes imposed by the director. This paper submits that
most works of the Nigerian playwrights are characterised by traditions, and, a
unified system of beliefs and culture which could be stumbling block to the
interpretation of a Western director. It observes that the Nigerian playwright
unconsciously creates limitations for foreign theatre directors in the
interpretation of his work. The paper, however, concludes that although there
is no absolute interpretation to a dramatic text, the diverse nature of the
Nigerian culture inhibits the directorial power of Western theatre directors on
the Nigerian indigenous drama. The paper however suggests that any interested Western/Asian
director in the interpretation of Nigerian indigenous drama needs to study the
ambience conducive to the indigenous dramatic interpretations.
Key words:
Nigerian playwright, Culture, Challenges
Introduction
The playwright, unlike other
creative artistes in the theatre, takes a solitary approach when composing or
confabulating his creativity. Although working in solitude, he remains at the
apex of the process that finally results in a dramatic performance before an
audience. Despite facing limitations such as his experience, observation and
sensitivity, he takes unilateral decisions in his creativity. However, like the
theatre director, he has the actor and audience in mind as the essentials of
theatre. The playwright’s intent, as woven into the plot of the drama, is the
determinant for other artistes’ creativity towards realising an organic whole
called production. Since a playwright writes from his societal milieu, his
creativity is often a reflection of his culture and tradition. The Nigerian
playwrights from the primordial time to date have not ceased to use his art to
reflect the culture, beliefs and tradition of his society. Most importantly, he
raises his voice against sociopolitical issues that are inimical to the
well-being of his people and the growth of the country. This is where his
relevance as an artiste comes to play. Akorede (1993) succinctly explains that
“the relevance of the dramatist is determined by the usefulness of the role he
plays in the portrayal of the social reality of his time. The committed writer
is the conscience of his society and it falls on him to make his people aware
of the social, economic and political problems and the causes and possible cure
of such problem.” Also Umukoro (2010) comprehensively clarifies the sensitivity
and prophetic tasks of the Nigerian playwright to his society when he observes
that:
“he shoulders a
heavy responsibility towards his immediate society and humanity at large. His
is the role of a seer or a prophet in a predominantly ignorant community, a
visionary artist, whose work points the way forward through the labyrinth of
time. He is characteristically an artist in a hurry to gain in time lost and
catch up with the pace of human progress. He cannot afford to be aloof, or
alienate himself from the collective goal of his people. His service to
humanity is vicariously predicated upon his immediate community”
Despite his existence within the
tyrannical and autocratic regimes of the past, the Nigerian playwright has
refused to shut his eyes against abysmal conditions and inhuman decisions of
individuals or groups that may be barriers to socio-political and economic
breakthrough. His growth as a creative artist has seen him wriggle through the
autocratic rule of the colonial masters, the post-independence
maladministration of civil rule which eventually paved way for military
dictatorship.
The Nigerian playwrights may be
categorised into two groups. These groups emerged at the foundation of the
University College, Ibadan and the establishment of Departments of Languages
and the Theatre Arts in other institutions that emerged after the Ibadan
experience. The Ibadan experience however, remains the factor behind his
precocious quality and the predominant state of the Nigerian playwright over
his counterparts in the Black continent. Prior to this time, dramatic
productions were based mainly on the extemporaneous skills and abilities of the
earlier dramatists of the pre-colonial period. Umukoro (1994) explains the differences
in these groups of Nigerian playwrights through the thematic nature and focus
of their writings. He observes that:
“while their predecessors deal with the
universal verities and metaphysical such as the part psychic search for the
meaning of life and death in Soyinka’s The Road, the young deal with
urgent contemporary social problems in Nigeria like the armed robbery
phenomenon in Osofisan’s Once Upon Four Robbers, students’ unrest in
Sowande’s The Night Before and the obscenity of undistributed property
in Omotosho ‘s The Curse”
However, the work of any playwright,
whether composed in an abstract form such that the metaphor of the play seems
esoteric for the understanding of the common audience, or confabulated in a
simplified context, it remains a “harbinger of the artistic reflection of the
playwright’s society’s mores, and values, its hopes and aspiration, its failure
and frustration” (Umukoro, 2010). These cultural values, mores, beliefs and
tradition are embedded into the phantasmagoria of the play with the hope of
transmitting them into the present as well as serve as a sort balance diet that
can place the society on a healthy and peaceful communal terrain. Wole Soyinka
painstakingly reflects this culture in his play Death and the King’s Horseman
and cautions the would-be director to avoid as much as possible the
conceptual projection of culture conflict which is against the author’s intent.
“The bane of this
genre is that they are not sooner employed creatively than they acquire the
facile tag of clash of cultures …. It is thank to the kind of perverse
mentality that I find it necessary to caution the-would be director of the play
against a sadly reductionist tendency and to direct his vision to the far more
difficulty and risky task of eliciting the play’s threnodic essence” (Soyinka, 1982).
This
cautionary note is a “reflection of the creative self-consciousness and
mediation of the Nigerian playwright using various designs of literary and
extra-literary elements in constructions” (Nwozu, 2007). Kofoworola (2004) in
his interpretation of this same play submits that:
“Wole Soyinka
reflects the encroachment of the Western colonial authority and civilisation.
However, the long shadow of the British intervention could not breach the cosmology
where the living, the dead and the unborn are perceived as a consortium, hence
Olunde, the eldest son of Elesin, could not be prevented from his required
obligation in spite of his Western education.”
This tradition which sanctifies and
appreciates the death of Elesin (the king’s horseman) as honour to the departed
soul of the monarch is in contrary to the usual belief of the West as
committing suicide. It perceives the obligatory death of Elesin with the king
as committing death. This tradition, as sacrosanct as it is in the eyes of the
people, may not be conceivable to a foreigner like Pilkins. No playwright
writes out of his societal domain and there is no universal drama.
The Nigerian playwright, especially
the first generation of Soyinka and J.P, Clark, are endowed with the creative
instincts of perceiving situations beyond the natural range of the senses. They
appear to possess the ability to foresee future events. These clairvoyance and
precognition attributes are displayed by Wole Soyinka in his Dance of a
Forest, a play that was performed at the celebration of independence in
1960. The playwright, like a seer, foresees the state of maladministration,
corruption, and mismanagement that have gradually encroached into our political
culture today. Kofoworola (2004) claims that, “Wole’s plays are condensed,
pitchy and enmeshed in language. Thick in idioms, aggregated in symbolism, its
metaphoric concoction is not easily digested. Forceful in its metaphysical
engagement of the mind, his language of communication is highly captivating,
profuse and picturesque.” The personality of the playwright here is a
representation of his inner man, the essence of his being. Some of these
qualities attributed to Soyinka are features present in the works of these first
generation of Nigerian playwrights.
Femi Osofisan, the most prolific of the
second generation of Nigerian playwrights. While attesting to the essence and
main objective of his generation, he enunciates that “for my generation, one of
the most vital goals was to beat back the growing tides and despair,and to
restore our people to optimism and to struggle.” Hence in the play Yungba Yungba and the
Dance Contest, he raises his voice for the need for unity among the ethnic
groups in Nigeria in order to terminate the absurdity of the military rule. In Women
of Owu, an adaptation of Eurepedes’ Trojan Women, Osofisan questions
the relevance of the gods in the affairs of men as he did in Morountodun. These
crops of Nigerian playwrights, like their predecessors, have not neglected nor
jettisoned the employment of myths, ritual, and other aspects of culture in
their compositions nor relent in their radical approach when addressing
national issues. While the “older generations have not halted their creative
output, many new playwrights have emerged to confront the devastating
absurdities of the post-military Nigeria’s political climate” (Agboola, 2014).
Still Obafemi (2009) advises that “for both the old and new playwrights, one
hurdle however to cross is the simple assumption that the battle has already
been won over dictatorial regimes after the exit of the military. This is a
costly assumption that can make the theatre of any nation to slumber or
compromise its call.”
Moreover, every dramatic
presentation is a display of a particular culture which is relayed through the
use of language, dialectics, semiotic and embellished with costumes, props, set
design and other paraphernalia of theatre productions. The focus of this paper
is the semiotic and dialectics of the Nigerian drama, an aspects of the
Nigerian culture which cannot be detached from the people‘s daily activities
and interactions, but, which may pose problems to the interpretation of a
foreign theatre director.
Culture and the
Challenges of Directing Nigerian Traditional Plays by Western/Asian Directors.
Rasheed
Musa (2004, p. 171) critically submits that:
“culture is theatre and theatre is culture
because all cultural activities are essentially theatrical and that most
theatrical events are moments of cultural re-enactments. While culture serves
as the materials for the theatre, the theatre itself celebrates known and
unknown cultures of the world through various performance forms as
aesthetically designed and reflectively created by theatre workers one of whom
is the artistic director.”
Suffice
to say that theatre relies on culture for its materials. Although it is theatre
that promotes culture, theatrical forms emerged from the womb of culture. The
Nigerian theatre is a presentation of beliefs, morals, art, custom, language,
drumming, dance, mime and music. Some of these features of her culture,
especially drumming, dances, music and mime are used to create the changing
mood in her dramatic productions. Hence, the Nigerian theatre in Adedeji’s
(1998) submission is “an adroit arrangement of words, acting, dance, music,
setting, costume, lighting and properties for total theatre - a total goal –
directed performance.” A play director
in the Nigerian theatre usually borrows from various traditions of the people,
but in his creation, is influenced by certain forces in his environment. A
closer look at David Kerr’s observation (1995) reveals that “while the pre – independence theatrical
activities were influenced by Western acculturation and religion, the
post-independence era have witnessed a new cultural revivalism that brought in
traditional music and musical instruments.” Kerr’s observation becomes the
prim of this research as it contains the major periods through which one may
take a retrospective look at the major events in the history of theatre in
Nigeria.
The Nigerian theatre and culture
possess characteristics that make both inseparable for external forces. As the
theatre promotes the culture, cultural elements such as dialectics, semiotics
and techniques give the theatre its appeal and substance. These cultural
factors are barriers to the artistic creativity of Western/Asian directors when
directing a Nigerian traditional play. These cultural factors predominate the
theatrical performances to a level that made Osofisan (2001) to succinctly
describe the Nigerian theatre as “a drum that will not travel West.” These
obstacles, as observed by Osofisan are as a result of the diversity of the
Nigerian culture as presented through the theatre. Nigeria is made up of
heterogeneous tribes whose heterogeneity is mainly displayed in the many
languages out of which three are predominant – Yoruba, Hausa, and Igbo
languages. The level of understanding of the language in which a script is
composed or with which a story is narrated (improvisation) plays a vital role
in the creativity of the director. A lack of, or little understanding of the
script’s language hinders the director’s interpretation, his artistic
contribution and creativity. Aside language, are the non – verbal languages
which are the semiotics of the Nigerian theatre and in particular the Yoruba
drama. These non – verbal languages are synonymous with the day to day
activities of the Yoruba communities. Some examples of this semiotics as
analysed by Osofisan (2001 in Abe, 2011) are:
“the causal habit of slapping the palms together three times in
alternative up and down movements to express emphasis and surprise; the
peculiar hissing sound to show disgust and mockery; the quick snapping of the
fingers backward over the head to divert evil away from oneself (which most
times attract the participation of the audience); the standing back with arms
akimbo before bursting into laughter; and the offering of osu (osuba), which is
a form of homage paid with the fingers of the two palms interlocked, then the
whole bunch reversed and stretched forward towards the revered person.”
Another noticeable significance of
the Nigeria theatre is the use of dialectics and magical powers. These are features of the traditional plays
and are notable features of the pre-independence Nigerian drama. The
significance of these aspects of Nigerian culture may pose an onerous task to
the interpretation of a foreign director. How do you explain to a foreign
audience whose imagination is ruled by technology that the recitation of some
magical words in the right order could force a man to sleep or dance, or that
the mere stretching of the Sango’s wand could provoke lightning as displayed in
Duro Ladipo’s Obakoso (The King did not Hanged) and Wale Ogunyemi’s Kiriji
(a play written on one of the internecine wars in Yoruba land). This may be far
above the creative expertise of the Western theatre director. Therefore, it was
not an exaggeration when the editorial review of the dramatic performance of
Duro Ladipo’s Obakoso (The King did not Hanged) in Berlin in 1965
exposed the inability of the Western Theatre to achieve such aesthetic height
in performance. The Spectator, a British Weekly Magazine carries in its
review page that “here is something Europe cannot do” (Kerr, 1995). Osofisan
(2001) submits that, “these cultural elements which are used in order to create
an African identity in our works turned into obstacles for performers in the
West, and therefore stand in the way of a regular production of our plays
there.” Moreover, it is important to state here that these cultural elements,
which have become a heritage to the theatre practitioners in Nigeria, are
transmitted from one generation to another, therefore, may not easily go into
extinction no matter the level of civilization via technology. Gowon (2004)
claims that
“It is
this transmission that has a direct bearing and latitude with theatre. Theatre
on the other hand is widely known to be a structured performance before an
audience. The nexus between culture and theatre is largely transportational.
While culture generates codes on which the peoples behavioural pattern is
anchored, theatre provides the vehicle with which these codes are passed from
one generation to another.”
Conclusion
The art of playwriting and the
theatre directors will certainly endure no doubt. The Nigerian
Femi Osofisan, another Nigerian
playwright/director states,
“I have been
invited to be guest director at several theatres outside Nigeria, and
particularly in Europe and America. It began in 1983 in Philadelphia, where I
directed my play, Cannibal Rage for the summer workshop of the
University of Penn. I was in Stanford, USA, to assist in Sandra Richards’
refreshing production of the same play. I toured six states of the USA with the
Kakaun Sela Kompany in a production of two plays, The Oriki of a Grasshopper
and The Engagement, in 1990…returned to the United States in 1991to
perform the same plays in Atlanta, directed Farewell to a Cannibal Rage in
Winchester at the King Alfred’s College. In 1994, wrote and directed Tegonni,
an African Antigone for the Theatre Emory in Atlanta…in 1996, directed Esu
and the Vagabond Minstrels at the Workshop Theatre at the University of
Leeds, in England” (Osofisan,
2001, pp. 174-175).
These are a few of the exploits of Osofisan as
a director on the Euro-American stage. Also, Ahmed Yerima directed Wole
Soyinka’s The Lion and the Jewel at the Royal Holloway College,
London in the 90’s. All these are parts of the efforts of the Nigerian theatre
directors to place the art of directing in particular and the practice of
theatre in Nigeria alongside other theatre traditions and practitioners in
other parts of the world.
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