A Dance of the Forest
The Drama of Existence: Myths and Rituals in Wole Soyinka’s Theatre
Rosa Figueiredo, Polytecnic of Guarda, Portugal
Abstract: The citation for Soyinka’s 1986 Nobel prize for literature reads: “Who in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones, fashions the drama of existence”. The “wide cultural perspective” mentioned refers to the fact that Soyinka’s writings, especially the dramas for which he is best known, are at once deeply rooted in traditional African expressive and performance forms like myths and rituals, dance and mime, music and masquerade and are also greatly influenced by such diverse Western dramatic and theatrical modes as classical Greek drama, Shakespearean and Jacobean theatre, and modern European and American antirealist and avant-garde forms and techniques. Keywords: Theatre, Rituals, Myths, Soyinka
Wole Soyinka is, no doubt, Africa´s leading playwright, but the African audiences for his major plays are very small indeed. He addresses himself to the reflection of an African sensibility and the creation of an African drama, but his plays have nonAfricans amongst their most ardent admirers. Some African critics accuse him of a reactionary sensibility and intellect; yet his political activities, for which he has suffered imprisonment and exile, seem to stem from a deep concern for the common man seen as mercilessly exploited by tyrants, bureaucrats and opportunists. First of all, he is very specific about the role of the audience in a live theatre performance: the members of the audience are part of the space of the performance and therefore metaphysically part of the conflict taking place. The audience participate in this much deeper metaphysical sense throughout the ‘ritual’ – which is the word Soyinka uses for the drama in performance – because they are an integral part of the space in which the performance of the conflict takes place; and he refers to the audience as a ‘chorus’ who give the protagonist strength in ‘the symbolic
Rosa Figueiredo, Polytecnic of Guarda, Portugal
Abstract: The citation for Soyinka’s 1986 Nobel prize for literature reads: “Who in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones, fashions the drama of existence”. The “wide cultural perspective” mentioned refers to the fact that Soyinka’s writings, especially the dramas for which he is best known, are at once deeply rooted in traditional African expressive and performance forms like myths and rituals, dance and mime, music and masquerade and are also greatly influenced by such diverse Western dramatic and theatrical modes as classical Greek drama, Shakespearean and Jacobean theatre, and modern European and American antirealist and avant-garde forms and techniques. Keywords: Theatre, Rituals, Myths, Soyinka
Wole Soyinka is, no doubt, Africa´s leading playwright, but the African audiences for his major plays are very small indeed. He addresses himself to the reflection of an African sensibility and the creation of an African drama, but his plays have nonAfricans amongst their most ardent admirers. Some African critics accuse him of a reactionary sensibility and intellect; yet his political activities, for which he has suffered imprisonment and exile, seem to stem from a deep concern for the common man seen as mercilessly exploited by tyrants, bureaucrats and opportunists. First of all, he is very specific about the role of the audience in a live theatre performance: the members of the audience are part of the space of the performance and therefore metaphysically part of the conflict taking place. The audience participate in this much deeper metaphysical sense throughout the ‘ritual’ – which is the word Soyinka uses for the drama in performance – because they are an integral part of the space in which the performance of the conflict takes place; and he refers to the audience as a ‘chorus’ who give the protagonist strength in ‘the symbolic