From Theory to Text: African Theatre Phases

This cheat sheet explores the five phases of African theatre development, from Traditionalism to Radical Decolonisation, by analyzing four key texts. It emphasizes testing theoretical frameworks against practical examples in plays to understand their evolution and arguments.

Core Principles

• African theatre evolves through distinct phases: Traditionalism, Creolisation, Civilisationism, Negritude, and Radical Decolonisation.
• Plays serve as arguments against Western theatrical traditions, offering unique perspectives.
• The relationship between form and political argument can show alignment or tension.
• Orature and Western dramatic conventions offer different approaches to storytelling and audience engagement.
• Metatheatrical elements can signal reappropriation or continuity with tradition.
• Theorizing is an ongoing process of testing and refining frameworks against practical application.

Action Steps

• Read extracts, noting surprising or confusing elements as data for discussion.
• Analyze plays for unconventional narrative devices, character roles, and audience awareness.
• Identify shifts in language, rhythm, and tone, and explore their reasons.
• Perform selected passages to reveal nuances lost in silent reading.
• Discuss findings in groups, focusing on storytelling, character, and form/politics.
• Compare responses with other groups, identifying agreements and divergences.
• Assign speakers for presentations, ensuring coverage of key questions.
• Anchor arguments with specific textual evidence (lines, stage directions, page references).
• Place plays on Ravengai's timeline and consider playwrights' potential agreement.
• Argue with provisional placements, using textual evidence to support claims.

Key Terms

• Traditionalism: The first phase, likely referencing pre-colonial African theatrical forms.
• Creolisation: A phase involving the blending of African and external cultural elements.
• Civilisationism: A phase potentially reflecting the impact of colonial 'civilizing' missions.
• Negritude: A phase focused on Black identity and cultural assertion, often through reappropriation of Western forms.
• Radical Decolonisation: The final phase, aiming for complete liberation from Western influence in form and content.
• Orature: Performance-based oral traditions, emphasizing community participation and storytelling.
• Metatheatre: Theatre that draws attention to its own theatricality, often by breaking the fourth wall or commenting on its construction.
• Fanon argument: Relates to reclaiming African content through borrowed aesthetics, questioning the tension between radical political arguments and their potentially non-radical dramatic forms.

Real World Examples

• Aimé Césaire's 'A Tempest': A direct reappropriation of Shakespeare's 'The Tempest', recasting Caliban and Ariel, placing African content within a Western dramatic frame with a formal intervention.
• Ama Ata Aidoo's 'Anowa': Set in 1870s Ghana, replaces Aristotelian acts with 'phases', uses a Ghanaian oral narrator, and begins reshaping Western form from within.
• Wole Soyinka's 'The Bacchae of Euripides': Infuses Greek structure with Yoruba ritual, adding an African-centric slave chorus and political consciousness, demonstrating syncretism on African terms.
• Femi Osofisan's 'Another Raft': An explicit argument with existing works, fully aligning form and politics, using Yemosa narrator figures drawn from African storytelling traditions.

Timeline

• 1969: Aimé Césaire writes 'A Tempest'.
• 1970: Ama Ata Aidoo writes 'Anowa'.
• 1973: Wole Soyinka writes 'The Bacchae of Euripides'.
• 1988: Femi Osofisan writes 'Another Raft'.

People

• Ravengai: Theorist proposing the five phases of African theatre and a practice-theory-practice-theory method.
• Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o: Theorist of orature, emphasizing performance as a unifying feature and participatory audience.
• Aimé Césaire: Playwright of 'A Tempest', associated with the Negritude phase.
• Ama Ata Aidoo: Playwright of 'Anowa', associated with pushing towards Radical Decolonisation.
• Wole Soyinka: Playwright of 'The Bacchae of Euripides', associated with Phase 4/5 Syncretism.
• Femi Osofisan: Playwright of 'Another Raft', associated with Phase 5 Radical Decolonisation.