| THE ATTAINMENT OF DISCOVERY: EFUA SUTHERLAND AND THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN AFRICAN DRAMA
Ola Rotimi* Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife Born in Cape Coast, Ghana, in 1924, Efua Sutherland (nee Morgue), is certainly the first African female playwright/director south of the Sahara. She schooled at St. Monica’s Teacher Training College, in Ghana; Homerton College in Cambridge, England, and the University of London’s School of Oriental Studies, where she specialized in Linguistics to supplement her earlier discipline in teaching. Returning to Ghana in 1957 (the historic year of Ghana’s independence from British colonial rule), she set up an experimental theatre. This was followed, three years later, by the establishment of the Ghana Drama Studio, which she envisaged as “a centre for vigorous experimentation in drama ...[and] in developing writers”.1 In 1963, Sutherland was appointed Research Fellow in African literature, with a focus on drama, at the University of Ghana’s Institute of African Studies. She has since been combining this position with that of Artistic Director of Kusum Agorombo – an itinerant theatre group attached to the Ghana Drama Studio. Sutherland’s first play, Foriwa (produced 1957), visualizes the ideal of a new nation, highlighting such patriotic motifs as inter-ethnic mutuality, and a positive cleavage with the insularity and petty prejudices of the past. This was followed by Edufa. Produced in 1964, Edufa is an indictment of materialism spawn of insatiable self-interests. Her third major play, The Marriage of Anansewa (produced 1971), is a social satire and, in all respects, her most successful drama to-date. She has been influential to the emergence of modern African dramatic arts in Ghana: first, by her encouragement of newer playwrights to apprentice in her studio; second, and more significantly, perhaps, by her own experiments with the cultural particulars of traditional Ghanaian theatre to serve modern terms of dramaturgy. Before Sutherland, theatrical expression in modern Ghana took four forms. The first was the FOLK DRAMA. This was a neo-traditional form of display undertaken by itinerant folk-troupes. Their staple fare revealed a penchant for bawdy and bodily jokes spun generally around womenfolk, commingled with traditional dance, acrobatics, music and mimetic gestures – much like the Yoruba Alarinjo theatre of Nigeria. * Professor Ola Rotimi died on August 18, 2000 at the age of 62. |
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