Literary Drama in Africa: the Disabled Comrade

Abstract

NTQ has given considerable coverage to forms of popular theatre for conscientization and development in the so-called Third World. By contrast with such community-oriented, audience-involving activities, is there a function for conventional ‘literary’ drama, on the western model, which can probably only reach relatively comfortable and literate middle-class audiences? Tunde Lakoju examines two such plays – I Will Marry When I Want by the Kenyan playwright Ngugi Wa Thiongo (London: Heinemann, 1982), and The Trials of Brother Jero by the Nigerian dramatist Wole Soyinka (Oxford University Press, 1964) – in terms of their success in measuring up to the needs they identify: and he considers, too, how those ‘needs’ may be variously assessed by theoretical and practical criteria. Tunde Lakoju is Senior Lecturer at the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, in his native Nigeria, having been awarded his doctoral degree from the University of Wales. His own play, The Last Saturday, has been broadcast in the BBC's African Theatre series.