Dramatizing Postcoloniality: Wole Soyinka and Derek Walcott

Abstract

One major charge that much of postcolonial African and Caribbean dramatic and theatrical production has been unable to permanently dislodge is their derivative character in relation to Euro-American traditions. melody of Europe, the rhythm of Africa, is how Rex M. Nettleford, the renowned scholar and founder/director of the National Dance Theater Company of Jamaica, articulates the prejudice.' And the Nigerian dramatist, J. P. Clark, observes that, in comparing the Yoruba popular traveling theatre with the literary drama in English, [s]ome would say that the latter has its heart right at home here in Nigeria and its head deep in the wings of American and European theatre! The works of Mr. Wole Soyinka, Dr. Ene Henshaw, and my own plays, I am told, clearly bear this badge, but whether of merit or infamy it is a matter still in some obscurity.2 The point of the charge here-quite far-ranging in its implication-is whether the postcolonial space is capable of any originality, whether the postcolonial is really not doomed to perpetual and mindless apery.