Staging resistance matters! Deconstructing structures of power and oppression in Ngugi Wa Thiong’o and Micere Githae Mugo’s The Trial of Dedan Kimathi and Dario Fo’s Accidental Death of an Anarchist

Abstract

ABSTRACT Situated on parallel cultural geographies of the global north and south, this study seeks to critically interpret Dario Fo, Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Micere Githae Mugo’s theatre as representative of radical theatres of resistance and cultural intervention in their searing reinterpretation of Kenyan and Italian cultural discourse. Through staging narratives of systemic oppression and injustice, these dramatists salvage the history of the subaltern from the ruins of colonial and fascist regimes, thereby transforming their theatre into Marxist tools of counter-information. The concept of theatre as a form of anti-establishment political action and counter-discourse will be analyzed through The Trial of Dedan Kimathi (1976) and Accidental Death of an Anarchist (1970). Both plays are rooted in specific historical situations that are a part of the collective consciousness of the nation. However, through the use of revolutionary methods – humour, indigenous performance traditions, a critically-invested audience, the rejection of the traditional idea of empathy and catharsis, Fo, Wa Thiong’o and Mugo force spectators in the words of Nicholas Brown ‘to take seriously the possibility that art can be at war – in more than a metaphorical sense – with the state.’