Visions of Myth in Nigerian Drama: Femi Osofisan versus Wole Soyinka  by Tess Akaeke Onwueme  

          The article named Visions of Myth in Nigerian Drama: Femi Osofisan versus Wole Soyinka written by Tess Akaeke Onwueme which was published by the Canadian Journal of African Studies in 1991, in which we can trace the revolutionary visions of Femi Osofisan and the mythopoeic visions of Wole Soyinka. Osofisan’s plays argue that social reconstruction is achievable through the rejection and change of existing history, myth and oppressive ruler ship, and the reinterpretation of traditional values.

         Wole Soyinka’s The Strong Breed portrays the role of rituals and traditional practices in the society. And here the myth and history determines the human condition and becomes the tool of oppression. But in the case of Femi Osofisan’s play attempts to convey: “that history and society are always changing and that not only do social conditions determine human consciousness, but the human being also determines those conditions” (61). Eman becomes the victim of suppression by sacrificing his life according to the ritual. “ He(Wole Soyinka) sustains this tragic vision in The Strong Breed (1969) by emasculating the revolutionary potential in Eman, who in Osofisan's view, should have challenged and denounced his fate as a carrier doomed to be sacrificed for society”(63).

Nagamandala by Girish Karnad

          When we are analyzing the role of rituals and practices in a society, it is necessary to evaluate the treatment of myth and history in the Indian theatre. Girish Karnad is one of the most prominent Indian playwrights, who blend the history and mythology in his plays. His Nagamandala depicts the conditions of women in a society and Rani represents whole women in the male dominated society. And he ironically depicts that how traditional values and practices determines the human life, in which we can find the cultural ordeals which have been carried by the preceding generations, the village eldres were asking Rani to prove her fidelity by holding the cobra.

       “EldrerIII says : the traditional test in our village court has been to take the oath while holding a red- hot iron in the hand. Occasionally, the accused has chosen to plunge the hand in boiling oil. But you insist on swearing by the King Cobra” (36).

              This subversive kind of practice should determine the individual life.

Ritual killing, 419, and fast wealth: inequality and the popular imagination in southeastern Nigeria by  Dniel Jordan Smith

             The practices of ritual in a society enable the elite people to accumulate wealth, in an article named Ritual killing, 419, and fast wealth: inequality and the popular imagination in southeastern Nigeria was written by Dniel Jordan Smith published by American Anthropological Association in 2001, in which author referred some real incidents in Owerri, the capital of Imo State in southeastern Nigeria. A man was arrested by the police for he was holding a fresh severed head of a child. This is the result of satanic way of ritual practice in Owerri. In order to fight against this there burned out a riot,

                   “the rioters believed that many of Owerri's young elite had achieved their wealth through satanic rituals. Collective anger was vented not only at the nouveaux riches suspected of ritual murder, but also at the police, politicians, and religious leaders who were believed to have encouraged, protected, legitimized, and consorted with these evildoers” (804).

        See the response to this kind of ritual prctice from th  political institution, one of the most striking conversations that author had in the aftermath of the Owerri riots was with a 55-year-old Presbyterian minister who was the dean at a local theological seminary. He said to the author,

                “We Africans have a long tradition of sacrificing human life to seek power or wealth. But in the past, one always had to kill a kinsman, you couldn't just kill any stranger. This imposed limits and costs to taking a human life. It is not so easy to kill your relation. But now these people kill anybody to satisfy their greed. We are in trouble” (820).

Nadugadhika by K.J Baby

            The practices of rituals and customs among the tribes are very decisive in their culture. When we look at the Keralite culture, the Vayanadu tribes are very rigid in conducting the rituals. Adiyas and Paniyas are two major tribes in Vayanadu. They have a ritual called Naadugahika, who is a person, belonged to a particular tribal community; exorcise all the evil spirits from every house. And he collects money and other stuff like rice and coconuts. This is beautifully depicted in K J Baby’s (a well known Malayalam modern playwright) play called Naadugadhika.

THE STRONG BREED by  Wole Soyinka

The reading of Postcolonial drama is not complete without going through Wole Soyinka’s dramas. He is a well known South African playwright, who clearly explores the cultural diversities of South Africa. Cultural boundaries and its logic became the dominant criteria of a particular country/ society.  And it became the dominant ideology among the mass, by which the lower class people are suppressed and exploited. This is what we can trace from the play The Strong Breed. Wole Soyinka portrayed the cultural ritual of sacrificing a “carrier” and the Yoruba festival of the New Year in his drama, and its effect on the society and the treatment of it by the mass.

Eman represents the whole victims of the evil ritual of sacrificing “carrier”. This type of ritual and customs can see in different communities of the world, mostly among the tribal communities. They were forced to continue that kind of practices because of their illiteracy. But here the victim of this ritual is an educated man, who is not escaped from his destiny even in a strange land. He had left his homeland for twelve years in search of a new destiny but had to go back, because as his father said, “they were born to be carriers and he could not flee from his destiny.” And here the cultural ritual determines the destiny of whole people of the society. The people like Old man, Jagunu and Oroge are blindly believed that it is their God given destiny. But actually it is manmade cultural logic and misused as a dominant idea. According to Frederic Jameson, prominent Post modern theorist, “cultural products of a society would determine the socio political conditions of that society”. Every cultural product of arts, literature and architecture has their own cultural logic, by which the society was controlled.

This kind of ritual representations and practices are backing up the political situations of the world order. The concept of carrier is only a tool of cleansing, and he is sacrificed for the evil of the village. According to Wole Soyinka, “The carrier is simply a cleansing device- it’s the ritual of purification for the community at the turn of the year. The carrier is in its original sense, the scapegoat”(49). This kind of concept is in practice in Kerala, known as Naadugahika, who is belonged to a particular tribal community; exorcise all the evil spirits from every house. This was depicted in K J Baby’s( a well known Malayalam modern playwright) play called Naadugadhika.

In this play Emen was characterized as a tragic hero because he fell in the hands of destiny and also reached self knowledge at the end. And he is doing what he actually wants to avoid, like what the Greek hero Oedipus did. This mixing of elements of Greek dramas with modern dramatic conventions make The Strong Breed a thematically well constructed one.

 Thus the play The Strong Breed depicts the exploration of ritual and its impact on the mass and its role in a community context. In my view, every cultural products, whatever may it is, determines society and its people.

               

THE HUNGRY EARTH BY MAISHE MAPONYA

           More than three quarters of the people living in the world today have had  their lives

shaped by the experience of colonialism. The past few decades have witnessed the

gradual development of post colonial drama as a challenge to the artistic hegemony

of the English and American canon. Maishe Mapomya's The Hungry Earth is one of the major

post colonial dramas. Maponya, a prominent  African dramatist, who is fully succeeded in depicting

the conditions of postcololnial society. He dramatises the personal consequences of labour system

and cultural commodification. When we go through the drama, we can trace the level of explpoitation,

it follows  the hostel, the plantation, the train, the mine compound. It is interesting that how systematically

 the scenes arranged and how it leads to the end.

          The play provides the picture of Gamboot Dance, a traditional art form of Africa, which is commodified

by the upper class, and its artistic value transformed from ritual to political value amd from cult value to

exhibition value( Benjamin). Likewise , Manjula Padmanaban dramatises the consequences of commodification of

third world bodies amd the impact of tresspassing of technological sophistication on human bodies in her inspiring drama Harvest. The Hungry Earth inspires me to read more post colonial dramas from different countries. This is what our weapons against the Western domination. Their arrival made the country static  and even it stopped the beats of the drum in South Africa. The Drum is the symbol of cultural richness if Africa. This is what Beshwana said " We blew the horns, we beat the drums, we sung the song of  Neglethu Mawethu, when this land was unknown to the white skins! shit!" (17) And again, this is what Gabriel Okara sung "Then, then I packed my mystic drum/ turned away, never to beat so loud any more"(Mystic Drum, 55). Thus dramas like The Hungry Earth got high place in Modern literature.

 Sydwell Yola, Simon Mosikili and Velile Nxazonke in Maishe Maponya's The Hungry Earth .