Dynamics of Distancing in Nigerian Drama

ibidem Press, Stuttgart

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Preliminaries

Chapter 1Distancing through Metatheatre

A. Distancing: A Dramatic Imperative

1.1 Bertolt Brecht and Distancing

1.2 Thomas J. Scheff and Optimum Distancing

B. Metatheatre and Dramatic Distancing

1.3 Metatheatre: Conceptual Significance with regard to Distancing

1.4 Metatheatre: A Theoretical History

C. Nigerian Metatheatre: An Under-researched Field

Chapter 2Metatheatre and its Distancing Function in Nigerian Drama

2.1 Metatheatrical Techniques in Nigerian Drama

2.2 Post-Independence Nigerian Playwrights

2.3 Pre-independence Theatre in Nigeria

2.3.1 Egungun Masquerades—A Yoruba Masking Tradition

2.3.2 Mmonwu Masquerades—An Igbo Masking Tradition

Chapter 3Metatheatricality in Wole Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman and King Baabu 3.1 Death and the King’s Horseman

3.1.1 Derivative Narratives as Strategies of Disruption

3.1.2 Metatheatricality at Micro Level

3.1.3 Double Performative Illusions

3.2 King Baabu

3.2.1 Intertextuality as a Source of Metatheatricality

3.2.2 Structural Metatheatricality in King Baabu

Chapter 4Manipulating Distance through Historical Metatheatre: The Case of Ola Rotimi’s Kurunmi and Hopes of the Living Dead

4.1 Reality versus Dramatic Illusion

4.2 Emotions versus Intellect in Rotimi’s Dramaturgy

4.3 Kurunmi—an Historical tragedy

4.3.1 Metatheatricality and Rotimi’s Historical Projections

4.3.2 Metatheatricality through Identification Control

4.3.3 Reporting and Proverbs as Metatheatrical Devices

4.4 Hopes of the Living Dead—A Drama of Struggle

4.4.1 Metatheatricality through the Creation of a Micro-World

4.4.2 Balancing the Ideal and the Common

Chapter 5Femi Osofisan’s Subversive Metatheatre in The Chattering and the Song and Women of Owu

5.1 Explicit Metatheatricality in Osofisan’s Plays

5.2 The Significance of Open-Ended Denouements

5.3 The Chattering and the Song

5.3.1 Theatrical Framing through Play-Within-the-Play

5.3.2 Role-Switching through Iwori Otura

5.3.3 Role-Playing within the Play

5.4 Women of Owu

5.4.1 Textual Frames as Historical Palimpsests

5.4.2 Changing Perceptions through Shifting Foci

Chapter 6Revolutionizing the Metatheatrical Space: Esiaba Irobi’s Hangmen Also Die and Stella ‘Dia Oyedepo’s A Play That Was Never to Be

6.1 Esiaba Irobi’s Radical Postulates

6.2 Hangmen Also Die

6.2.1 Double Framing through Analepsis

6.2.2 Foreshadowing as a Device of Metatheatrical Distraction

6.2.3 Frames of Defiance and Devices of Disruption

6.3 Stella ‘Dia Oyedepo’s Theatrical Reformulations

6.4 A Play That Was Never To Be

6.4.1 The Play-within-the-Theatre

6.4.2 Dramatic Self-Reflexivity

Conclusion

Appendix-I Significant Pre-Independence Performance Traditions in Nigeria

(i) Alarinjo Performances

(ii) Travelling Theatre Movement

(iii) Hubert Ogunde

(iv) Duro Ladipo

Appendix-II

Literary Categories of Meta-Narratives

Appendix-III Interview with Dr Stella ‘Dia Oyedepo (June 2014)

Personal

General

Specific (On A Play That Was Never To Be)

Bibliography

Acknowledgements

The study presented in this book was developed and completed during my PhD at The University of Northampton. I am highly indebted to my supervisors Dr Victor Ukaegbu and Professor Janet Wilson, whose invaluable intellectual contribution made it possible for me to put this book into its final form.

This book has seen the light of the day due to the help and expertise of my editor Janet Wilson, whose careful and constructive support, continual encouragement and illuminating criticism enabled me to develop and expand upon my ideas. I am truly indebted to the hard work she has put in to materialize my dreams. I wish to express my sincere gratitude to Dr Chris Ringrose who read this book in typescript and offered me stimulating suggestions and useful feedback.

I am grateful to Dr Stella Oydepo for agreeing to answer my questions regarding her dramaturgy and sharing her views with me. Her helpful and forthcoming responses to my queries and encouragement are highly appreciated.

I would also like to extend my loving gratitude to my family, in particular my father, father- and mother-in-law, and siblings for their constant encouragement and support both financially and emotionally. No words will ever be sufficient to encompass my appreciation for my family’s selfless love for me. And finally, I shall like to thank my husband, Mustafa Nazir Ahmad, for his love, persistent support and understanding which enabled me to complete successfully what seemed to be a never-ending venture. I would also like to add that if still alive my mother would have been very proud of me and I owe every success of my life to her love and faith in my abilities.

Many other people contributed emotionally as well as intellectually in materializing the project I started around five years ago. The journey from an idea to PhD to monograph is replete with many challenging and complex phases but the love, help and encouragement of my family and friends shielded me against all odds.

I also acknowledge my gratitude to all those colleagues, academics and, scholars who critiqued, challenged, and questioned my research and so ultimately helped me in refining this work.

In the end I would like to dedicate this book to all those who believe in love, peace and harmony.

Nadia Anwar

Lahore, 8 May 2016

Preliminaries

The study carried out in this book is important to me for two main reasons. Firstly it is an attempt to challenge the way in which postcolonial writing has thus far been circumscribed to limited locales, leaving out the huge output of significant writers from Africa; and secondly, it engages critically with the fact that in some parts of the world, including South East Asia and particularly Pakistan, non-western literary plays and academic writing about them get less attention due to the predominance of western educational systems in place. As a result, African literatures in general have been sidelined from mainstream academia in countries of the East. My study is not only an attempt to bring to the fore lesser known yet major voices of world literature, but also to tackle the paucity of theoretical frameworks which could facilitate contextually appropriate analyses of less well researched areas of African literature, in particular Nigerian drama. In order to do so I use the existing theoretical lenses developed by twentieth-century German dramatist and theatre practitioner Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) and American social psychologist Thomas J. Scheff (b. 1929) as a starting point from which I move on to develop a new, reliable and relevant framework for the reading of dramatic literature from Nigeria.

In this study I look into the concept of metatheatre, a well known but highly contested theatrical situation, and its distancing function, by taking into account the performance practices of post-independence Nigerian drama from the first to the third generation of Nigerian playwrights. In order to deal with the problem of generational categorization, I have selected playwrights according to specific phases in time during which their literary talents were more pronounced and they addressed pressing issues of that specific phase in political history. Current Nigerian drama can be appropriately grouped into three categories according to historical political and social contexts, namely the first (pre-independence), the second (post-independence), and the third generation (military), implying “the thematic and stylistic preoccupation of a group of writers responding to a distinct circumstance, partaking in the same narrative, consciously or unconsciously gravitating towards a unifying body of discourse” (Egya 2011, 50). But, following Harry Garuba’s analysis of generational categorization in “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” (2011), it is also worth pointing out that a specific literary period cannot be restricted to a single theme and style because of modern African literature’s association with “extra-literary context”.

In the examination of the selected texts, I have kept the theoretical focus on Brecht’s principles of dramatic distancing, and on the optimum distancing paradigm put forward by Scheff. Both models inform the theatrical, illusive, and fictional nature of metatheatrical performances that help in creating a balance between under- and over-distanced dramatic situations. I use notions of metatheatrical illusion, the Brechtian concept of estrangement or alienation, and the phenomenon of distancing interchangeably because they all tend to distance actors/performers and audiences/readers from an emotionally affective theatrical environment. However, it should be kept in mind while reading this book that the term ‘alienation’, when used to connote a distancing, in no way attempts to challenge or critique an individual’s mastery over her or his surroundings or feelings, as do some more formal and existential approaches towards alienation, which, according to Jaeggi (2014) see it as characterized by deficient relationships, indifference, and powerlessness. In fact, it empowers the theatrical space by offering possibilities of emotional balance.

This book particularly focuses on how metatheatrical elements can help in achieving a balanced state of audience reception by affecting the viewers on both cognitive and emotional levels. In the textual analysis I will look into the specific instances and varying degrees of metatheatrical illusion and into how that illusion is balanced and optimized in accordance with the shifting structural patterns within the texts. I have focused on the fluctuating levels of distancing created by metatheatrical techniques, noting their development from the metaphysical and spiritual plays of the first generation playwrights to the highly political and socialist plays of the second and the third generation, post-independence dramatists. This study also investigates why metatheatrical distancing is particularly relevant in the work of three generations of post-independence Nigerian theatre; and so includes playwrights Wole Soyinka (1934), Ola Rotimi (1938–2000), Femi Osofisan (1946), Stella Oyedepo (1949), and Esiaba Irobi (1960–2010). In addition, the analysis of the selected texts will show those theatrical features each generation of playwright shared and those that distinguish them and how their perspectives transformed over the course of their careers.

Given that it is impossible to incorporate all the dramatic literature written in the recognized national and regional languages of Nigeria; that the works of very few authors who write in their indigenous language have to date been translated into English; and that the literary output of all three generations of playwrights continues today, I have made a careful selection of playwrights to best reflect the three generations. The dramatists selected belong to the Nigerian cultural groups of the Yoruba and Igbo, both of which have a rich cultural history of performance and are known for their artistic contribution to Nigerian theatre. Although another major group, the Hausa, and many other ethnic and cultural groups such as the Efik, Ijaw, Tiv, and Ogoni, also display rich performance traditions, I have not examined their works, because they are mostly produced in their indigenous languages and are less well documented than the Yoruba and Igbo literatures.

Since through the course of history Nigerian drama has experienced many crucial political, social, and cultural moments, it is less important to investigate the change in the oeuvre of each dramatist than the transformations in the wider environment that has greatly affected all post-independence playwrights. In the case of the first and second generations, I have curtailed my selection to two plays from each playwright, one from an earlier phase of their career and one that is comparatively recent, so that the evolution of their styles can also be examined. From the third generation playwrights, I have selected one play each by Esiaba Irobi and Stella Oyedepo in order to highlight their experimentation with dramatic form in covering a wide range of everyday issues. Finally, I have categorized them according to the extent to which they make use of those metatheatrical elements that are the focus of this book. The transformation in the themes, which appear in their plays through metatheatrical techniques, occurs on three distinct levels; from one generation to another, from one playwright to another belonging to the same generation, and from the earlier work to the later work of a single playwright.

This book is aimed at students, teachers, and scholars of English Literature, especially postcolonial drama and theatre. It aims to provide an essential introduction to a subject that is both under-researched and academically enabling. The application of the framework used in this study also allows me to make new theoretical insights and the analysis of the play-texts aims to facilitate a critical reading and evaluation of them in the light of emerging trends and theoretical tropes in drama studies.

Note: To avoid potential inconsistencies in presentation, no diacritic signs or accent marks are used with non-English (especially Yoruba and Igbo) words, names, and titles in this book, whether in the main text, footnotes or bibliography.

Chapter 1

Distancing through Metatheatre

The culturally rich theatrical traditions of Nigeria have produced a number of outstanding dramatists who have enriched the field of dramatic literature. Their plays are an excellent example of how imaginative material from the past can be adapted according to the performance aesthetics and social and political realities of specific sites informed by the geo-cultural setting of the African continent. Because of this significant aesthetico-political connection, Nigerian drama has previously been studied under the politically motivated distancing model presented by Bertolt Brecht;[1] but there has hitherto been no attempt to go beyond these obvious yet rigid associations between politically motivated Brechtian dramatic practices and aesthetically appealing Nigerian performance traditions and to create a synthesis between two extremes of dramatic reception—one which rests on cognition and an other which involves emotions. In this study, the crucial theoretical strand is provided by Thomas J. Scheff’s seminal work on the role and levels of emotional reception in dramatic situations which, although they involve the detachment necessitated by Brechtian principles, also embrace the cathartic pleasure derived from emotional attachment to a performance.

Scheff’s theory focuses on the creation of such scenes/situations in drama which need to first “touch upon the repressed emotions that are shared by most members of the audience”, at the same time allowing them sufficient freedom not to be overwhelmed by these (Scheff 2001, 155). Similarly, Brecht’s distancing, according to Eriksson, is “realized by detachment from uncritical empathy, not from emotion” as generally assumed (2009, 48). The current study demonstrates how critical empathy can be aimed for and achieved through the employment of illusion-breaking or metatheatrical techniques which produce and modulate the degrees of dramatic distancing in the plays selected for analysis. Although apparently opposed to Scheff’s cathartic model, Brecht’s theory is both the foundation and driving force behind it in terms of interdependence of distancing and illusion, and their varying levels. The degree of illusion depends on how much a playwright desires his or her audience to detach from or attach themselves to the performance. In both Brecht’s and Scheff’s works, the creation of a dramatic illusion is oriented towards the achievement of degrees of transformation in actor-audience’s perception about reality and potential capacity to reflect and act upon that reality. Whereas for Brecht the experience of emotional catharsis leads to complacency in the audience, Scheff considers the same as a means to regain emotional equilibrium. The interesting combination of these interdisciplinary models of distancing and then of reading them through the lens of metatheatrical illusion address both the playwright’s call for intellectual activity and the emphasis on emotional attachment. In the context of Nigerian drama, the combined model derived from the distancing practices of Brecht and Scheff is very relevant as it foregrounds the socio-political and cognitive dimensions of texts and their impact on audiences (through the Brechtian model) and the emotional and aesthetic aspects (through the Scheffian balancing model).

The current chapter consists of three sections. In Section A, the critical framework of this study, derived from Bertolt Brecht’s groundbreaking experimentation in theatrical arts and Thomas J. Scheff’s psychological excavations into the social dynamics of the concept of distancing, is discussed. Section B interrogates the conceptual relation between dramatic distancing and metatheatre and provides evidence of how the latter seeks to estrange, alienate, or distance audiences. Section C gives an overview of existing critical perspectives on post-independence Nigerian drama. It investigates current critical analyses and readings of Nigerian drama that either seek to promote cognitive or emotional aspects of audience reception or to overlook the manifestation of different dramatic forms which can strike a possible balance in terms of emotions.

A. Distancing: A Dramatic Imperative

The concept of distancing has been used in various fields of art, social sciences, and literature. Distance entails separation. This separation can be manifested and happen at different levels in the temporal or spatial, and personal or public domains. The distanced or separated subject from its immediate context and circumstances or/and vice versa, can therefore be affected historically and individually as well as affecting the psychological and emotional states of mind of the other separated subjects in the political and social milieus. Studies of the concept of distancing appear in interrelated and divergent fields such as drama, theatre, social psychology, psychotherapy, philosophy and the arts in general. In his influential book on drama education, Stig A. Eriksson traces the meaning of distance from the Latin distantia (standing apart), and considers it equivalent to lexical items such as “separation, distance, remoteness, difference, [and] diversity” (2009, 35). However, in whatever context it is used, it refers to the varying levels of detachment of the separated subject from his or her immediate or remote environment or theatrical space, depending on how and for what purpose this distance is enforced and created to elicit certain outcomes.

In his seminal work, Edward Bullough envisages distance in psychical terms, referring to the distance that “lie[s] between our own self and its affections”, whereby the affections can allude to “sensation, perception, emotional state or idea[s]”. This does not mean that “the relation between the self and the object is broken to the extent of becoming ‘impersonal’” (1912, 89–90). Timothy J. Reiss explains that this impersonal state, as discussed by Bullough, allows the audience to identify with the characters emotionally, but “another part of the mind [watches] the action unfold more dispassionately [intellectually], as though from a distance” (1971, 5). Emotions in this particular state do not affect the audience in a directly personal manner, but neither do they disappear. This leads to the analysis of the emotional impact on readers and audiences and of the extent to which the fictionality of works of art, especially drama, can shape audiences’ post-performance views of themselves, their communities and their social and cultural institutions. Distance changes our reception habits towards both the unfolding theatrical event and the characters playing their parts in it. By altering our relationship with the characters, distance renders the latter fictitious (Bullough, 1912, 92). Not only that, but the variable and unfixed nature of the dramatic action changes the very levels and degrees of distance by which its effect is produced. Some of the Nigerian playwrights whose plays are analyzed in this book exemplify this trend by using framing devices and doubled performative situations; these will be discussed in the next chapter.

As an inevitable element in the works of art, distance brings multidimensional aesthetic objectivity. From the point of view of an artist’s objective treatment of his or her own art work, it can refer to the amount of objectivity available to recipients. An artist can only be effective artistically if he or she is detached from “the experience qua personal”. This objectivity is both perceptual/individualistic and contextual/situational. Within these parameters Bullough contextualizes distancing as a critical and emotional facility that helps readers, theatre goers and everyone engaging or encountering art in the development of their “aesthetic consciousness” (Bullough 1912, 90). The channelling of emotions—what Descartes terms the transformation of raw emotions into ‘joie intellectuelle’[2]—therefore depends on the innate ability to colour sensations with our individual perceptual and physical proclivities.

As an acknowledged literary, psychic, and social reality, distance is characterized by flexibility and contextual adaptability and cannot exist without differentiating levels within any dramatic formula. A piece of performance or a dramatic enactment attains its meaning in the audience’s perception through certain strategies of dramatic distancing which a playwright or director applies in order to manipulate ideas, opinions, images, and information. Although this manipulation enables a playwright or director to exercise varying levels of authority over his or her audience, or instigate suggestions in terms of controlling its levels of involvement and interest in the performance, audience members also learn to adjust accordingly by relating to those levels with their individual ability to perceive things.

Subsequently, the experience of performance is ascertained through the intermingling of personal and collective values and their effects on the level of response, all of which lead to different forms and levels of distancing that are supposed to bring about an aesthetically enriched and practically useful dramatic experience. According to Bullough “[t]he idea of achieving an aesthetic consciousness relies on the variability of Distance”, where “Distance [decreases] without its disappearance”. He envisions distance in relation to the subject/object paradigm with greater or lesser degree. For him, distance can change both according to the “distancing-power of the individual” and due “to the character of the object”;[3] whereby the former can possibly lead an individual to emotional collapse in an under-distanced situation (as one can expect through Esiaba Irobi’s and Stella Oyedepo’s violence-ridden stage in Hangmen Also Die and A Play That Was Never To Be) and the latter can suggest the failure of a piece of art in an over-distanced situation or vice versa (Bullough, 1912, 94). Thus, the creation of a balanced dramatic experience which is neither emotionally overwhelming nor intellectually overpowering can compel audiences and participants into action without losing its aesthetic and emotional appeal.