David Kerr, "Pre-Colonial African Popular Theatre” and "Reaction of Indigenous African Theatre to Colonialism" in African Popular Theatre by David Kerr (1995). pp 1-15, 41-58. (OCRA)
Ngugi Wa Thiong'o, "Enactments of Power: The Politics of Performance Space" TDR: The Drama Review
RECOMMENDED:
Mathias Guenther, “Stories, Storytelling, and Story Gathering” in Tricksters and Trancers by Bloomington: Indiana University Press. (On Southern African Tradition – the Bushmen of Botswana), (OCRA).
Also recommended: Kathryn Linn Guerts, "Is There a Sixth Sense?" and "Personhood and Ritual Reinforcement of Balance," pages 3-20 and 144-165. In Culture and the Senses: Bodily Ways of Knowing in an African Community (not on OCRA but available in ROCK).
Reading response:
1. How might Kerr be used to critique Drewal and Some, or vice versa?
2. Pull out the essential argument of Thiong'o's essay and discuss it. Do you agree?
2. Can you apply the idea of "scenographic models of sociometric process" to the practices described by Some, or Kerr? Or, if you read the recommended reading, apply it to Guenther (on foraging and performance, very interesting!).
3. If you do the recommended reading: Compare and contrast attitudes to repetition or mimesis and the copy in Plato on the one hand and Yoruban/Anlo-Ewe ritual discussed in Guerts on the other.
Images: a masker at an Egungun ceremony in Benin, West Africa (squaretop one below), and a Nigerian Egungun costume and mask. Egungun maskers are considered very dangerous. As they dance and swirl, the masks will run into the gathered crowd trying to catch the soul of the living person.
Left: Children maskers playing "Pierrot Grenade" at Carnival in Trinidad. The
etymology of this costume can be traced to African Egungun and European
Harlequin (commedia Harlequin historically played in blackface, the "rags" become triangular patches). At bottom: a mummer in whiteface (blackface has been
banned for 40 years) at the Philadelphia's Mummer's Parade, January
2011.
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