Counter-Mimicry, or Performance Across Cultures



Read the play: Death and the King’s Horseman, by Wole Soyinka


Recommended: An essay in Representations by Brown Professor of English, Olakunle George.


Reading response choices:

1. How many types of performance are countenanced in Soyinka's play. What are they? Does Soyinka delineate them and point to the differences in type? Does he illustrate their similarity? How?

2. The Pilkings are seen dancing the Tango. Why tango? After watching this video, and exploring the other links below, go back to the play and discuss why Soyinka might have selected that dance for them.

4. Discuss one or more of the ways in which Soyinka’s use of language, his visual imagery, or the play’s relationship to the audience shifts from scene to scene.  Why do you think Soyinka employs these shifts?

5.  What is Soyinka’s position on the phrase “culture clash” as articulated in his introduction? Why does he take this position? How is it exemplified in the play? To write this response I encourage you to engage with the essay by Olakunle George recommended above.


NOTE:  Besides reading the play, everyone should do some online (or otherwise) background searching on the playwrights and other authors we encounter.  Who is Wole Soyinka more broadly? What is he known for, and what has he faced in his life to inform his writing?


Compare the videos below. 




More links of interest:

Yoruba Bata (drum) and Praise Singing (notice similarities in language to Soyinka's opening)

Example of Ghanian Praise Singing

The History of Tango

Slideshow from WSU Production



Recommended:  The Bacchae of Euripides by Soyinka








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