Items

• Tonie: acting in Hampsted

  Sierra Leone's first professional stage actress is Tonie Tucker who will take the part of Sidi in The Lion and the Jewel by Wole Soyinka of Nigeria on the B.B.C. Third programme on Thursday. Tonie, who is 23, came to this country in 1962 with a government grant to study at the College of Dramatic Art in Glasgow. At the end of June she will play in a double bill presented at Hampstead Theatre Club by the Masques, a group formed this year who want to perform plays in London by African wrtiers. Their producer is Athol Fugard from South Africa. Their first plays, The Trials of Brother Jerome and The Strong Breed, are both by Wole Soyinka. ....
• The Times Diary: A Ghanaian Playwright

  Excerpt: "So far the only West African playwright we know much about is the Nigerian Wole Soyinka. The next may be Ama Ata Aidoo, 27, a short, good-natured Ghanaian writer. The London-based Ijinle Company, which performed Soyinka's The Lion and the Jewel at the Royal Court in December, is anxious to present her first play, Dilemma of a Ghost (published here by Longmans)... Her belief is that she can only find real validity as a playwright by absorbing the spirit of Ghana's indigenous mime and dance drama."
• The Primacy of the Performer

  Book reviews by Geoffrey Axworthy. He critiques three books: "African Theatre Today" by Martin Banham, "The Drama of Black Africa" by Anthony Graham-White, and "African Literature Today" by Eldred Durosimi Jones. Excerpt: "'African Theatre Today' is a well-organized and thoroughly readable introduction to the works of the principal published dramatists of West and East Africa, with a concise account of their cultural and theatrical backgrounds. Extensive quotations from the plays, clearly related to context, and the attractive format of the book, make it a pleasure to read... This quality is unfortunately lacking in Anthony Graham-White's 'The Drama of Black Africa.' ... One important point that all three books tend to obscure (for instance, through book lists giving dates of publication rather than composition) is that the flow of dramatic writings of high literary quality in English has dried to a trickle in the past decade. One of the reasons for this is undoubtedly political disillusionment, the ebbing of the powerful romantic and idealistic forces that produced an astonishing flood of creativity in the period just before and just after independence..."
• Sheer ingenuity of Soyinka's plot

  Royal Court Theatre: The Lion and the Jewel by Wole Soyinka. This is the third play by Wole Soyinka to appear in London since last year, and this work alone is enough to establish Nigeria as the most fertile new source of English-speaking drama since Synge's discovery of the Western Isles. Even this comparison does Soyinka less than justice, for he is dealing not only with a rich folk material, but with the impact of the modern world on tribal custom: to find any parallel for his work in English drama you have to go back to the Elizabethans...It is tempting to linger over the sheer ingenuity of Soyinka's plot. But what comes over even more strongly in Desmond O'Donovan's production is his originality of scene construction (a sparring match in proverbs, reflected in a simultaneous wrestling bout), and the richly expressive range of speech idioms...
• Season of African Plays

  Mr. Michael White and the African Music and Drama Trust are to present the I Jinle Company (The Transcription Centre Theatre Workshop) in three African plays, which will be performed in repertory for a season at the Hampstead Theatre Club from June 28. The plays are: The Trials of Brother Jero and The Strong Breed, both by Wole Soyinka, which will be performed as a double bill, opening June 28, and The Blood Knot by Athol Fugard, opening on June 30. Wole Soyinka is known in Nigeria and in Britain not only as a dramatic writer, but also as an actor and producer. His earlier play, The Road, a highlight of the Commonwealth Arts Festival last year, recently won the Drama Prize at the Negro Arts Festival in Dakar. The Trials of Brother Jero is a satirical comedy, featuring a cunning prophet (played by Zaikes Mokae), whose brand of Christianity works to his own advantage. The Strong Breed is about a savage New Year ritual and the search for a scapegoat. The leads are played by Femi Euba and Rosetta N'wanzoke.
• Rest of the week's theatre

  "Things Fall Apart West Yorkshire Playhouse Leeds"
• Negro Theatre Workshop

  Negro Theatre Workshop will present a special charity preview of The Road by Wole Soyinka on Monday, Septemer 13 at 8 p.m. at Theatre Royal, Stratford East. The Workshop is in the process of being set up as a trust, a limited company by guarantee not for profit.
• Modern African Writers

  Modern African Writers: General editor, Gerald Moore. An important new series presenting critical studies of the works of Africa's leading novelists, poets, and dramatists. Wole Soyinka: Gerlad Moore. An account of the work of this remarkable Nigerian writer, best known as a major dramatist but also widely praised as a poet, novelist, and commentator.
• Lion and the Jewel

  B. A. Young reviews Wole Soyinka's play The Lion and the Jewel at the Royal Court: "This is Wole Soyinka taking a satirical look at his own people again, and very delightfully he does it... I suspect diehard African Nationalists may think him wrong in this, since he is adulterating the pure African culture with an alien element; the rest of us may thank him for opening up this particular source of good-natured entertainment."
• Joan Littlewood's theatre plan

  Joan Littlewood was back on home ground this week at the Theatre Royal, Stratford, E. She is rehearsing there for the new Theatre Workshop season which opens on April 8 with the American political parody, Macbird, by Barbara Garson. Future productions will include Mrs. Wilson's Diary, by Richard Ingrams and John Wells, an adaptation of Brendan Behan's Borstal Boy, and new plays by Stephen Lewis, Wole Soyinka, and Peter Shaffer.
• How do you pull of something like this? Director Rufus Norris talks to Sarah Hemming about the challenge of staging a play by Wole Soyinka

  Sarah Hemming interviews director Rufus Norris about the process of putting on Death and the King's Horseman, by Wole Soyinka. Of the play: "Considered by many to be Wole Soyinka's greatest play, this 1975 drama is based on a real incident in Oyo, Nigeria, in 1946, when the colonial district officer intervened to prevent a local man committing ritual suicide. Soyinka's drama places that man, Elesin, at the centre of the story and follows the disastrous conseqeunces of his being unable to complete the rite."
• Harsh comedy on a Lagos beach

  Independent Africa has produced a big crop of novelists, but so far the only dramatist we know anything about is the Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka. But with Soyinka on the scene African drama is a force to be reckoned with. After last year's production of The Road, and now The Trials of Brother Jero, performed by an African company from the Transcription Centre Theatre Workshop, he appears as an extremely sophisticated craftsman working within a rich folk tradition: given the present impoverished state of our own language, his contribution to English-speaking drama could grow into something as important as Sygne's opening up of the Western isles...
• Commonwealth writing from Africa

  The announcement features African writers whose novels/collections have recently been published. Major poets include Wole Soyinka (Black Orpheus), John Pepper Clark (A Reed in the Tide) and Christina Ama Ata Aidoo (The Dilemma of a Ghost). Excerpt: "The Dilemma of a Ghost: Christina Ama Ata Aidoo. A lively play in five acts. It is set in Ghana and tells of problems in a Ghanaian family when the eldest son brings home an Afro-American wife."
• Arts Council Awards for Two Playwrights

  Lord Goodman, chairman of the Arts Council, is to present awards of 500 each to two playwrights to-day. Wole Soyinka and Tom Stoppard are the first writers to receive the John Whiting Award, which is given to British or Commonwealth playwrights for a play or plays, either read in script form or seen in production during the year, which show a new and distinctive development in dramatic writing... The 1966-67 award will be made jointly to: Wole Soyinka, for plays published in a volume of "Five Plays" including the following produced in this country for the first time during the year. The lion and the jewel (Royal Court Theatre), and Trials of brother Jero (Hamstead Theatre Club); and Tom Stoppard, for his play Rosencrantz and Guildenstein are dead (National Theatre).
• Anowa: The Gate Theatre

  Malcolm Rutherford reviews Ama Ata Aidoo's play "Anowa." Excerpt: "Some of the touches, like the introductory and closing music, are distinctly West African. But do not go to see Anowa looking for something exotic. What will strike you is not how different it is from developed western culture, but how similar. It is a very well-constructed, thoughtful piece. Anowa is played with superb self-control by Joy Elias-Rilwan, as is Kofi by David Harewood. The play is directed by Dele Charley and was written by Ama Ata Aidoo as long ago as 1970."
• African Playwright and Poet

  We must hope that the reception given at the Royal Court last night to verses and songs by Mr. Wole Soyinka and to his one act play The Invention will make this Nigerian writer less suspicious of the London theatre than he gives the impression of being. Whenever he allowed a reader or a character to speak directly to the audience, the audience responded. It went more than half way towrads doing so even when Mr. Soyinka plainly was not addressing it. If he thinks this was prompted by the thing he hates most, a patronizing attitude on the part of a white audience, it will be a pity. It was prompted by respect for his gift for words. When his words were clear, clarity was their most striking quality. At those times he had written briefly, without repeating himself, and then suddenly the wish to do just that, to say it all over again, became too strong for him. What his last comment was on the relationship between the races most of us will never know. For instead of making it at the end of The Invention he made a joke, or else, figuratively speaking, he mumbled. So the comment was lost. For us, a pity.
• African dramatist's new play

  The English Stage Company has now completed its plans for the 1966-67 season at the Royal Court Theatre. After Three Men for Colverton, which has just opened, and Macbeth, with Sir Alec Guinness and Simone Signoret, on October 20, will come the first performance of Wole Soyinka's The Lion and the Jewel. This is to be the first of two productions of plays by Wole Soyinka to be presented by the English Stage Company in conjunction with the Ijinle players, the group of African actors living in London who recently produced The Trials of Brother Jero at the Hampstead Theatre Club. The Lion and the Jewel opens on November 30 and will be directed by Desmond O'Donovan...
• Theatres

  "Eastern Nigeria Theatre: Scala Theatre "Song of a Goat"--John Pepper Clark"
• Africa: mask & face

  "I cannot help the feeling that the first week of the Commonwealth Arts Festival has not shown the theatre at its best."
• Radio 1

  "10.45 A Future for Their Past? Christopher Hope returns to his native country to find out how South African novelists, poets, and playwrights are adjusting to their altered state."
• Provocative view of Hammarskjold

  "He accuses him of bungling in the Congo and of being responsible for the death of its Prime Minister, Patrice Lumumba."
• I Come to Bury Césaire

  "Chiwetel Ejiofor strives to find something three dimensional in Cesaire's Lumumba, some semse of doubt and humanity, occasionally stammering or casting his eyes about."
• Book It Now

  "A season in the Congo, Young Vic, London SE1, Jul 6-Aug 10."
• New voice from Africa

  "'Une Saison au Congo" is an epic drama about the life and death of Patrice Lumumba."
• Also Showing

  "With the benefit of hindsight, elaborate connections are made with the CIA, Patrice Lumumba, chimpanzees, HIV, space travel, Doris Day, and Rock Hudson."