Jeyifo

I found the article a little frustrating this week. There are a couple of reasons for this. I know this is a 500 level course and we are in an academic setting but wow he’s uses a lot of elevated diction and paper to say what he can say in one sentence. The history of Nigeria being a verbal one makes it difficult to pin down actual Nigerian theatrical history. There are both several things to consider about this statement and things that support this statement.
The British Drama League formally decided that there is no indigenous drama in Africa, but failed to give credit for performance based in ritual dance as well as several other examples. The problem that is faced by historians seeking to research Nigerian performance is that Nigerians suffers from three influences on it culture that cannot be ignored.
Jeyifo spoke of several responses in terms of African theatre and what has both influenced and created it. Nigeria was colonized by Britain the colonization of this country led to its culture being transferred to the native population in many ways shapes and forms. This resulted in warping and altering any already existing theatre that existed in Nigeria before the advent of colonial rule. Another thing that must be considered is that even before Britain entered the picture, is that trading brought others into the country and contact with these cultures also could have changed theatre of Nigeria.
I agree whole heartedly with this assessment. It is a historical fact that no matter where white European settlers have gone they have wrought a path of destruction. I like to think of what happened to Nigeria like removing the center card on a house of cards. We did the same thing to Iraq when we removed Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. The existing tyrannical regimes served a function of keeping other tyrannical elements from each other’s throats. I’m not excusing colonialism but it’s a phenomenon that has continued to persist. America still alters other cultures without even blinking. I had a philosophy professor once say that we didn’t invade Afghanistan to liberate it or even battle the Taliban. We invaded so that we could continue selling them blue jeans and Coca-cola. This is ironically what Al Qaeda was angry about in the first place. But I think he was referring to the relationship Christianity has to capitalism.
I digress however; Jeyifo’s second thesis speaks of a sort of Counter Reformation. He refers to this counter reformation as nothing more than the deliberate result of Nigeria rebelling against the colonial culture it had assimilated. Both this and the previous thesis results in the third thesis. This thesis says that almost all of African drama today is the direct result or derivatives of western drama.
This conclusion however in my opinion doesn’t give much thought to religious drama and dance that is most decidedly African in origin. No matter how much the western world has influenced a culture it cannot be denied that some of the African dance rituals. I know the Yoruba have a very rich culture of music and dance. That is theatre