Whose Theatre, Whose Africa?: Wole Soyinka's The Road on the Road

Whose Theatre, Whose Africa? Wole Soyinka's The Road on the Road BIODUN JEYIFO In this article, I explore the question of whal happens when African literary and dramatic texlS travel. Using the example of one of the major works of Wole Soyinka's corpus, The Road, I pose the following question: In what resides the '''Africanness'' of African literary and dramatic texts, and how does this "Africanness" fare when African texts travel? In other words, I explore how the markers, signs, and codes of "Africanness" are read, decoded, reconfigured , and, above all, appropriated when African texls travel. Although the lhree inslances of "traveling" that I shall explore in the staging of The Road all took place outside Africa, I wish to emphasize that both the practical and the theoretical implications of my observations and reflections in the article also apply to the "traveling" of African literary and dramatic texts wilhin the African continent. Although I shall presently give a fuller elaboration of the term "Africanness" and why I make it so central to my observations and analyses in this article, it is perhaps useful to stale here that in deploying this lerm here, I am drawing upon and also expanding on the sense in which one can talk of social realities, practices. texts, discourses, and expressive codes that are "Canadian," "Cherokee," Chinese," or "Central American" - without thereby implying that what are specifically "Canadian." "Cherokee:' "Chinese," or "Central American" in objects and practices so designated cannOl be found in other parts of the world. Given this widespread common-sense approach to social identification, why the extrapolation and scrutiny of the "Africanness" of a play wrillen by an African playwright should become the subject of an academic article is precisely the point of departure for this essay. To the question that frames this article, the answer can be quile simple and uncomplicated: like the dramalic and literary texts of every cullural region of the world, African literary and dramalic texts necessarily and inevitably change when they travel. Like people, commodities, services, and the forces of nature - the winds and the waters of the oceans - lexts, when they travel, Modern Drama, 45:3 (Fall 2002) 449 450 BIGDUN JEYIFO are subject to the contingencies of travel. In new contexts, they have to adapt to the exigencies of "local conditions," such as hospitable and inhospitable norms and customs, and they are brushed against the grain of both fervently desired and quite unanticipated transformative encounters. But the matter is not quite so simple, and this is why the article is framed by its particular title: "Whose Theatre, Whose Africa?" I posit the title in this deliberately interrogative manner because, ultimately. the article is motivated by a defense of the "Africanness" of African literary and dramatic texts, a defense that I hope is unsentimental, tough-minded, and self-critical. Putting the matter in this pointed manner dramatically raises another related question: Against what threats, from which enemies, does one have to protect and insist on the "Africanness" of African texts? And what are the stakes involved in the project of constructing and defending the "Africanness" of African texts, especially when they travel, within Africa itself and in the world at large? It is thus important to elaborate a little on these particular sets of questions before coming to my discussion of the concrete instances of the staging of The Road in three venues outside Africa, namely, Port of Spain in Trinidad, as staged by the Trinidad Theatre Workshop Company in 1966 under the direction of its resident playwright and artistic director, Derek Walcott; a production in 1980 in Mysore, India, in a Kanada translation directed by Professor Anniah Gowda, who was also responsible for the translation; and. finally. a production in London in 1992 by the Talawa Theatre Company under the direction of its artistic director, Yvonne Brewster. Theoretically, this arLicle is located between what I would describe as the Scylla of extreme postmodemist. social-constructionist discourses on the "invention" of Africa and the Charybdis of cultural nationalist or"essentialist" discourses on Africa. Elsewhere I have already explored both of these composite discourses and the conflicts and tensions between them; moreover, there are other accounts...