The Generation of Plays: Yoruba Popular Life in Theater (review)

Karin Barber's book offers a rare insider insight into a cultural effervescence among the Yoruba between the 1940s and the 1980s, the dramatic form that became famous as Yoruba opera, giving rise to the national superstar Hubert Ogunde (she spells it Ogunnde) and international star Duro Ladipo, and the long-surviving Oyin Adejobi, whose theater is the subject of her specific focus.

She describes the subject as "historical," in acknowledgment of the moribund state of the Yoruba theater phenomenon. From a modest beginning in the 1940s, it benefited from a general cultural vivaciousness during the decade of independence in the 1960s as well as "the swell of petro-naira in the 1970s" (2), after surviving the civil wars of 1966 to 1971. As Barber testifies, by the 1980s its survival had come to depend heavily on patronage by television programmers and resort to the burgeoning video market. For that reason one might describe her study as a sort of postmortem, and as such it provides valuable insights into its history and dynamics.

She describes her approach as "generative materialism" (7), which involves closely observing every stage in the generation of a piece: from the inception of the idea, to the brainstorming to develop it, the trials, trimmings, and tryouts. It also includes how it is spontaneously adapted to unforeseen eventualities on staging—no-show actors, lack of lighting, inadequate performance space, and the like. The strategy necessitated her becoming a participant observer in the Oyin Adejobi troupe from 1981 to 1984, living with the members for days on end, traveling with them, and also acting in their performances. She supplements the experiential information she thus gathered with casual conversations and interviews with key members of the company. Because she is aware that most of her readers will never have had (nor ever will have) the opportunity to see the Adejobi theater in performance she provides synopses for fifteen of their plays spanning the period from the late 1940s to 1992.

In addition to the valuable information she provides about the origin and development of the theater, the daily routines of the personnel, and the logistics of operating a traveling theater, she also indirectly clarifies some of the controversies that have attended the Yoruba theater movement in general, among others, whether it arose from traditional observances, its contribution to the struggle against colonialism, and its status as a truly popular form that not only emanated from the people but also reflected their interests.

Barber, who has native fluency in Yoruba (the language of the theater), exemplifies the sort of linguistic competence required for the study of African verbal texts and performances. Had she depended on the services of an interpreter she could hardly have avoided drawing attention to herself and her presence, thus undermining the advantages of her methodology. Moreover, her book is generously documented and lucidly written, and it characteristically does extremely well by the people who took her into their midst and confidence.