femi osofisan - oral tradition & the african playwright

1 Dr. Kemi Atanda Ilori – Oral Tradition and the African Playwright: The Case of Femi Osofisan

ORAL TRADITION AND THE AFRICAN PLAYWRIGHT

THE CASE OF FEMI OSOFISAN

BY

KEMI ATANDA ILORI

(1st published in the Nigerian Theatre Journal, Volume 2, No. 1, August, 1988 pp 94-

112)

The comprehensive repertory of myth and ritual, particularly of

those primal rites of communal retrieval which survived as a

paradigm and whose seasonal re-enactments helped to restore

harmony in the race, face the prospect of attribution in the

contemporary intellectual climate. (1)

If the myth is not just an infantile or aberrant creation of a

“primitive” humanity, but is the expression of a mode of being in

the world, what has become of myths in the modern world? (2)

(Emphasis Eliade’s).

There is scarcely any in-depth study of the development of African theatre and drama that

fails to notice the importance of oral tradition to this development. Seminal among such

studies are the works of Joel Adedeji, Oyin Ogunba, Anthony Graham-Whyte, Femi

Osofisan, Wole Soyinka, Ebun Clark, Michael Etherton and Biodun Jeyifo. In addition to

full-scale investigations there are scores of essays on the same subject by notably Ulli

Beier, Robin Horton, Oyekan Owomoyela, Yemi Ogunbiyi and many others. These


scholars discuss in detail the indebtedness of African drama, not Nigerian drama alone, to

oral tradition, in terms of the inter-junction of ritual and theatre, the complicity of ideology

and the playwright’s social vision, the dynamics of refraction of social structures in both the

form and content of the drama. Essentially their conclusions point up the inter-relatedness

of drama and society.

Furthermore, most of these studies also show that it is the folk theatre groups that have

borrowed most generously from oral tradition. Unlike the literary dramatists, they have –

for instance - moved beyond merely excerpting motifs from oral tradition but have also

incorporated its performative distinctions. In this paper, we want to show that this is also

the case with Femi Osofisan who, in our opinion, is the most versatile contemporary

literary dramatist to sustain his plays on myth, legends and folktale. We propose to discuss

how Osofisan has integrated certain dynamics of oral tradition in his play generally and

this implication of this on the future and scope of Nigerian Drama.

Having said this, perhaps, it is also necessary to remark that Osofisan belongs in the

immediate flux of Post- Soyinka playwrights in Nigeria, i.e. , in the spectrum of Zulu Sofola,

Wale Ogunyemi, Ola Rotimi, Bode Sowande, Kola Omotoso, among others. The

emergence of these writers about the time of the Nigerian civil war is significant in that it

serves as a common background for them. Though the writers reaction to this experience

varies widely in their artistic reconstruction of the period, it invariably acted as the crucial

symbol of the malaise, if not wholesale disruption, of society for all of them. The unifying

element in their works maybe summed up in the apocalyptic vision of the civil war, and of

the social climate of the immediate post-war years. In terms of the dialectics of their works

– what Olu Obafemi pinpoints as revolutionary aesthetics(3) – and the surfeit of anger,


reaction and revolution as thematic directions, Femi Osofisan and Kole Omotoso represent

the boldest outline of this vision. For Femi Osofisan much of this vision is sublimated in

oral tradition.

There is something interesting, if not significant, about this point, in that from the late 60s

upwards, because of the war, because of the oil - boom, because of certain developmental

programme of Nigerian government (the Universal Primary Education of Gowan, the

creation of states by Mohammed, the return of civilian democracy of Obasanjo) many oral

communities in Nigeria were invaded by the print and electronic media and lost thereby

what Ong’s described as primary orality:

The pristine orality of mankind untouched by writing or print

which remains still more or less operative in areas sheltered to

a greater or lesser degree from the full impact of literacy and

which is vestigial to some degree in us all.(4)

In our opinion, and to conclude this introduction, this is precisely the juncture at which the

two quotations at the beginning of this paper are relevant. However, our attention is not

per se on ‘the pristine orality of mankind untouched by writing or print’ but on those noetic

(Intellectual) processes which extensively defines it and which finds a certain sublimation

in the drama in a large sense- despite the reductive nature of literary text – and, to be quite

specific, in the form and content of Femi Osofisan’s drama.

A writer is drawn to Myths because they illustrate the essential

principles of story-telling and because the archetypal patterns


embodied in the myths offer him models by which to shape his

and his culture’s vital concerns.(5)

The wellspring of Osofisan’s drama is myth and this is without prejudice to his persistent

method of sourcing the referents of his drama in the facticity of contemporary life in his

society. This facticity is the complex neo-colonial structure of the Nigerian society and

serving as bastion mainly for the nourishment of government and neo - capitalist

outgrowths of Nigerian’s industrial development. In Osofisan’s drama, this neo-colonial

society is reconstructed in various forms with emphasis on its patiently acquisitive nature,

its potential to dehumanize the dispossessor and the dispossessed, as much as its

inherent contradictions that will ultimately work for its overthrow. For this complex though

engaging task, myth provides for Osofisan a symbolic construct in dealing not merely with

the negative vectors of social development but also in envisioning their transcendence

through positive, and for him, collective action.

Consequentially, what seems to be epicentre of Osofisan’s drama is that the paradigm of

dramatic collision (whether in terms of social forces or social ideas) which best iterates the

contradictory complexes of society. This paradigm is at the level of the archetype where it

represents for the playwright of the most actual portrayal of egos, visions and even fears of

his central characters. Whether as Yajin or Sontri, Titubi or Marshal, Biokun or Saluga,

Angola or Alhaja, Osofisan’s characters are creative images and clichés; they are topos to

depict the alienating parameters of society, its nodal tensions, and its tender pulses.

Osofisan pursues myth like analyst, seeking to record at meta-fictive levels a kind of reality

which in actual life is both patiently absorbed and objectionable.


At the level of art, Osofisan reinvests this reality in a most sensuous form by dissolving the

literariness of text in the creative facilities of folklore. In the Chattering and the Song, (6)

folk riddles encapsulate the dramatic tension; In Once Upon Four Rubbers (7) the whole

unfolding of the dramatic action is through the oral formula for folktale; in Morontondun

Osofisan’s mythopoesis disinvests the ancient Moremi myth of its conservative and feudal

implications, and in No more the Wasted Breed (9) he invents a folktale that dispatches

the gods to oblivion. In terms of the engagement of spatial and temporal factors, of the

creative processes of folklore and story-telling, Osofisan’s drama depends not merely on

the cultural ethos of society but on its oral constituents, the dynamics of oral reproduction.

Significantly, beyond what some critics have observed as Brechtian tendencies in

Osofisan’s drama is a far more situational process, a homology between the literary

structure of the plays and the non-literary specifics of oral art. This homology is evident in:

i. The oscillation of Osofisan’s drama between mythical and historical time. In an

illustrative arc, Okpewho has shown the symbiosis of myth (fiction) and history (fact)

and the artistic level at which this operates.(10)

ii. The incorporation of basic processes of oral tradition. In a deeply investigative

study, Jan Vansina discusses three such processes: memorized speech, oral

accounts and homeostasis.(11) Accompanying these processes are certain

mnemotechnic devices which aid total recall, vividness and breadth. As instances of

this homology, four plays by Osofisan shall be examined, beginning with

Morontodun.


Morontodun is a play based mainly on the Agbekoya crisis of 1969 in the defunct

Western Region of Nigeria. The crisis was sparked off by the government review of its tax

policy, a review that results in a higher head tax for the largely self employed rural masses

– the peasant farmers. The background to this crisis lies, of course, in the dis-enchantment

of the rural population with the conditions of social existence, the increasing poverty of the

countryside the insensitive bureaucratic structures, the corruption of government

functionaries. Evidently, the tax review of 1969 merely torched off a smouldering social

situation.

In Osofisan’s play, emphasis is on the farmers’ collective attempt not merely to resist bad

government but to overthrow it with the force of arms and government’s effort to quell the

uprising. Osofisan shows in his play the extensive effects of this uprising on the living

conditions in the farmer’s camp and on the class ego and solidarity of the bourgeoisie.

Through Titubi, the daughter of a redoubtable prosperous Alhaji, the police in Morontodun

suppresses the farmers revolt but only well after Osofisan has demonstrated the

transformation of Titubi from an Idle, fancy free heiress to a police informant and to an

individual who finally and consciously casts her lot with the peasants in their revolt. Tibuti’s

adventure and her suffering represent a process of conscientization, stages of which

Osofisan depicts with two contrastive views of the popular Moremi Myth.

Moremi is a legend of Ile-Ife, who in a bid to rescue Ife from perennial marauders

volunteers to be captured by these marauders in order to discover the secret of the secret

of their invincibility. Because, she succeeded in her mission, Ife was eventually able to

contain the marauders and absorb them into its own hegemonic social order. In Osofisan’s

view, Moremi - because she belongs to the feudal hierarchy as a queen – is on a mission


in furtherance of her own class interests. Titubi at the beginning of the play is in a similar

situation. To conscientize her and, therefore, radicalize the concept of heroism, Osofisan

retains the moral of selfless leadership but reverses the class ambience of the legend:

Titubi transforms from a police informant into a defender of the farmers’ interest. In her

new role she avows:

I knew I had to kill the ghost of Moremi in my belly. I am not

Moremi; Moremi served the state which was the spirit of the

ruling class. But it is not true that the state is always right ... for

there’s no way you can win a war against a people whose

cause is just. (12)

The displacement of the Moremi myth ends in a sufficiently strong rejection of the basis for

Moremi’s and – by Inference - Tibubi’s mission. What triumphs is the heroism of the

peasants, their audacity and endurance, their limited if not partial historical vision.

Throughout the play, Osofian oscillates dramatic action between historical and mythical

time to lend authenticity to his tale and to make poignant the moral he conceals beneath

his characters ‘egos, social choices and beliefs.

As a further index of spatial and temporal factors, Morontodun bristles with flashbacks

which are moments when specific narrative details are related by different characters. The

episodic structure of the play is highly valuable for this process. It accommodates

conveniently Osofisan’s digressions either from the folktale or from the peasants struggles.

It also embodies aspects of personal and group traditions when different character relate


past events about themselves or about their social group in a way to lead to audience’s

attention to the necessity or premise for their immediate activities.

Basically oral accounts satisfy two necessities in Osofisan’s drama: they recall what is

remote in time and space as crucial to the immediate circumstances of the characters,

and, where they occur as flashbacks, they provide a visual authenticity to the choices and

vision of the characters. Writes Duvignaud:

In the theatre action is made for seeing, and is, indeed,

reconstituted by spectacle… Imitation, in the full sense of the

word, implies a metaphorical transformation or sublimation … it

represents the full active texture of existence without living it

out. (13)

Much of our remarks so far also applies to Osofisan’s other plays. An instance of the

displacement of myth for ideological reasons mainly is also evident in No More the

Wasted Breed.

No More the Wasted Breed is Osofisan’s own engaging folktale in which the gods are

entirely repudiated by humans. Olokun - god of the ocean - and Elusu – goddess of the

inland waters – disguise as old Man and Woman to ask from humans why the seasonal

rites have ceased. Osofisan paints a poverty–ridden community, tyrannised as much by

inclement whether as by an exploitative social order. Saluga – a fisherman – is Osofisan’s

archetype who single-handedly confronts the gods and condemns them as extortionist and

tyrants. “Tell me”, he cries, “Why is it always the poor who are called to sacrifice? Why is it


always the wretched, never a wealthy man, never the son of a king, who is suddenly

discovered to bear the mark of destiny at difficult moments, and pushed on, to fulfil himself

in suicidal task? Why?” (14) Implicit here is Osofisan’s usual jibe at the inane structures and

thoughts construct of society. But, in addition, and as the play finally shows, these

structures have to be transcended if society must be renewed. In a subtly handled

dramatic plot, Olokun turns against Elesu and reverses her tyrannical orders. At the end,

the human triumph and the gods recede into the misty waves of the sea with a vow to

leave humans alone in the way they think fit to lead their lives. Though No More the

Wasted Breed is one single episode and a prologue, it contains the elements we have

noted in Morotodun. What may be added is that the prologue saps from myth, not merely

meaning and content but also the paradigms of wrath and justice: eternal verities in human

societies. These verities are apparent since they relate to and reflect directly the various

developments taking place in society. As Frye argues elsewhere, “As a culture develops,

its mythology tend to become encyclopaedic, expanding into a total myth covering a

society’s view of its past, present and future, its relation to its gods and its neighbour, its

traditions , its social and religious duties and its ultimate destiny.”(15) Significantly, the

balancing line between Olokun and Elusu as aspects of a developing society is not only

the themes Osofisan provides for them, but also the anthropomorphic faciticity of the gods,

the clash between them and humans and their eventual annihilation.

While Osofisan mythicises the contest between gods and man, the moral of the folktale

sorts well with the juxtaposition of land and sea, of the poor and the rich, the weak and the

powerful. The significance of this juxtaposition, especially in terms of the oscillation

between historical and mythical time, and spatial and temporal factors, “lies not only in the

fact that the treatment of each particular sort of space presupposes different kinds of


setting, which make for different psychological impacts on spectatators but also in that in a

sense it fixes in advance the extent of purposefulness and energy it will be possible to

confer on the imaginary character”. (16)

In a far more technical manner, it is this Juxtaposition that stands out in the Chattering

and the Song and Once upon Four Robbers. Chattering employs the triad of love–

hate–revenge to tell the story of Yajin, Sontri and Mokan whose lives inter-twine in love

and hatred and end differently in treachery: Yajin and Sontri against the state, Mokan

against his friends. Osofisan plays out this treachery in an overtly poetic mediation of the

ideological differences between Yajin, Sontri and Mokan and subsequently between the

choices which they make in the face of an oppressive political system. The issue of social

injustice and inhumanity which finds a bulwark in the material exploitation of society by the

rich and the powerful is the theme of Chattering, especially of the playlet on a moment of

history in the olden kingdom of Oyo.

Osofisan recalls this historical moment not in precise chronological details but in a highly

fictive mythopetic reconstruction. What is central to this reconstruction is the plasticity of

oral tradition in terms of its capacity to alter and be altered according to the demand of

immediate social reality. This homeostatic tendency is what accounts for the mythopoeic

representation in Chattering. What the playlet wants to enshrine may be summed up as

follows: ‘Any alteration in social organisation or practice is immediately accompanied by a

corresponding alteration in tradition.(14)

Specifically, in order to conjoin his own ideological point of view with the imperative of the

dramatic triad, Osofisan now leans on what is usually cited as the disadvantage of oral


tradition: The multiplicity (variants) of the same oral text. Here again is the juncture where

oral scholars raise the question of authenticity, antiquity and authorship of the oral text.

And as often happens with oral tradition these questions speaks directly to the context of

performers and the performer. In responding to this dialectic here, suffice to say that

Osofisan’s mythopoesis is as valid as any other in so far as it hinges directly on the moral

and social focus the playwright wants. Notes Vansina:

Traditions are performed and performers have their own

interests. They may want to please to earn money, to gain

prestige etc. As it is however, and if only because performances

also involve an audience, the interests of performers are almost

entirely conditioned by the interests of the community of which

they are members.(18)

Saliently, Osofisan’s variant merges in music, dance, songs, and even riddles to envision a

different society whose structure will be basically egalitarian. If this is a teleological or even

utopian view of society, it sorts well with the oral culture where social experience is re-

validated in multivalent forms, in the idyllic and the hyperbolic, in the imaginative fantasy of

the oral performer. A play that perhaps best illustrates this fantasy is Osofisan’s Once

Upon Four Robbers.

Once Upon Four Robbers is cast entirely in the medium of the folktale and in fact

depends for its effectiveness as a moral didactic on the structure of folk narrative. Starting

with a basic storyteller, Osofisan enlivens his tale of the exploits of four robbers in a largely

acquisitive and corrupt society with songs, riddles, incantation – Vansina’s memorised


speech(19) - and magic. The moral of this tale is that “Society…prepares crimes; criminals

are only the instruments necessary for executing them”.(20) Simplistic as it is here, the

pursuit of this moral by the storyteller blends different oral constituents into a single picture

of the truncation of society into oppressor oppressed polarities which ensure the

sustenance of the status quo, and the impoverishment or death and disgrace of the under-

privileged. As a paradigm, the four robbers together constitute a single but poignant

statement:

It is true we live in an unjust order. But this itself creates direct

obligations. Those who are members of the civilized elite, cut

off as they tragically are from the mass of the people, have the

duty to attempt to create broken humanity, to stop exploiting

them, to give them what they most need education, knowledge,

material help, a capacity for living better lives.(21)

To attempt a typology of the dramatic narrative in Once Upon Four Robbers, one may

say that it is a dilemma–trickster tale set out in dialogic form and involving the actual

representation of the personae involved. Because of the involvement of magic, the

necessity of a regularly repeated pattern of event (for structural and emphatic reasons) this

dialogic form transcends the immediate locale of the performers and sucks in the audience

as participants rather than as observers. The effective atmosphere is that of moonlight tale

which in setting displays a group of performers ringed by an audience that participated

methodically and deliberately in the processual flow of the tale. According to Bascom,

“Dilemma tales … are narratives that leave the listeners with a choice between

alternatives…(22) Osofisan does not resolve the conflict in his play but rather, through the


story teller, freezes the decisive moment of resolution, to ask the audience whether the

robbers should be executed or set free. Execution and freedom are two alternatives

implying several moral or social questions which can only be resolved not by a clever

authorial solution but a thoughtful choice. As Bascom observes, unlike riddles, dilemma

tales often have no answer and when they do the answers are not objects or abstract

concepts but depend for significance on the social status of the respondent. In the light of

the need for some degree of intellection, of balancing cerebrally (cerebration) the scale of

choices, it is usual to find that the difficult alternatives are resolved only through collective

or individual debate, the same process that obtains at the end of Four Robbers.

Bascom also writes. “In some dilemma tales, the element of moral or ethical judgement is

subordinated to contests of skill and magical power.(23) Occasions of the use of magic,

talismanic seals, spells of petrification, besides at times the unpleasant gallantry of the

robbers, in their attempt to get beyond their predicament, amply demonstrate Bascom’s

view. But more predicament, amply demonstrates Bascom’s view. But more cognant is the

incorporation of the structure of trickster narratives in Four Robbers. Lee Having in his

discussion of the African folktale pattern identifies six structural stages of trickster

narratives: FALSE FRIENDSHIP (trickster befriends his victim), CONTRACT (enters into

an agreement that binds the friendship). VIOLATION (of the contract) through TRICKERY

or/and DECEPTION and, finally, trickster plots his ESCAPE.(24) In Osofisan’s play, the

robbers strike a false friendship with a migrant shaman and vow to use the magical chant

which he entrusted to them in line with them in line with his provisions. One of the

robbers, however, violates these provisions and is caught by the law. To rescue him from

the salvos of the firing squad, his partners in crime appear at the execution ground to re-

invoke the old magical chant. Must it work or must it fail? Aafa – the shaman and the story-


teller – trusts his audience to make the choice. Whatever that choice is, we must note with

Having that “Escape, as trickster’s final position, functions to identify him; so we observe

the inter-relation of character and plot”. (25)

So far, we have examined what may pass for the morphology of Osofisan’s drama with

reference mainly to such properties as plot, episode, motif, setting and theme and the way

these bear on oral tradition.(26) However, if Osofisan’s drama must be understood beyond

reified ideological categories i.e. beyond it serving as “a collection of signals and calls to

arouse collective actions, and where the audience, deriving from the clearly defined,

structured social framework could be incited, to participate in the actor’s performance and

carry it over into real life,(27) its inherent technique of exposition, of the conflation of

dialogue and conflict must be shown as part of a conscious theatrical process, and in the

context of this paper, as part of the dynamic orientation of oral tradition. These techniques

culled from the oral culture are mnemonic and aesthetic valves that lend to oral art its

variety and spontaneity, its antiquarian and folk character. It is part of Jan Vansina’s

findings that these techniques include aural and visual cues, figurative iconography, details

of landscape (location and situ), music, learning by imitation and digressions.28

In Morotondun, in his reconstruction of the Moremi myth Osofisan utilises the traditional

songs about the Moremi saga and the Moremi necklace worn by the Titubi as aural and

visual cues. These cues serve to indicate time and spatial factors and the progress of

Titubi transformation from an uncritical mythogonist to mythoclast who must bear arms in

defence of the peasants’ revolt. The phases of the transformation are figuratively

differentiated by a movement through the urban and individualist peasants. Alternating his

character, their locales and circumstances, Osofisan imbues Morontodun with the


euphoria of communal life, the ceaseless tension between city and country, the

oppositional context of collective heroism and singularly individual adventurousness.

Osofisan’s images of death and valour, disgrace and honour, have “the property of

expressing what may be complex relationships, situations, or trains of thought in a dense,

concrete form, immediately grasped on an emotional and concrete level”.(29) Aural and

visual elements as imagic cues designate various realities, are statements or episodes

whose sheer theatrical germ underpins the central imagery of life as a collective and

heroic struggle against every limit imposed by man or nature. In a different way, No more

the Wasted Breed also utilises this imagery but more from the perspective of the

landscape whose concrete element must infuse the dramatic narrative. What seems to

interest Osofisan in this slender play is how the reproduction of a remote past attended by

a cognisable detail of a vanished and therefore curious environment liberates the

repressed energies of individuals. The past in situ of the vanished carrier tradition in Egure

torments the conscience and memory of Biokun and Saluga and is a contradiction of the

rites and actual existence of the gods. What inflames Saluga especially is the memorable

reproduction of this past in acutely visual though unpleasant details which burn into his on

the prevailing inclement weather and the maniacal wrath of Elesu is a narrative technique

to heighten the audience’s anticipation as much as it does the anger and bravado of

saluga. Through this technique, the playwright as narrator sustains the interest of the

audience to the end and credibly justifies the annihilation of the gods.

In The Chattering and the Song and Once Upon Four Robbers, the narrator’s task is

more engaging and less obtrusive, subsumed as it were in melodious songs. Many of

these songs are strained from folklore or seek to establish folk motifs on their own. In

Chattering, they are either set out as riddle or choral refrains to knit together the triad of


love-hate-revenge. In Once Upon Four Robbers, they perform a far more integral

function since the whole play itself is Osofisan’s own folktale on the sociology of armed

robbery. Structurally, they evince the parallelism of thought through the repetition of words

and phrases, or through the restatement of ideas by synonyms and indirect reference, a

particular distinction of oral art. At a level, this leads to a discernible and perhaps negative

automatisation of such literary elements as language and character in that they become

hackneyed, but it also conditions the dramatic conflict as an immediate social reality that

turns men into frauds. By far, a more potent technique of exposition and of ventilating the

dramatic conflict is Osofisan’s digressions. Usually accomplished through flashback, they

are so central to Osofisan’s dramaturgy that often they stand or are able to stand on their

own as playlets.

In terms of structure, digressions are clearly the resultant of the episodic cosmogony of

Osofisan’s theatre and are expected to provide the peaks and troughs of his plays, acting

as stop gaps in narration. They also heighten the visual images created by the narrator to

furnish his art, as he dips into memory for such details as he might have missed in the

course of the narrative so far, or merely to recall complementary situations to add more

insight to his own folktale. Certainly, the length of these digressions differ with the context

of their usage but they inevitably affect both the context and content of performance in that

they introduce new information, show the passing of time, or create anticipation by

diverting attention at crucial moments. In Osofisan’s drama, Especially Morotondun and

No More The Wasted Breed, the effects of digression are crucial to the unravelling of the

plot as well as to the relationship between the different characters. Essentially, Osofisan’s

flashbacks are conceived to relate action on two planes of reality: mythical and historical,

and the way this advances the central argument of the drama. Time-now and Time-past


are phases of consciousness for Osofisan’s heroes; they depend on this consciousness

for the choice and significance of their actions. It is also a dialectic that informs the critical

attitude of the drama since it provides a historical framework in whose continuum Osofisan

sources his rather teleological view of the necessity for the ceaseless renewal of the

society. If this renewal is played out in archetypal configurations, it is a testimony to both

the lingering influence of a vanishing oral culture and the need to constantly re-impact the

tension of time-past and time-now in fresh poetic ideations. It is only this need that can

account for the gift of total recall Osofisan’s heroes possess in moment of despair and

consternation, for instance, Titubi in Morontodun, Togu and Biokun in No More, Sontri

and Leje in Chattering. These characters, in an attempt to reach the bottom of their own

or society’s dilemma, plumb into the past for meaning and relevance. On such occasions,

Osofisan’s drama bubbles into digressions. The view of Norman Austin is instructive here.

Writing on the function of digressions in the IIIiad, he notes as follows:

The effect of this style is to put time into slow motion and to

create a ritual out of the moment… It brings time to a standstill

and locks our attention unremittingly on the celebration of the

present moment.31

What we need to add, and in summary, is that for Osofisan digressions and other

mnemotechnic device basic to oral act serves to magnify dramatic action, to iterate its

social context and the cerebral processes consequent to it. The trend of our argument so

far must not be perceived as a resolve to foreclose the literary stature of Osofisan’s drama.

On the contrary, let it be admitted here that the stature is in fact the medium for the oral

complexes we have observed. In its analytic linearity i.e., its textual nature, Osofian’s


drama has the inherent force to diminish its peculiar orality and replace it with the clinical

finality of the text. Clearly, this is contradictory since it impels both the mediation of orality

and its ultimate transcendence. It is as a critic has observed, “The theatre is a sublimation

of certain social situations, whether it idealizes them, parodies them or calls for them to be

transcended ….The theatre is society or the group looking at itself in various mirrors , the

images reflected therein making the people concerned, the spectators weep, laugh or

come to some decision with increased resolution”.32

This has far-reaching implications for the theatre in general, especially as “secondary

orality” – the orality induced by radio and television and dependent on the literary text –

impinges increasingly on the existence of theatre as life performance. Gradually the face-

to–face contact between a performer and the audience vanishes and in its place is an

anonymous and exotic experience. As technology barges ahead, orality in its most

genuine form shrinks into the past. Short of its occasional re-emergence in the festival and

organised cultural festivals, it is perhaps the theatre alone that has the capacity not only to

rescue orality from oblivion but to shelter it from the harsh metallic onrush of technology. In

view of this, certainly, any playwright that opts with genuine conviction to integrate oral

constituents in his drama, deserves our attention, and not frequently, our praise.


REFERENCE

1. Femi Osofisan, ‘Ritual and the Revolutionary’ Ethos, OKIKE N0: 22 September 1982 p.72.

2. Mircea Aliade, ‘Myths, Dreams and Mysteries’ (Collins, Britain, 1984) p.24.

3. Olu Obafemi, ‘Revolutionary Aeshetics in Recent Nigerian Theatre African Literature

Today’ Vol 12 pp. 118 -136.

4. Walter J. Ong, ‘Literacy and Orality in our Times in Norman Simms’ (Ed) Oral and

Traditional Literatures Outrigger, New Zealand, 1982) p. 13.

5. Northrop Frye, ‘The Place and Performance of criticism’ in Gregory T.Polletta (ed). Issues

in Contemporary Literary Criticism (Little, Brown & Co., Boston, 1973) p.7.

6. Femi Osofisan, ‘The Chattering and the Song’ (Ibadan University press, Ibadan , 1977).

7. Femi Osofisan, ‘Once Upon Four Robbers’ (Bio Educational services Ltd., Ibadan, 1980).

8. Femi Osofisan , Morontodun and their plays longman, Nigeria, 1982).

9. Ibid.

10. Isidore Okpewho, Myth in Africa Cambridge, 1983) p.68.

11. Jan Vansina, Oral Tradition as History (Heinemann Kenya, 1985).

12. Morontodun, op. cit. p.70

13. Jean Duvignaud, ‘The Theatre in Society: Society in the Theatre’ in Elizabeth and Tom

Burns (eds) Sociology of Literature and Drama (Penguin, London, 1974) p.85.

14. Morontodun and other Plays, op. cit. p. 105.

15. Northtrop Frye, ‘The Social context of Literary Criticism’ in Sociology of Literature and

Drama, op. cit. p.148.

16. Jean Duvignaud, op. cit. p.94

17. Jan Vansina, op. cit. p.120

18. Ibid. p.108

19. Ibid. p. 23


20. Quoted by Isaiah Berlin, Russian Thinker (Penguin, U.S.A. 1978). 109

21. Ibid p.152

22. William Bascom, ‘African Dilemma Tales: An introduction’ Richard M. Dorson (ed). African

Folklore (Indiana University Press,Blooming – ton & London, 1979) p. 143

23. Ibid. p.152

24. Lee Having, ‘Characteristic African Folktale Pattern in African Folklore, Ibid.p.165- 179.

25. Ibid. p. 175

26. cf. Vladimir Propp, Morphology of the Folk Tale (Texas University Press, Texas 1969)

27. Georges Gurvitch, ‘The Sociology of The Theatre ‘ in Sociology of Literature and Drama,

op. cit. p.81

28. Jan Vansina, op. cit p. 95

29. Ibid. p. 138

30. Cf. Daniel Kunene, Horoic Poetry of the Basotha (London, 1971)

31. Norman Austin, ‘The Function of Digressions in the Illiad’ in John Wright (ed). Essays on

the IIIiad (Indiana University Press, Bloomington / London, 1978). p.79, p. 84.

32. Georges Gurvitch, op. cit.p.76.

femi osofisan - oral tradition & the african playwright

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