I The Nature of Drama

Definitions

There are almost as many definitions of drama as there are

critics of it, but from some representative remarks we can
establish the essential elements of the form. G. B. Tennyson
says: 'Drama is a story that people act out on a stage before
spectators.' Eric Bentley remarks: 'The theatrical situation,
reduced to a minimum, is that A impersonates B while C
looks on.' For Marjorie Boulton, a play 'is not really a piece
of literature for reading. A true play is three-dimensional; it
is literature that walks and talks before our eyes",' The crucial
stresses are, again and again, on the theatricality of drama,
that it is an art which requires performance on a stage for its
full effect; that it involves real-life people pretending to be
imagined people; and that it places particular emphasis on
action; of a concentrated, often intense, kind. The primacy
of action in drama is a product of the peculiarly physical
nature of the form:

When we ask what it is that drama can do better than any-

thing else, we find that plot and character can be done
nearly as well in most respects, and in point of fulness and
detail much better, by the novel or other narrative forms
of writing, but that the drama being a visible show is
incomparable for crises, for those sudden turns of action
which the eye takes in at a glance before a word is spoken,
with the double advantage of a thrill for the audience and
a saving of space for the dramatist. These critical moments
are its moments of triumph, and a born dramatist so
contrives his plot that a number of these follow one another
in an ascending scale of excitement.f
G. J. Watson, Drama
© G. J. Watson 1983
2 Drama

Drama, then, is representation of carefully selected actions

by living people on a stage in front of an audience.

Origins and Universality

Drama is a communal art involving a group of performers and
a larger group who watch the performance. This communal
aspect of drama is rooted in its remote origins, in primitive
fertility rites and in religious observances. Drama's relationship
to the myths, legends and folk observances of a culture is the
major source of its power. The plays ofWole Soyinka (b.1934),
for example, are firmly rooted in aspects of the religion and
myths of the Yoruba people of Nigeria. The Road (1965) is
based on the Egungun ceremony in which a human is ritually
possessed by the god Ogun, who created the bridge between
men and gods. The title refers to his courageous journey
across the original chaos. Murano, the Professor's servant,
though mute because of an accident, is a symbolic character
who is arrested between the divine and human worlds.
Possessed by Ogun, he is in: touch with a spiritual mystery
which defies rational comprehension. The Professor's quest
for illumination - his 'road' - fails because of his attempts
to comprehend rationally the incomprehensible. Another
Nigerian dramatist, J. P. Clark (b. 1935) bases his ou«
(1977) on a week-long ceremonial ritual performed by the
Ijaw people of the Niger Delta. The play is vitalised by its
use of African imagery, drums and masks. Robert Serumaga
(b. 1939) in his play Renga Moi (1975) similarly uses tra-
ditional art forms in an exciting and exhilarating assertion of
African cultural vitality. Though Malawian drama in English,
in the works of writers such as James Ng'ombe (b. 1949), Joe
Mosiwa (b. 1950) and Chris F. Kamlongera (b. 1949), has
been written mainly for schools and radio broadcasts, the
possibilities of an exciting cross-fertilisation with the tra-
ditional nyau of the area are evident. Nyau is a form of spirit
worship among the Mang'anja, originating in a myth which
relates how the primal unity of man, animal and spirit was
broken by man's invention of fire. The masks, dances and
symbolism of nyau ceremonial comprise the basis for a fruit-.
ful indigenous dramatic tradition.