ANANSE IN THE LAND

OF IDIOTS
YAW ASARE

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 SYNOPSIS
• Ananse gets himself into trouble by eating mashed yam meant as a
sacrifice to the gods.
• He extricates himself by playing on the materialistic bent of the king
and secures for himself a favoured place in the kingdom.
• Eventually, through subterfuge, disguise, murder and the elimination
of the man who assists him along his devious path, he secures the
hand of the princess.
• He departs with his bride and numerous gifts to an island to enjoy
life.
• The ending may not be the happily-ever-after ending for the king
realizing how he had been deceived had mobilized his troops to
attack him.

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 THE AUTHOR
• He was born at Nkonya-Tayi in the Volta Region in 1953.
• He trained as a teacher and taught in several schools before
entering the University of Ghana, Legon where he earned a diploma
in Theatre Studies in 1979 and a Bachelor of Arts in English and
Theatre Studies in 1986. He had his MPhil in African Studies in
1993.
• In 1994 he was appointed the artistic director of the resident drama
company at the National Theatre, known as Abibigromma.
• His works include Ananse in the Land of Idiots, Leopard’s Choice
(1993), Secrets of an Ancient Well (1998), King Kokroko (1994),
Bride of the Gods (1996), The Choice (1996) and Ananse and the
Price of Greed (TV 1996).
• He died on 1st August 2002 at the age of 48.

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 THEMES
• The play tries to reveal the basic causes of alien domination in
all forms: egoistic materialism, idiocy, disloyalty and the lack of
eternal vigilance on the part of the victims.
• The play is a savage ridicule of our ludicrous love for titles. In
the play examples include Ananse, the king and Pootagyiri.
• The play attacks our national amnesia, our forgetfulness and or
our ignorance of our history. One elder has ‘misty memories’ of
how ‘a mysterious Kweku Ananse … passed through the land.’
He thus missed the chance to warn his society about this
trickster.

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 THEMES
• The play mocks the moral equivocation that enables Ghanaians to
admire and lionize the successful rogue, one who has gained his
wealth through ‘the logic of existential imperatives’ most of the time
at the expense of the whole society.
• Also ridiculed is our flexibility or our lack of principle especially on the
receipt of a little inducement. The King and the Queen are enthralled
by Ananse’s handiwork; for Akpala it is a bit of honey and many
promises.
• The play attacks a catalogue of moral lapses in the society: greed,
sexual immorality, envy, dishonesty and arrogance.
• One notable absentee on the roll call of idiots is the priestess
indicating that there are shining examples in the general decay.
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 DRAMATIC TECHNIQUES – THE
STAGE
• The stage is a composite one made up of four main parts. Up
right is the king’s court. From Up left to down left is a grove
where off-town rituals take place and where we have Ananse’s
secret craft shop. The centre stage is the neutral playing area
where rituals and dance takes place.
• The nature of the performance makes where the audience are
seated a part of the stage from where actors makes comments.

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 ANANSEGORO
• Anansegoro is a modernization of the traditional theatre of
storytelling especially of folktales which the Akans call
Anansesem.
• Ananse represents a kind of Everyman artistically exaggerated
and distorted to serve society as a medium for self-examination.
• There is normally a storyteller who owns and tells the story. He
refreshes and updates the story by spontaneous improvisation.
This play is one of the modern adaptations of Anansesem.
• Anansegoro uses all the conventions of Anansesem on the
stage and this includes the singing of mboguo and audience
participation.
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 MOVEMENTS
• The play is divided into four movements:
• In the first movement, Ananse defiled the land by eating a
sacrifice meant for the gods. He is caught in the act by Akpala
who takes him to the king. The priestess pronounces the death
sentence on him but Kwaku is able to buy himself some time
after showing the king his craftsmanship.
• In the second movement, Ananse succeeds in seducing
Sodziisa the princess. He then elicits the support of Akpala in
his plan to marry the princess in place of Pootagyiri. With the
inducement of some honey and promises, Akpala agrees.

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 MOVEMENTS
• In the third movement, Pootagyiri, the prince, comes to the
workshop of Ananse to inspect the cloth the craftsman is
weaving for him. As prearranged, Akpala shoots the prince with
a poisoned arrow and he dies.
• In the fourth and final movement, Ananse disguised as
Pootagyiri goes through the marriage rites with the princess
successfully. Akpala comes in to demand his reward for helping
Ananse. Ananse uses gum to seal his mouth and tells the king
to kill him so that the madness that had infected him would not
spread. After he is killed, Odudu the fool comes in to inform the
king that it was Pootagyiri who was killed. The king mobilises
his army for an attack on Ananse.
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 DISGUISE
• Ananse disguises himself as Pootagyiri and succeeds in
marrying the king’s daughter.
• Akpala who could have given him away had his mouth sealed
with gum and later killed on the suggestion of Ananse dressed
as Pootagyiri.
• Odudu the fool is the one whose arrival finally leads to the
discovery that it was Ananse who had married the princess.

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 TRICKSTER TALE
• The play is in the trickster-tale tradition where small creatures
like Ananse, the spider, and the rabbit play tricks on bigger
animals. Finally the trickster is found out and punished or
disgraced.
• In this play Ananse plays his tricks on the king, his elders, the
princess and succeeds in running away with many gifts and the
princess as a wife.
• The ending is just like all trickster tales. Ananse is not going to
get away with his tricks. The military expedition will make sure
of that.

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 CHARACTERIZATION
• The main characters in the play are Ananse, the King, Akpala,
the Priestess, Sodziisa (the princess) and Pootagyiri.
• The minor characters include Odudu, the Queen, the Elders.
• The play has two sets of characters: the wise comprising the
Priestess and Kwaku Ananse and the idiots consisting of all the
other characters in the story including the king.

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