INTRODUCTION

This work is set to Identify two African Dramatist and discuss any one of each of their plays.

Dramatists

The identified Dramatists are Athol Fugard and Wole Soyinka.

Athol Fugard, Hon. FRSL, OIS, a South African playwright, novelist, actor, and director, was born on June
11, 1932. He is regarded as the country's greatest playwright. He is most known for his political plays
that critique the apartheid system and for the 2005 Oscar-winning adaptation of his novel Tsotsi.

Wole Soyinka: Akinwande Oluwole Babatunde Soyinka, also known as Wole Soyinka, was born in Nigeria
on July 13, 1934. He is an English-language playwright, novelist, poet, and essayist. He was the first sub-
Saharan African to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1986 for "in a wide cultural perspective and
with poetic overtones fashionning the drama of existence." In Abeokuta, Soyinka was born into a Yoruba
family. He enrolled in Government College in Ibadan in 1954 before continuing on to University College
Ibadan and the University of Leeds in England. After completing his education in Nigeria and the UK, he
worked for the London's Royal Court Theatre. Later, he wrote plays that were broadcast on radio and
stage in both nations. He actively participated in Nigeria's political development and the country's
struggle for independence from British colonial authority.

THEIR PLAYS.

These two African dramatists were actively discussing Independence and freedom for Africans. Athol
Fugard and Wole Soyinka both has a very rich pool of plays to pick from, but this work will be focus on a
single play from each of them. These plays are The Island by Athol Fugard and A Dance of the Forests by
Wole Soyinka.

The Island

Set during South African apartheid, The Island is a play that Athol Fugard co-wrote with two writers and
actors, John Kani and Winston Ntshona, both Black South Africans. The Play is an adaptation of
Sophocles Antigone.

The play is set in an unnamed prison widely believed to be Robben Island, whose most famous prisoner,
Nelson Mandela, was kept captive there for twenty-seven years.

Summary

Cellmates John and Winston are imprisoned on an island for fighting against South African apartheid.
They spend their days undertaking back-breaking labor outside in the searing heat, and are generally
mistreated by the guards, one of whom they refer to as "Hodoshe," a word for a carrion fly that feeds on
decaying dead bodies. A brotherly feeling has developed between John and Winston, and they share
stories of their lives with each other. They picture days at the beach, and speak of childhood and
happier times.
The men are busy rehearsing for a performance of Sophocles's play Antigone; John plays the role of
Creon, Winston plays Antigone. So far, rehearsals have been mostly in their own cells, in their prison
clothes. When Winston tries on his female costume for the first time, he almost pulls out of the play
altogether, humiliated by the thought of appearing in drag in front of the other prisoners.

Amidst the preparations for the play, John is summoned to the prison governor's office, where he learns
that his appeal was successful. He is going to be released in three months, after having originally been
sentenced to 10 years. Although Winston is happy for his friend, thoughts of home combine with regret
and he starts to unravel emotionally. He wonders why he got involved with making a stand against the
regime in the first place. Winston vows to endure his sentence, but tells John that he will likely forget all
about him, beaten down by years in a cell.

Performance time comes quickly; John, playing Creon, sentences Winston, in character as Antigone, to
be walled into a cave because she has defied him and instead shown her loyalty to her brother by giving
him a proper burial. The plot of Antigone mirrors the plight of the two prisoners, who fought for what
they believed in. They stare at the audience, having taken off their costumes, begging to be understood.
The play ends with John and Winston running, still chained together, with the sound of sirens going in
the background.

A Dance of the Forests

One of Wole Soyinka's plays that is the most well-known is A Dance of the Forests. "Presented at the
Nigerian Independence celebrations in 1960, it... denigrated the glorious African past and warned
Nigerians and all Africans that their energies henceforth should be spent trying to avoid repeating the
mistakes that have already been made".

Summary

A Dead Man and a Dead Woman are summoned to a tribal gathering by the deity Aroni. Instead of
inviting more illustrious ancestors to the festival, Aroni chooses the dead couple because they  were
wronged by the previous incarnations of several of the play’s living human characters. These characters
—Demoke, Rola, Adenebi, and Agboreko—meet and reject the dead couple and argue about political
corruption before being led off into the forest by Obaneji, who is really the chief Orisha (or god), the
Forest Head, in disguise as a human.

Meanwhile, strife brews between the gods Eshuoro and Ogun. Ogun is Demoke the carver’s patron god,
and Eshuoro is angry that Demoke carved Oro’s (another Orisha) sacred tree into an idol for the festival,
and because Demoke killed his assistant Oremole, who was also a devotee of Eshuoro. The Orisha and
the dead plan to gather with the living in the forest to redress the wrongs of the past.

In Part 2 of the play, The Forest Head turns back time eight centuries, shifting the setting to the Court of
Mata Kharibu, when the dead couple lived. Mata Kharibu wishes to wage war for a frivolous cause. The
Dead Man, known as “the Warrior” in the past, refuses to lead his soldiers into battle for such a cause.
For his defiance, the Warrior is castrated and enslaved and his pregnant wife, who is the Dead Woman
from Part 1, dies soon after. Demoke, Rola, Adenebi, and Agboreko’s ancestors (the Court Poet,
Madame Tortoise, the Court Historian, and the Soothsayer, respectively) all play a part in the fate of the
Warrior and his wife.

In the present, deep in the forest, the humans are put on trial for their previous lives in a masquerade
presided over by the Forest Head, Aroni, and the other forest spirits. The pregnant Dead Woman is
finally able to give birth to her baby, who is called the Half-Child. Eshuoro interferes with the ceremony,
attempting to kidnap the Half-Child; he is thwarted, and Demoke rescues the Half-Child, giving him back
to his mother. The Forest Head laments to himself that he doubts that the intended lesson has sunk in,
and fears that the humans are doomed to repeat the sins of the past. The Orisha, the dead, and the
forest spirits disperse.

Eshuoro forces Demoke to climb the village idol as an unwilling sacrifice. Eshuoro sets fire to the idol and
Demoke falls but is rescued by Ogun. When he regains consciousness, Demoke is confronted by his
father and Agboreko. When they ask Demoke what happened to him and what he learned of the future,
Demoke is unable to give a sufficient answer.

CONCLUSION

Athol Fugard hard little to no time to sit-down in a Library and write the Island why Wole Soyinka had
the comfort to write to sit down and write A Dance of the Forests.

However the 2 plays aim at fighting for freedom and good leadership respectively.

WORK CITED

Riseley, Ned. Cooper, James ed. "The Island Study Guide". GradeSaver, 14 November 2020 Web. 21
November 2022.

 "The Island". Royal National Theatre. Archived from the original on February 22, 2003.

^ Grayling, AC (2002). "The Island". Online Review London. Archived from the original on May 21, 2003.

"Soyinka, Wole (Vol. 5): Soyinka, Wole 1934–." Contemporary Literary Criticism, ed. Carolyn Riley. Vol. 5.
Gale Cengage, 1976. eNotes.com. 2006. 23 January 2009.

^ "A Dance of the Forests", Hans M. Zell, Carol Bundy, Virginia Coulon, A New Reader's Guide to African
Literature, Heinemann Educational Books, 1983, p. 169.

^ Omatsola Azumurana, Solomon. "Wole Soyinka's dystopian/utopian vision in A Dance of the

Forests". Tydskr. Letterkd. 51 (2). ISSN 2309-9070.
GradeSaver "A Dance of the Forests Summary". GradeSaver, 21 November 2022. Web. 21 November
2022.