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 Playwright,
Poet, and Essayist
5th Avenue Theatre, December 6, 1999
Biography
Excerpt
Selected Works
Links
Biography
For Wole Soyinka (born Akinwande Oluwole Soyinka in 1934), an artist and
an activist, writing and politics are interwoven. He traces his political
awakening to 1958 when he met the first generation of Nigerian legislators
in London. At this meeting he painfully realized that they meant to take
up where the departing white colonialists had left off, in terms of continuing
a corrupt political regime. It was after this meeting that Soyinka implored
African writers to become the “conscience” of their nations;
otherwise, they would be forced to withdraw “to the position of chronicler
and post-mortem surgeon.”
Receiving his education first at the University College of Ibadan, then
at Leeds University (1957) in England, where he came under the influence
of the brilliant Shakespeare scholar G. Wilson Knight, Soyinka found his
passion for theater and play-writing. After he graduated he went on to
write, direct, and produce plays for theater and radio in both France
and England. In 1960, when he returned to Nigeria, he was commissioned
to write a play to celebrate Nigeria’s independence (A Dance of
the Forests). The Guerilla Theatre Unit, a Nigerian production company,
performed many of Soyinka’s plays, not only in auditoriums, but also,
provocatively, in front of government buildings and in public squares
and marketplaces. While these community performances drew criticism from
the government, they allowed the company to reach audiences traditionally
excluded from theatrical performances.
Soyinka was arrested in 1967 when he tried to act as mediator for a ceasefire
between the Nigerian federal government and the Biafran rebels, who wanted
to secede from Nigeria. He was not “anti-Biafran” enough, according
to the Nigerian government, who proceeded to imprison him for two years
for his efforts. He spent most of his time in solitary confinement, where
he wrote his vitriolic memoir, The Man Died, in between the lines
of books smuggled into the prison. After his release he entered a period
of voluntary exile. He lectured at universities, and wrote, directed,
and produced plays in Europe and West Africa. He also founded the culture
and criticism magazine Transition, in Ghana. He returned to Nigeria
in 1975, but left again in 1983 when he learned there was “a price
on his head.” Since then Soyinka has been in and out of exile in
accordance with the ever-changing political environment of Nigeria. When
asked where home is, he replied, “In my head,” and when asked
what he misses about Nigeria, he said, “The smell . . . especially
the smell of the bush when I go hunting.”
In 1986, Soyinka won the Nobel Prize for Literature. His best known plays,
written in English and performed mainly in West Africa and Europe, include
A Dance of the Forests, The Bacchae of Euripides, The Swamp Dwellers,
Kongi’s Harvest, The Road, The Trials of Brother Jero, Death and
the King’s Horsemen, and The Lion and the Jewel. His non-fiction
books include The Burden of Memory, The Muse of Forgiveness, The Open
Sore of a Continent, and the beautifully crafted memoir Ake: The
Years of Childhood. Soyinka is currently the Woodruff Professor of
the Arts at Emory University in Atlanta and a Fellow of the W.E.B. DuBois
Institute at Harvard.
Excerpt
taken from A Dance of the Forests (1960)
COURT POET: Did not a soldier fall to his death from the roof two
days ago my lady?
MADAME TORTOISE: That is so. I heard a disturbance, and I called a guard
to find the cause. I thought it came from the roof and I directed him
there. He was too eager and he fell.
COURT POET: From favour Madame?
MADAME TORTOISE: [eyeing him coolly.] From the roof.
[They look at each other.]
MADAME TORTOISE: Well?
COURT POET: I forbid him to go.
MADAME TORTOISE: I order him to go.
[The novice runs off.]
MADAME TORTOISE: And I order you to follow him. When he has retrieved
my canary, bring it here to me, like a servant.[The poet bows and leaves.
Madame Tortoise and her attendants remain statuesque.][From the opposite
side, a warrior is pushed in, feet chained together. Mata Kharibu leaps
up at once. The warrior is the Dead Man. He is still in his warrior garb,
only it is bright and new.]
MATA KHARIBU: [advancing slowly on him.] It was you, slave! You it was
who dared to think.
WARRIOR: I plead guilty to the possession of thought. I did not know that
it was in me to exercise it, until your Majesty’s inhuman commands.[Mata
Kharibu slaps him across the face.]
MATA KHARIBU: You have not even begun to repent of your madness.
WARRIOR: Madness your Majesty?
MATA KHARIBU: Madness! Treachery! Frothing insanity traitor! Do you dare
to question my words?
WARRIOR: No, terrible one. Only your commands.
[Mata Kharibu whips out his sword. Raises it. The soldier bows his head.]
Selected
Works
The Lion and the Jewel (1963)
A Dance for the Forests (1963)
Idanre and Other Poems (1967)
Madmen And Specialists: A Play (1971)
The Jero Plays: The Trials of Brother Jero and Jero's Metamorphosis (1971)
Interpreters (1972)
The Man Died: Prison Notes of Wole Soyinka (1972)
Death and the King's Horseman (1975)
Aké: The Years of Childhood (1981)
Forest of a Thousand Daemons: A Hunter's Saga (1982)
Mandela's Earth and Other Poems (1988)
Art, Dialogue, and Outrage: Essays on Literature and Culture (1994)
Ibadan - the Penkelemes years - a memoir 1946 - 1965 (1994)
The Open Sore of a Continent : A Personal Narrative of the Nigerian Crisis
(1996)
The Burden of Memory, The Muse of Forgiveness (1999)
Web
Site Links
An interview
with Soyinka
Selected book reviews
of Soyinka's books
Study guide
for Soyinka's work
Soyinka's Nobel Laureate lecture
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