Insidious Treasons and Beyond

Description

It was in this new dark era that our career began, we the second generation of literary dramatists. The enemy this time was no longer from the outside, but part of us. The problem was no longer that of correcting a distorted racist image , but rather, of rescuing our people from internal oppressors. We were back at the barricades again, we Africans, but now against people who had the same colour of skin, spoke the same language, but held guns to our head.

“Whereas in the West politics is theatre, in Africa, theatre is politics. Except for a brief, eccentric period of the Ibadan Mbari movement… all our artists from the ancient oral performers to their modern scribal heirs—from Négritude’s Léopold Senghor to Tigritude’s Wole Soyinka—have accepted and revelled in their identity as communal spokespersons and as the conscience of their societies.”

In this seminal, and highly engaging collection Femi Osofisan demonstrates clearly why he has been described as “the most African playwright of the postcolonial era…”  and generally regarded as “… the most prolific playwright on the continent. “