Event overview
Refracted from the Canon: The Transmuted Form of Europe’s Ambassador to Africa. A Talk by Sola Adeyemi
The third of three events in the CCL’s Postcolonial Theatre series, May 2022
Centre for Comparative Literature, Goldsmiths, University of London
In this presentation, I am going to be exploring the idea of tragedy from the perspective of Yoruba culture.
I shall frame this exploration from the refracted premise of classical European canon and how the meaning of tragedy has been altered to become part of the arsenal of anticolonial agency as deployed to the consecrated ritual space of the Yoruba people of West Africa.
More specifically, I shall be examining the transmutation of the tragic form in Nigerian playwright Femi Osofisan’s Wèsóo, Hamlet! Or The Resurrection of Hamlet (Re-reading of Shakespeare’s Hamlet) (2012) and in Wole Soyinka’s The Bacchae of Euripides (1969).
My focus will be on how these playwrights’ re-reading – or re-interpretation – of Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark and Euripides’ Bacchae serve as a refraction of the tragic form from the canon.
Leading to a different understanding, in a different cultural setting, with diverse conventions.
Furthermore, where the understanding of tragedy is somewhat more communal, abstract, and more intercultural, and where the recognition accorded that form of drama is elevated.
In my presentation, I aim to show that the process of re-interpreting the essence of the canonical God in the new space of Yoruba culture, or of translating the attributes with a new understanding and awareness, is more dialectical and more interwoven than the historical or anthropological process of re-working canonical texts by African writers.
Attendance is free but booking will be essential to receive a link to attend.
Participants attending;
Dr Sola Adeyemi is a Lecturer in Drama at the University of East Anglia.
His researches are in world theatre and performance studies, African Literary Studies, and postcolonial literature and theatre (and the themes of de-colonial and Global South studies).
He is the author of Vision of Change in African Drama: Deconstructing Identity and Reconfiguring History (2019).
Currently, he is working on ‘Dramatizing the Postcolony: Nigerian Drama and Theatre.
Sola’s talk will be chaired by Professor Samuel Kasule.
Professor Kasule holds a BA in English and Drama and Diploma in Education from Makerere University, Uganda, and MA in Theatre Studies and PhD in Drama and Theatre from the University of Leeds.
He is a founding member of the African Theatre Association and founding Reviews Editor of African Performance Review (APR).
He was the President of the African Theatre Association between 2014 and 2020.
His latest work (with Osita Okagbue) is Theatre and Performance in East Africa (London: Routledge, 2021).
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 26 May 2022 | 6:00pm - 7:30pm |
Accessibility
If you are attending an event and need the College to help with any mobility requirements you may have, please contact the event organiser in advance to ensure we can accommodate your needs.
