Language and Body in Performance: Working across Languages in the Ghanaian Production I Told You So

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Notes

1. Awo Mana Asiedu, Sarah Dorbgadzi and Ekua Ekumah, Theatre Arts Department, School of Performing Arts, University of Ghana, Legon, PO Box 19, Legon Accra, Ghana, West Africa. Emails: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected] T. Sutherland, ‘The Second Phase of the National Theatre Movement in Ghana’, in FonTomFrom: Contemporary Ghanaian Literature, Theatre and Film, ed. by Kofi Anyidoho and James Gibbs (Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi, 2000), pp. 45–57 (p. 46). In evaluating the first phase of the National Theatre Movement in Ghana, we note that Sutherland worked with a number of performing groups, some of which performed solely in Akan. We thus infer from the context that her critique is directed towards the groups who worked in English.

2. The School of Performing Arts, the first of its kind in West Africa, has in its 48 years of existence served as a major training school for many performing artists in Ghana. During term time, there are guaranteed student and staff productions every weekend, open to the public. In fact, there are a larger number of regular performances than at the Ghana National Theatre.

3. I Told You So was adapted and directed by Fiifi Coleman and was first performed from 18 to 20 October 2007 at the Efua Sutherland Drama Studio, University of Ghana, as a stage play. It was based on a film released in 1967, similarly crafted in Concert Party style.

4. Concert Party, which started around 1918 with piano recitals and comic skits by one man, is a travelling theatre tradition that combined guitar band music with slapstick comedy and moralistic comic plays. It has strong links with oral performance traditions, and was influenced by the American Vaudeville, Al Jolson and Charlie Chaplin. This influence is seen mostly in use of make-up and broad humour. It became very popular and extremely profitable between the 1940s and the 1970s, when there were over 200 itinerant performing groups. The success of these groups lay in their dexterous use of Fante language and plays which were very topical and easy to relate to. They were also famous for their use of drag, which was hugely popular in Ghana. They declined in the 1980s with the economic downturn, when travelling around the country became impossible. These plays were introduced onto television and film in the 1970s. For a detailed discussion, see Karin Barber, John Collins and Alain Ricard, West African Popular Theatre (Oxford: James Curry, 1997); also Catherine Cole's Ghana's Concert Party (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001) and Kwabena Bame's Come to Laugh (New York: Lillian Barber Press, 1985).

5. It is worth noting that drama departments have been at the centre of theatre in the region in which they exist, not only in terms of training, but in terms of resources and productions. In these contexts the distinctions between professional and amateur theatre are not clear - as they are in the western context - with many companies and playwrights emerging from drama departments where they have begun their creative work as students, like Efua Sutherland and Ama Ata Aidoo in Ghana, Soyinka, Rotimi and Osofisan in Nigeria, and Ngugi wa ‘Thiong'o in Kenya.

6. The Blinkards is considered the first Ghanaian play, written in 1915, performed in Cape Coast in 1916, and first published in 1974.

7. Where other African languages have been used in various African plays, it has been difficult to include these on our stage owing to audiences not being able to understand them. Occasionally, with the help of Nigerian students or faculty, Nigerian songs and a smattering of phrases have been included from various Nigerian languages, as in the very recent student production of Osofinan's Morountodun.

8. As he notes in an interview he granted Graphic Showbiz (12–18 June 2008, p. 8). He played Cassius in this Twi translation of Julius Caesar.

9. Focus group discussion, June 2007.

10. In the 1960s, for example, the Ghanaian literary magazine Okyeame carried several significant articles, particularly on the subject of language and performance – see, for example, in the 1968 issue, 4.1, 95–109, K. A. B. Jones-Quartey's ‘The Problems of Language in the Development of the African Theatre’ and Scott Kennedy's ‘Language and Communication Problems in the Ghanaian Theatre’. Ngugi Wa Thiongo's much more political analysis of the language situation in post-colonial Africa in Decolonizing the Mind (London: James Currey/Nairobi: EAEP/Portsmouth: Heinemann, 1986) and his decision to write solely in Kikuyu and Swahili provide other cogent examples. The language issue in African literature is, however, a complex one and Ngugi's views have been regarded by some as extreme - he notes the reality of the thousands of languages spoken on the continent and how these colonial languages have become a useful lingua franca within and between nations. See, for example, Awo Mana Asiedu, ‘West African Theatre Audiences: A Study of Ghanaian and Nigerian Literary Theatre Audiences’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Birmingham, 2003), pp. 54–64, and also Wole Soyinka's essay ‘Language as Boundary’ in his book Art, Dialogue and Outrage (London: Methuen, 1993), pp. 82–94.

11. Akosua Anyidoho provides a useful discussion on the language policy of successive governments up to the present situation, where English is the medium of instruction at all levels of education in the country. See Akosua Anyidoho, ‘English Only as Medium of Instruction in Primary 1–3?’, Legon Journal of the Humanities, 15 (2004), 81–97.

12. Ghana Statistical Service (GSS), Population and Housing Census: Summary Report of Final Result (Accra: GSS, 2002).

13. Politicians and policy makers are loath to admit this for fear of the controversy it might raise among other language groups; hence there is only anecdotal evidence for this language bias.

14. Ethnologue: Languages of the World (5th ed.), ed. by Raymond G. Gordon, Jr. (Dallas, TX: SIL International, 2005) (online version: http://www.ethnologue.com/); and Samuel G. yasi Obeng, ‘Akan and Nyo Languages’, in Encyclopedia of Linguistics, ed. by Philip Strazny (New York: Routledge, 2005) pp. 28–31.

15. The negative associations of Concert Party are discussed in greater detail later in the article.

16. ‘Alaba’ is written phonetically to indicate how the character would pronounce ‘Araba’, as he would mix his ‘R's and ‘L's, creating further comedy.

17. ‘Abrofosem’ is a word used to describe someone trying to imitate European manners in speech and action; it is used here to indicate the use of English.

18. Focus group discussion, June 2007.

19. Teri Kwal Gamble and Michael Gamble, Communication Works (4th ed.) (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1993), p. 121.

20. In Abdallah's original script, the character Okomfuo has English dialogue. The actor, with the consent of the student director, had translated the dialogue into Twi. This was very effective, as it made the play relevant to the audience, insofar as it highlighted linguistic differences signalled by the Traditional religion, as opposed to Christianity and Islam. It also added a great deal of vitality to his role and characterization.

21. Focus group discussion, June 2007.

22. Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature (London: James Currey, 1997), p. 15.

23. Focus group discussion, June 2007.

24. Lorna Marshall, The Body Speaks: Performance and Expression (London: Methuen, 2001), p. 80.

25. Ibid., p. 84.

26. Focus group discussion, June 2007.

27. Ibid.

28. Peter Brook, There Are No Secrets: Thoughts on Acting and Theatre (London: Methuen, 1995) p. 69.

29. See Excursions in Drama and Literature: Interviews with Femi Osofisan, ed. by Muyiwa P. Awodiya (Ibadan: Kraft Books, 1993), p. 127, and ‘An Interview with Ola Rotimi’, in Dem-Say: Interviews with Eight Nigerian Writers, ed. by Bernth Lindfors (Austin, TX: African and Afro-American Studies Research Centre, 1974), pp. 57–68 (p. 59).

30. Asiedu, ‘West African Theatre Audiences’, pp. 62–3.

31. Awo Mana Asiedu, ‘Femi Osofisan's Once Upon Four Robbers, a Review’, in African Theatre: Playwrights and Politics, ed. by Martin Banham, James Gibbs and Femi Osofisan (Oxford: James Curry/Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2001), pp. 57–61.