Memory, Expiation and Healing in Bole Butake's Family Saga

Abstract

This article proposes a reading of Bole Butake's play, Family Saga (2005. Yaoundé: Editions CLÉ), as a very deliberate gesturing and dramatic participation in redeeming, healing and reconciling a fractured post colonial Cameroonian nation, constructed on the historical anxieties and tensions of colonial linguistic binary sentimentalities. Drawing largely from paradigms of forum and playback theatres’ matrices of practice, the article foregrounds memory, myth and collective narratives as templates upon which truth and falsehood are played out in the play, in a conscious attempt to engineer processes of expiation and amelioration, redemption and healing and eventually reconciliation.

Keywords:

• allegory
• applied theatre
• Cameroon
• healing
• memory
• reconciliation