Shakespeare in Africa?

Entry #21
02 April 2007
Work: Wole Soyinka's A Dance of the Forests

This play, at least at its start, reminded me of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, though it’s probably been twelve or thirteen years, maybe more, since I’ve read it. The whole celebration held a dream-like, pensive feel to it. Something is going to happen; we don’t know what.

The story itself, this idea of “it’s all happening at once,” or at least, “nothing ever dies, but merely changes” (and at that, only by degrees—such that a human remains a human, regardless of the stage of time, and does not become a cow), was comforting to me in a way. Though I’m all for the idea that we can keep trying to get it right (and perhaps to a degree, some of the characters do improve their station or state), I’m also hoping for some sort of clean slate idea (So, perhaps the carrier idea is not such a bad one).

This connection between the past-present-future is an interesting one. I think I first encountered it in some reading on quantum theory: the idea that every crossroad, every choice, creates a parallel universe in which the antithesis of the fact exists. That isn’t the case here, though some would say that the difference between the life of a whore and that of a queen aren’t all that far apart. Yes, that’s a feminist making that statement. I’d say the same thing of a beggar and a politician (male sex implied).

The idea that life does not end, that the circumstances are only altered and not really changed, is at once comforting and hopeless. My life has changed dramatically in thirty-eight years. In the words of (I think) June Jordan, I have lived many lifetimes. My life fits no pattern, as the lives of the characters in Dance of… seem to. It makes for better didactics, though I’m not sure how much instruction is intended by the play. A celebration of independence, you say, Dr. McCarthy? Perhaps Half-Child, with a foot in each world. But the others? What will they do with their freedom? So, in reading the play, we only get half the story: how it was and what happened. Any good A&Aer knows that the story is only two-thirds told in that way. We must know how it is now, or there is no story. Perhaps that’s the reason that “leads” (stories of sobriety) aren’t encouraged to be told until someone has a year booze-free. At that point, their story is by no means complete, but there is some perspective. There is a bit of a conclusion.

But this is drama, not AA. The cliffhanger ending (One last “Proverb to bones and silence”) leaves us to either read and research the subtext or, if reading for pleasure, create our own impression of what happens next. I’ll stew on this one, try to make some sense of some of it in class.

Till later...