Today We Become: Echoing the Past to Negotiate the Landscape of Postcolony

Speaker: Sola Adeyemi, Goldsmiths, University of London 

This presentation explores the issue of “authenticity” in recuperating traditional performance culture among the Yoruba of West Africa, and in proffering a new dramatic interpretation of the pre-colonial history and narratives.

In pre-colonial encounters, there exists the “dawn of contact” when the nature of the encounter is as yet unmarked and unremarked, and where the awareness of the experience is still at its most ambiguous and undefined. Yet, this point marks exactly the formative stage where perceptions are formed and boundaries are demarcated, and where received narratives are situated. It is also where I have chosen to locate my interrogation of the postcolony; to question the encounter and the experience as derived from that point, and structure it into a new narrative that challenges popular chronicles. I employ the modern drama of Wole Soyinka and Femi Osofisan in questioning the meaning of “authenticity” and reclaiming the Alarinjo performance culture as the basis of the new dramatic interpretation.

Sola Adeyemi teaches World Theatres, African Theatre and Postcolonial Drama at Goldsmiths, University of London. His current researches are on the works of Nigerian playwright Femi Osofisan; and on diasporic African and black British theatre in its exploration of the politics of identity. His monograph, ‘Vision of Change in African Drama: Deconstructing Identity and Reconfiguring History’ is scheduled for publication in May 2018. This presentation is from an ongoing project on Yoruba performances: ‘Dramatizing the Postcolony: Nigerian Drama and Theatre’. Sola is the Reviews Editor of African Theatre.

Part of the Africa Talks Seminar Series Spring 2018.

Talks are held in the Danford Room, 2nd floor, Arts Building (R16 on the campus map). 

All welcome. 

• Full seminar programme