Further information: Yoruba literature
In his pioneering study of Yoruba theatre, Joel Adedeji traced its origins to the masquerade of the Egun or Egungunoud and red, rarely applauding the actors, but always shouting insults and booing. Because the audience was so loud, much, the “cult of the ancestor.”[1] The traditional Egun rite, which is controlled exclusively by men, culminates in a masquerade in which ancestors return to the world of the living to visit their descendants.[2] In addition to a basis in ritual, Yoruba theatre can be “traced to the ‘theatrogenic’ nature of a number of the deities in the Yoruba pantheon, such as Obatala the god of creation, Ogun the god of creativeness and Sango the god of lightning” whose worship is imbricated “with drama and theatre and their symbolic and psychological uses.”[3]The Aláàrìnjó theatrical tradition sprang from the egun masquerade. The Aláàrìnjó was composed of a troupe of traveling performers, who, like the performers in the egun rite, were masked. The Aláàrìnjó performers created satirical skits by drawing on a number of established stereotypical characters and incorporating mime, music and acrobatics. The Aláàrìnjó tradition in turn deeply influenced the Yoruba traveling theatre, which, from the 1950s to the 1980s was the most prevalent and highly developed form of theatre in Nigeria. From the 1990s on the Yoruba traveling theatre began working with television and film and now rarely gives live performances.[4]
‘Total theater’ also developed in Nigeria in the 1950s and was characterized by surrealist physical imagery, non-naturalistic idioms and linguistic flexibility. Later playwrights writing in the mid 1970’s valued ‘total theater’ but included “a radical appreciation of the problems of society.”[5]
Major figures in contemporary Nigerian theatre continue to be deeply influenced by traditional performance modes. Chief Hubert Ogunde, sometimes referred to as the “father of contemporary Yoruban theatre,” was informed by the Aláàrìnjó tradition and egun masquerades.[6] Wole Soyinka, who is “generally recognized as Africa’s greatest living playwright” gives egun a complex metaphysical significance in his work.[7] Further in his essay, "The Fourth Stage: Through the Mysteries of Ogun to the Origin of Yoruba Tragedy," originally published in 1973, Soyinka suggests that “no matter how strongly African authors call for an indigenous tragic art form, they smuggle into their dramas, through the back door of formalistic and ideological predilections, typically conventional Western notions and practices of rendering historical events into tragedy.” Soyinka then contrasts Yoruban drama with Greek drama, as discussed by Nietzsche in The Birth of Tragedy, establishing an aesthetic of Yoruban tragedy based, in part, on the Yoruban pantheon, including Ogun and Obatala.
[edit] Asian theatre
[edit] Indian theatre
Main articles: Theatre in India and Sanskrit drama
Folk theatre and dramatics can be traced to the religious ritualism of the Vedic peoples in the 2nd millennium BC. This folk theatre of the misty past was mixed with dance, food, ritualism, plus a depiction of events from daily life. It was the last element which made it the origin of the classical theatre of later times. Many historians, notably D. D. Kosambi, Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya, Adya Rangacharaya, etc. have referred to the prevalence of ritualism amongst Indo-Aryan tribes in which some members of the tribe acted as if they were wild animals and some others were the hunters. Those who acted as mammals like goats, buffaloes, reindeer, monkeys, etc. were chased by those playing the role of hunters.In such a very simple and crude manner did the theatre originate in India during Rig Vedic times. There also must have existed a theatrical tradition in the Harappan cities, but of this we lack material proof.
[edit] Natya Shastra
Further information: Natya Shastra and Natya Shastra of Bharata
Bharata Muni (fl. 5th– was an ancient Indian writer best known for writing the Natya Shastra of Bharata, a theoretical treatise on Indian performing arts, including theatre, dance, acting, and music, which has been compared to Aristotle's Poetics. Bharata is often known as the father of Indian theatrical arts. His Natya Shastra seems to be the first attempt to develop the technique or rather art, of drama in a systematic manner. The Natya Shastra tells us not only what is to be portrayed in a drama, but how the portrayal is to be done. Drama, as Bharata Muni says, is the imitation of men and their doings (loka-vritti). As men and their doings have to be respected on the stage, so drama in Sanskrit is also known by the term roopaka which means portrayal...The Natya Shastra is incredibly wide in its scope. It consists of minutely detailed precepts for both playwrights and actors. Bharata describes ten types of drama ranging from one to ten acts. In addition, he lays down principles for stage design, makeup, costume, dance (various movements and gestures), a theory of aesthetics (rasas and bhavas), acting, directing and music, each in individual chapters.
Bharata sets out a detailed theory of drama comparable to the Poetics of Aristotle. He refers to bhavas, the imitations of emotions that the actors perform, and the rasas (emotional responses) that they inspire in the audience. He argues that there are eight principal rasas: love, pity, anger, disgust, heroism, awe, terror and comedy, and that plays should mix different rasas but be dominated by one. According to the Natya Shastra, all the modes of expression employed by an individual viz. speech, gestures, movements and intonation must be used. The representation of these expressions can have different modes (vritti) according to the predominance and emphasis on one mode or another. Bharata Muni recognises four main modes: speech and poetry (bharati vritti), dance and music (kaishiki vritti), action (arabhatti vritti) and emotions (sattvatti vritti
Further information: Yoruba literature
In his pioneering study of Yoruba theatre, Joel Adedeji traced its origins to the masquerade of the Egun or Egungunoud and red, rarely applauding the actors, but always shouting insults and booing. Because the audience was so loud, much, the “cult of the ancestor.”[1] The traditional Egun rite, which is controlled exclusively by men, culminates in a masquerade in which ancestors return to the world of the living to visit their descendants.[2] In addition to a basis in ritual, Yoruba theatre can be “traced to the ‘theatrogenic’ nature of a number of the deities in the Yoruba pantheon, such as Obatala the god of creation, Ogun the god of creativeness and Sango the god of lightning” whose worship is imbricated “with drama and theatre and their symbolic and psychological uses.”[3]The Aláàrìnjó theatrical tradition sprang from the egun masquerade. The Aláàrìnjó was composed of a troupe of traveling performers, who, like the performers in the egun rite, were masked. The Aláàrìnjó performers created satirical skits by drawing on a number of established stereotypical characters and incorporating mime, music and acrobatics. The Aláàrìnjó tradition in turn deeply influenced the Yoruba traveling theatre, which, from the 1950s to the 1980s was the most prevalent and highly developed form of theatre in Nigeria. From the 1990s on the Yoruba traveling theatre began working with television and film and now rarely gives live performances.[4]
‘Total theater’ also developed in Nigeria in the 1950s and was characterized by surrealist physical imagery, non-naturalistic idioms and linguistic flexibility. Later playwrights writing in the mid 1970’s valued ‘total theater’ but included “a radical appreciation of the problems of society.”[5]
Major figures in contemporary Nigerian theatre continue to be deeply influenced by traditional performance modes. Chief Hubert Ogunde, sometimes referred to as the “father of contemporary Yoruban theatre,” was informed by the Aláàrìnjó tradition and egun masquerades.[6] Wole Soyinka, who is “generally recognized as Africa’s greatest living playwright” gives egun a complex metaphysical significance in his work.[7] Further in his essay, "The Fourth Stage: Through the Mysteries of Ogun to the Origin of Yoruba Tragedy," originally published in 1973, Soyinka suggests that “no matter how strongly African authors call for an indigenous tragic art form, they smuggle into their dramas, through the back door of formalistic and ideological predilections, typically conventional Western notions and practices of rendering historical events into tragedy.” Soyinka then contrasts Yoruban drama with Greek drama, as discussed by Nietzsche in The Birth of Tragedy, establishing an aesthetic of Yoruban tragedy based, in part, on the Yoruban pantheon, including Ogun and Obatala.
[edit] Asian theatre
[edit] Indian theatre
Main articles: Theatre in India and Sanskrit drama
Folk theatre and dramatics can be traced to the religious ritualism of the Vedic peoples in the 2nd millennium BC. This folk theatre of the misty past was mixed with dance, food, ritualism, plus a depiction of events from daily life. It was the last element which made it the origin of the classical theatre of later times. Many historians, notably D. D. Kosambi, Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya, Adya Rangacharaya, etc. have referred to the prevalence of ritualism amongst Indo-Aryan tribes in which some members of the tribe acted as if they were wild animals and some others were the hunters. Those who acted as mammals like goats, buffaloes, reindeer, monkeys, etc. were chased by those playing the role of hunters.In such a very simple and crude manner did the theatre originate in India during Rig Vedic times. There also must have existed a theatrical tradition in the Harappan cities, but of this we lack material proof.
[edit] Natya Shastra
Further information: Natya Shastra and Natya Shastra of Bharata
Bharata Muni (fl. 5th– was an ancient Indian writer best known for writing the Natya Shastra of Bharata, a theoretical treatise on Indian performing arts, including theatre, dance, acting, and music, which has been compared to Aristotle's Poetics. Bharata is often known as the father of Indian theatrical arts. His Natya Shastra seems to be the first attempt to develop the technique or rather art, of drama in a systematic manner. The Natya Shastra tells us not only what is to be portrayed in a drama, but how the portrayal is to be done. Drama, as Bharata Muni says, is the imitation of men and their doings (loka-vritti). As men and their doings have to be respected on the stage, so drama in Sanskrit is also known by the term roopaka which means portrayal...The Natya Shastra is incredibly wide in its scope. It consists of minutely detailed precepts for both playwrights and actors. Bharata describes ten types of drama ranging from one to ten acts. In addition, he lays down principles for stage design, makeup, costume, dance (various movements and gestures), a theory of aesthetics (rasas and bhavas), acting, directing and music, each in individual chapters.
Bharata sets out a detailed theory of drama comparable to the Poetics of Aristotle. He refers to bhavas, the imitations of emotions that the actors perform, and the rasas (emotional responses) that they inspire in the audience. He argues that there are eight principal rasas: love, pity, anger, disgust, heroism, awe, terror and comedy, and that plays should mix different rasas but be dominated by one. According to the Natya Shastra, all the modes of expression employed by an individual viz. speech, gestures, movements and intonation must be used. The representation of these expressions can have different modes (vritti) according to the predominance and emphasis on one mode or another. Bharata Muni recognises four main modes: speech and poetry (bharati vritti), dance and music (kaishiki vritti), action (arabhatti vritti) and emotions (sattvatti vritti
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