ÒGBÓJÚ ỌDẸ NÍNÚ IGBÓ IRÚNMỌLẸ̀ (THE FOREST OF A THOUSAND DAEMONS: A HUNTER’S SAGA) AND LÁNGBÒDÓ (THE INDESCRIBABLE MOUNT): PERFORMING CULTURE IN AFRICA

Shola  Balogun; Abiodun  John Macaulay

doi:10.21618/fil2225279b

Authors

Shola Balogun University of Ibadan, Faculty of Arts Department of Тheatre Arts
Abiodun John Macaulay Afe Babalola University, College of Arts and Humanities Department of Performing Arts

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.21618/fil2225279b

Keywords:

African theatre, Yorùbá experience, cultural realities, indigenous materials, ancestral cults, professionalism

Abstract

The study of theatre culture in Africa provides a significant background to reassess the emphasis on orthodox ideologies and inﬂuence of European aesthetics on the development of African theatre. The tradition of locating the worldview of dramatic characters within a culture which the audience within the culture can emphathise with is universal. And in most instances it is the misinformation about what is stylistically diﬀerent across cultures that is instrumental in isolating non-Western people's experiences. Thus the contextualisation of D. O. Fágúnwà’s novel, Ògbójú Ọdẹ Nínú Igbó Irúnmọlẹ̀, translated from the Yorùbá as The Forest of a Thousand Daemons: A Hunters Saga by the Nobel Prize winner Wole Soyinka, and Lángbòdó, the stage adaption whose title, Lángbòdó (The Indescribable Mount), is based on the wild locale at the heart of the hunter's adventure in Fágúnwà's novel by Wálé Ògúnyẹmí, within the system of Aláárìnjó the indigenous Yorùbá Travelling Theatre in West Africa, asserts culture as a performance space. The approach to understanding the concept of a theatre is to understand the art form which is characteristic of the culture. In the dramatic narrative of the hunter-narrator on a mission to the distant Mount Lángbòdó, Fágúnwà and Ògúnyẹ́mí capture the functional dimensions of indigenous people's theatres distinctive from European realities. This paper is an attempt to emphasise the importance of revisiting the definitions and developments of theatre along the backgrounds of indigenous cultures and theatrical arts such as Aláárìnjó as drawn from the selected works of the two Yorùbá writers.

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