African Theater Women

African Theater Women Jane Plastow, ed. James Currey, Oxford; Indiana University Press, Bloomington; Witswatersrand University Press, Johannesburg, 2002. 178 pp. $24.95 paper.

This volume brings together, under Jane Plastow's able editorship, a collection of articles focused on women in African theater. In addition to Plastow's introduction, there are nine articles ranging in their focus from plays by women (Box, Kuria, Dunton, Ajayi) and women performers (Matzke, Ntangaare, Sutherland-Addy), to representations of women in performance (Amin, Dogbe). There is, too, a wide geographical range: Eritrea, Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria, Algeria, and Egypt.

The collection opens with an article by Laura Chakravarty Box on women's theater in the Algerian diaspora and sets the scene for much that permeates the volume--the ubiquitous tenor of resistance to men's curtailment of women's participation in theater practices. In her introductory paragraph on the status of women as playwrights in the Maghreb, Box gives a gloriously direct refutation of an assertion by a (male) "highly placed official of a government theater in Morocco" who states that "with one exception, women ... are writing nothing of consequence" (p. 3). Box's response is that "He is quite wrong, but proving it is an uphill struggle" (ibid.). Such a direct riposte is rare and the opportunity to make it courteously and publicly, rarer still. This determined voicing of women's knowledge about, experience, and practice in theater encapsulates much that follows. One particularly horrifying incident recounts how the manuscript by the Algerian broadcaster and playwright Hawa Djabali was "destroyed, against her wishes, in 1986" (p. 12).

Dina Amin's article comparing two plays on the Egyptian goddess Isis makes the all-too-familiar point of how male dramatists portray women--unless they are venerable figures or "self-sacrificing mothers"--as "mindless, irrational, jealous, hysterical, materialistic, and at times downright ridiculous" (p. 15). What is sad is that this comedic representation is accepted--and enjoyed--by women as well as men, the women "unaware that the joke is on them" (ibid.). Her article goes on to pilot the reader through a fascinating comparison of the portrayals of the eponymous central character of the respective plays (both are titled Isis) by Tawfiq al-Hakim and Nawak ak Sa'dawi as each playwright identifies the "male" virtues of the goddess.

Christine Matzke's article records the forays by women performers in Eritrea into the public arena and makes a link (again, already familiar and not yet appearing to have become defunct) between drinking houses (the "suwa houses" of her title) and women performers. A link between alcohol and women performers is also made by Mike Kuria in his article on women's theater in Kenya, noting that after the Kamiriithu theater project, it did not become any "easier for women to participate" (p. 48), in part because of the use of bars as theater venues. He concludes that theater practice in Kenya is "not gender-friendly as far as women are concerned" (p. 49). Kuria analyzes two plays by women, Mama ee (1987; in Kiswahili) by Ari Katini Mwachofi, and Otongolia (1986; in English) by Alakie-Akinye Mboya. The latter is not about women as victims but about their "active engagement in the manipulation of the socio-political forces that shape the lives of both men and women" (p. 50). Mama ee, on the other hand, shows how men expect women to adhere to "traditional" modes of behavior while the men "dispense with their responsibilities" (ibid.). In a grim reminder of the physical pain to which dissenting women could be subjected, the financially independent central character, Mwavita, is able to acquire a divorce without being "subjected to the painful process of tying her toe" (p. 52) to persuade her to rescind her decision. In real life, some women preferred ultimately to let the toe be severed, however painful it might be, rather than forego divorce from oppressive husbands.

In her account of women in Ugandan theater, Mercy Mirembe Ntaangare observes that "a woman's body ... has an economic value on stage and is an important aspect for calculating profitability in the commercial theater" (p. 59). She also notes the prevalence of the legendary depiction of women as destructive characters and how this has transferred itself to the theatrical depiction of "powerful women ... educated women ... [and] prosperous business women" (p. 61) whose wealth drives them mad because women, unlike men, "cannot handle riches" (p. 62). She concludes by naming some positive representations of women, notably by the late Rose Mbowa and by Charles Mulekwa, but observes that not only were these part of "committed conscientisation projects" but also that the women in them are "too good to be true" (p. 64).