I love Baobab trees, so I thought I would post a photo of a beautiful one I ran across the other day.
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| A Baobab Tree on the Ghana University Campus |
While America celebrates Labor day this weekend, Ghanaians
are celebrating their harvest day with Thanksgiving Sunday. This was the culmination for us of a
beautiful weekend exploring Accra, seeing great Ghanaian theatre, and just all
in all, enjoying our time.
We went to see the University of Ghana Theatre department
perform in a play called “Snakes and Ladders”
-- an original devised work about the ups and downs of life, much of it
focused on students and stereotypical scenarios in Ghanaian life. I didn’t find the drama itself to be all that
intriguing, but I loved the dance, music and movement. Indeed, this is where Ghanaians excel and I
would love for the dance and drama to meld more gracefully in the theatre works
I see here. The dancing and drumming in
this particular piece took on a life of its own and the musicians themselves
were great commentators and controllers of the action of the piece.
Then, on Saturday, we went to a poetry slam for kids 13 to
19 years old at the National Theatre and Julia and I were chosen as judges! So, that was fascinating as we judged the
competition. It was a tie between the
only female competitor and another very smooth talking young poet who often
seemed to be preaching more than making poetry, still his use of alliterative
and internal rhyming, even in an extempore round, was quite good.
After this, we went to see Ebo Whyte’s new play “Men Run,
Women Cry” which was fabulous. Mr. Whyte
has been writing a play every quarter for the past five years, and then, at the
end of the year in December they perform all four of them. This one takes place in a hair salon and
involves a plot device of a magic necklace that makes men fall instantly in
love. What I love about Ebo’s plays is
the combination of music, Ghanaian character types playing out every antic in
the book, dance, and Ghanaian humor.
They’re really wonderful, and he develops them free form with
improvisation. I am hoping to go sit in
on some of his rehearsals for his fourth quarter play when I have more time in
November. I’d love to write about his
use of improvisational form in the theatre.
The jokes in the play about various stereotypes in Ghanaian culture were
hilarious – for example and Ashanti character messes up his Ls and his Rs and
sings a love song (the Ashanti’s are known for this consonant confusion) So LOVE became ROVE etc. And another local joke replaced a popular Twi
gospel song with the name of a woman in the place of God and Christ. The audience ate it up!
Then, as I mentioned above, we culminated the whole weekend with
the Thanksgiving service at Legon Interdenominational church. And here’s a couple of pictures of our
weekend.
The Thanksgiving Service
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| Snakes and Ladders: University of Ghana Devised Theatre Production |
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