This ain't National Geographic!

I’m very glad we’re studying this play. As much as material or language may have been a challenge in past plays, this one will, I think, stretch our aesthetic sensibilities. It may take some “filling the blanks” with “leaps of faith” (yes, a mixed metaphor) but if we can come to understand Talthybius, the Friar, or even Nora’s need to abandon her children, the Yoruba-specific aspects of this play should feed and enrich the message(s) this play offers.
Though, obviously, Soyinka’s message here is the futility and tragedy of Western colonialization and oppression, I- because of recent life events- am most struck by the juxtaposition of views of death presented in this play.
Being conditioned by Protestant Christianity, I tend, as I believe most Americans do, to see death as a finality; the soul or spirit going to a “world” completely cut off from this plane of physical existence. It takes some effort for me to see the world which I actively perceive as existing parallel to this “spirit world”- though I very much want to believe that. Having lost my father a few years ago and, just this week, a close family friend, I wish Westerners had a cultural construct of the egungun, ancestral spirits looking out for us, still available for supplication and guidance.
Stepping over to this “spirit world” is seen as a great opportunity, as the opening scene celebrates, and giving one’s life to preserve others’ perhaps the highest honor; the exchange between Olunde and Jane illustrates this.
If I were to stage this I would, first and foremost, immerse myself in as much of the Yoruba cultural standard as practical (you can’t effectively tell any story if you don’t understand the symbolism employed). Using the opening to position the Eurocentric audience members as the outsiders surrounded by “the others,” I would have as much of the singing, dancing, drumming, and ceremony in the aisles and amongst the audience as would be coherently possible. Perhaps, also, scene 3 where Amusa and his men are being held at bay by the women. These scenes speak directly to and set up the poison of enforced cultural supremacy.
The other scenes would be, as we discussed, straightforward European realism. I believe Soyinka wanted white culturalists to see the humanity of the Nigerians. Telling this story wholly through Yoruban aesthetics would cause a European audience to look at the production as a cultural documentary, and overlook the human tragedy, a tragedy on the scale of the ancient Greeks.