A DANCE OF THE FOREST- Wole Soyinka

 

A DANCE OF THE FOREST

Wole Soyinka

Soyinka is recognized as a prolific essayist, playwright, poet, novelist, and theatre director. He writes mainly in English. His works are distinguished by their exploration of the African world view, and are steeped in Yoruba mythology, imagery and dramatic idioms. Soyinka‘s representation of Postcolonial African identity will be examined in the light of his two plays, The Bacchae of Euripides and A Dance of the Forests to show how this writer‘s idiom of cultural authenticity both embraces hybridity and defines itself as specific and particular. His works conceptualize identity in ways that modify colonial perception of Africaness‘. Soyinka has been one of the most outspoken critics of the concept of negritude.

Soyinka‘s first important play, A Dance of the Forests (1960), was written for Nigeria‘s independence celebration. Soyinka has played an active role in Nigeria‘s political history.

A Dance of the forest Summary

The play begins with an introduction by Aroni, "the Lame One," laying out the circumstances of the play. Soyinka lists the characters, and describes them. The Dead Man was a captain in Mata Kharibu's army, the Dead Woman was his wife. Rola is a prostitute and goes by her name from long ago, Madame Tortoise. Adenebi is the court orator. He used to be the court historian. Demoke, the Carver, was a poet in his previous life. Agboreko is known as "The Elder of the Sealed Lips," who made sacrifices for the Forest Head. The Forest Head is disguising himself as a mortal, Obaneji. Aroni has secured the Dead Man and Woman as “two spirits of the restless dead.”

The Dead Man was a soldier in a former life that was castrated for his unwillingness to go to war against a neighbouring tribe. He was sold to a slave-dealer and eventually killed. He has been brought back to life by Aroni to settle the unfinished business of his ill-fated death. The Dead Woman was pregnant with the Dead Man's child when she attempted to plead for her husband's life in the court of Mata Kharibu. Her plea was rejected and she and her husband were killed. Forest Head is a god. Rola is a prostitute, who was once Madame Tortoise in a past life, and queen to Mata Kharibu. Demoke is a carver who was once a poet in a past life. While carving an araba tree he pushed his apprentice, Oremole, from the tree to his death. The Forest Head wants him to see the sin he has committed and atone for it. Adenebi was a court historian for Mata Kharibu who accepts a bribe from a slave trader to sell the Soldier as a slave, even wrongfully stating that the ship he will travel in is not tortuous.

The play begins with a Dead Man and a Dead Woman breaking free from their burial in the soil in the middle of a forest. The Man and Woman were a captain and his wife in a past life and were tortured and killed by an Emperor by the name of Mata Kharibu and his Queen, nicknamed Madame Tortoise. The Dead Man and his wife have come to the Gathering of the Tribes, and were sent here by Aroni, a god, with permission from the Forest Head in place of the forefathers that the living have requested to join them. 

            Meanwhile, strife brews between the gods Eshuoro and Ogun. Ogun is Demoke the carver’s patron god, and Eshuoro is angry that Demoke carved Oro’s sacred tree into an idol for the festival, and because Demoke killed his assistant Oremole, who was also a devotee of Eshuoro.

            As the play moves forward we are taken back in time into the court of Mata Kharibu, where we learn that the Dead Man was a soldier who led Karibu's men. The soldier refuses to go to war against another tribe because Kharibu has taken the tribe leader's wife, Madame Tortoise.

            All of the characters from the earlier part of the play (but from later in time) are seen as the court counselors of Kharibu. They do not help the soldier, who is castrated and given to a slave dealer. The scene ends as the soldier's wife comes in, pregnant. It is left up to the audience to determine how she is killed.

            The forests are then smoked out by humans with a petrol truck. The Forest Head says that he must "pierce the encrustations of soul-deadening habit, and bare the mirror of original nakedness." He exits knowing that he is alone in his fight. Demoke is led to climb up a totem he built by Eshuoro, who lights the totem on fire. Demoke falls and joins his father and the other mortals and they discuss what they have learned.