Brecht in Asia and Africa 
 
 
                                   NOTES 
 
 
1. The title for this paper comes in part from a quip Femi Osofisan made

   .concernig Brechtian influence at the fifth International Jahn Janheinz

   Symposium in Mainz, Germany, where an earlier draft of this paper was
read. 
2. Given historical circumstance and the choice of language, comparisons

   between European traditions and modern African literatures are in some

   senses appropriate and inevitable. For a perceptive essay on the complexity

   of the challenge facing the critic of African literatures, see Abiola
Irele, The 
   African Experience in Literature and Ideology. London, 1981, pp. 9-42.

3. In that a modem Nigerian theater in English is generally dated from he
1958 
   production of Wole Soyinka's The Swamp Dwellers and The Lion and the Jewel,

   the term "second generation" has been adopted to signal the
emergence of a 
   group of younger men who have joined theater pioneers Soyinka and J.P.

   Clark. For a discussion of some Onstage: Responses from "Second 
   Generation" Playwrights, Theater Journal, 39, No. 2, May 1987, pp.
215-227. 
4. Roger Abrahams, "Concerning African Performance Patterns," in
New African 
    Literature and Culture, Essays in Memory of Janheinz Jahn, eds. Bernth

    Lindfors and Ulla Schild. Wiesbaden, 1976 and Henry John Drewal and 
    Margaret Thompson Drewal, Gelede: Art and Female Power Among the 
    Yoruba. Bloomington, 1983, pp. 1-7. 
5. For an extended discussion of this complex, see such works as Roger D.

   Abrahams, African Folktales: Traditional Stories of the Black World. New

   York, 1983 and William Bascom, "African Dilemma Tales: An Introduction"
in 
   African Folklore, ed. Richard M. Dorson. Garden City, New York, 1972.

6. Victoria Chinwenma Ezeokoli, "African Theater: A Nigerian Prototype",
Diss. 
    Yale University 1972, p. 186 and James Gibbs, Wole Soyinka. New York,

    1986, p. 32. 
7. James Gibbs, p. 32. 
8. James Gibbs, p.34. Edith Ihekweazu offers in "Two Leaders on the
Stage: 
    Soyinka and Brecht" (Journal of African and Comparative Literature,
No. 1 
    [March 1981]: 52-68) a much more detailed and perceptive analysis of
the 
    ways in which the two plays differ. 
9. Wole Soyinka, Kongi's Harvest in Collected Plays. vol. 2. London, 1974,
p.99. 
10. Oyin Ogunba in The Movement of Transition: A Study of the Plays of Wole

    Soyinka Ibadan, 1975, pp. 187-189, 197-198 while acknowledging Segi's

    destructive capacities also likens her to legendary Yoruba or Bini women
like 
    Moremi, Emotan, and Sungbo who took decisive action to save their 
    communities. The parallel seems inapplicable, however, because tradition

    does not also attribute such elemental destructiveness to these women.

11. Interestingly, production histories suggest that both plays fail to stimulate

    self-critical reflection. The Threepenny Opera audiences have often found
the 
    robbers and beggars charming and distant. from themselves. Wonyosi 
    audiences were either delighted by the accuracy of Soyinka's satire or

    enraged by his accusation of complicity leveled at all social strata.
On 
    reactions to the Nigerian production, see James Gibbs, Wole Soyinka,

    pp. 133-136 and Mario Relich, "Soyinka's 'Beggar's Opera" in
James Gibbs, 
    ed., Critical Perspectives on Wole Soyinka. Washington, D.C., 1980, pp.
128- 
    129. 
12. See the transcription of a conversation between Brecht and Giorgio Strehler,

    who was preparing to direct The Threepenny Opera in Milan in 1955. 
 
 
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