Revolutionary Postcolonial Drama: Ngūgī Wa Thiong'o and Saadallah Wannous

Revolutionary Postcolonial Drama: Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o and Saadallah Wannous This dissertation is a comparative project that studies the common aspects of the revolutionary theaters of two important postcolonial dramatists Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong’o (1938) from Kenya and Saadallah Wannous (1941-1997) from Syria. I argue that the adoption of the Brechtian non-cathartic form by the two playwrights has enabled the transculturation of their theaters and rendering them revolutionary. Non-cathartic drama differs from classical Aristotelian drama in the absence of a purifying ending that purges the audience of already charged emotions of pity and fear and brings calmness to the world of the play. Contrary to what happens at the end of an Aristotelian play where calmness prevails in the world of the play, a non-cathartic ending leaves emotions charged and minds alert thinking about solutions to wrong situations. The non-cathartic ending sends the audience home with the knowledge that there is still work to be done. The absence of a catharsis is the main factor that makes the Brechtian form suitable for moving audiences to action. Saadallah Wannous and Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong’o, who share with Bertolt Brecht a Marxist outlook of the world, find in Brecht’s dramatic form a flexible framework for the exigencies of their postcolonial resistance theaters that aim oppressed classes to question, refuse, and take action to change unjust status quos. The Brechtian form also plays a big role in the transculturation of the two playwrights’ theaters. The narrative, rather than dramatic structure of events and independence incidents of the form, also allow including native theatrical traditions like songs, dance, ritual, and ceremony within the framework of the play. Native theatrical forms are not originally performances of a manuscript or text of a play and they do not enact a story with a masterplot. These aspects belong to Western drama where the playwright produces the text and the theater group rehearses the play behind closed doors to present it to the audience as a piece of perfection. The absence of the catharsis in the Brechtian form allows for integrating native performance elements in a play that is written and rehearsed beforehand like a Western play, and which at the same time resembles native theatrical traditions in including song, dance, ritualistic, and ceremonial elements. This makes the adoption of the European dissenting form a main factor of the transculturation of the genre.