Non Western Theatre Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Non Western Theatre - Essay Examplehistory forwards European countries invaded it and subjugated African nations as colonies, was little kn confess largely because Africans merely improvised their performances without write scripts. Most information of African arena during this time can be gleaned only from the accounts of traders and missionaries and researches of them by scholars. It is not surprising that during the colonial period, the African theater was dominated by European performers who enacted their countrys own classic texts and who made schoolchildren perform them in schools. It was during the post-colonial period, in the 1960s for many African countries and in the nineties by South Africa, that the African theater was wrested back by the Africans. However, all throughout the contrary periods and the different categories of African theater, one theme has always prevailed African theater did not only serve the function of entertainment but had been the focal point wh ich sustained African communities as performances were the reenactment of the villages ethos of the time. In the pre-colonial times, performances were an enactment of the superstitious beliefs of villages, i.e. driving away an evil spirit from the village, and in the post-colonial era, performances were staged first, as a protest against their colonizers and second, when they at long last gained independence, as critical watchdog of their new governments.1African Theater has always been ritualistic and today, traces of the ritualistic aspects hitherto remain in the postcolonial theater. Rituals in celebration of birth, marriage, puberty, planting, and harvesting, its epic story-telling tradition of praising heroic and communal achievements, and its visual and auditory spectacle provided by dance and music are enacted on stage making African theater largely functional. It is said that theaters in general are rooted in ritual, seasonal rhythms, religion and discourse but the great distinction between European theater