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 Drama, arts, music and entertainment programmes need to offer artists, writers and entertainers generous scope for individual expression. The power of drama in Africa - by Fiona Ledger, producer and drama consultant, BBC World Service. I loved my time working in current affairs, but news can't tell the whole story. Drama, along with poetry and the documentary feature, must do that job. Like news, it feeds off tension. In Africa the tension and conflicts are there, and drama is central to people's lives; the form varies – from dramatised dance to stage shows, from story telling to Indian romantic films, from video melodramas to well timed anecdotes delivered in the comfort of one's own home. People love acting it out and watching it. Shakespeare in Ethiopia Under the oppressive regime of Haile Mengistu, Shakespeare guaranteed a full house. Passion, power, pride – it was all there. And Ethiopia's theatregoers were adept at relating this to their own situation. But allegory and metaphor are not a guarantee against government harassment. When I was sent a compelling script about a mythological tyrant by a young Malawian playwright Garton Kamchedzera, my heart leapt, but I also hesitated. Poetry in Malawi I thought of poet Jack Mapanje who could only confuse the government of Hastings Banda in Malawi with his beautiful poetic metaphors up to a point; eventually he was jailed for four years without charge or trial. "Are you sure you want it produced on the BBC?" I asked Garton anxiously. "Of course," he replied without hesitation. He knew the odds better than me, I thought. We produced the play. The former dictator Hastings Banda liked to leave his opponents in a limbo of anxiety before pouncing, months or even years after the originally perceived offence, but Garton survived the next three years, and in 1994 there was a new democratic regime. Satire in Kenya I also worked with a Kenyan author who received government feedback almost immediately after his satire on the abuse of the media by politicians was broadcast. A silky-voiced member of security rang him at home. "Why did you write such a thing?" he asked, like a disappointed master to a pupil caught in some delinquent act. The playwright didn't hang around to find out the government's next move. The next week he left for America and Kenya lost a commentator as valuable as any journalist. |
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