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Efua Theodora Sutherland (née Efua Theodora Morgue) 1924-1996 |
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Ghanaian theatre pioneer, children's author ("Auntie Efua"), and dramatist, whose best-known works include Foriwa (1962), Edufa (1967), and The Marriage of Anansewa (1975). In 1960 Efua Sutherland founded the Drama Studio in Accra, which became part of the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana. Sutherland's plays are often based on African myths and legends, but she also used Western sources, such as Euripides and Lewis Carroll. ANANSEWA: [Pained] But father, why are you confusing me like this? I, Anansewa, I don't love Chief-Who-Is-Chief? [Her tears are close.] Now I see what has happened. [She is scared.] Have you, by any chance, gone to Chief-Who-Is-Chief, and told him that I don't love him, and ruined everything? [Cunning laughter from ANANSE.] He has gone and told him that. Oh, the whole affair is ended. It's turned to wind. He has finished me. [She breaks into song.] Efua Theodora Sutherland was born in Cape Coast region, which
was
then the British colony of Gold Coast. Her father, Harry Peter Morgue,
was a teacher. Harriet Efua Maria Parker, her mother, came from
the royal families of Gomua Brofo and Anomabu; she died in lorry
accident when Efua was just five months old. Efua was taken care of her
grandmother, who earned her living as a baker. After graduating from St.
Monica's Training College at Asante Mampong, Sutherland worked as a
teacher. In 1947 she went to England where she studied for a B.A.
degree at
Homerton College, Cambridge, and the School of Oriental and African
Studies, University of London. She contributed to the BBC's West African Voices as a writer and reader. Upon her return to home in 1951, Sutherland worked as a teacher in several schools, among others at St. Monica's Training College, before settling in Accra, the capital. She continued to write for the BBC. Her work was read by the likes of George Lamming and Pauline Henriques, a Jamaican-born English actress. (Voices of Ghana: Literary Contributions to the Ghana Broadcasting System 1955-57, edited by Victoria Ellen Smith, Boydell & Brewer, 2018, p. 20) In 1954 she married William Sutherland, an African American peace campaigner and pan-Africanist. They had three children. Sutherland assisted her husband in the establishment a high school, that eventually became Tsito Secondary School in the Volta region. The Sutherland's marriage did not last, but she remained loyal and generous to his family and friends, especially his sister Muriel Sutherland. During her theatrical career, Sutherland was the creative
force behind several experimental drama groups and writers'
workshops. In 1958 she opened the Experimental Theatre Players in
Accra. Two years later, with funding from Ghana's Art Council and the
Rockefeller Foundation in the U.S., it became the Ghana Drama Studio,
and a courtyard theatre, with a covered stage on one side, was build
for it. A few years later Sutherland designed another outdoor
performance area for experiments. Television service began in 1966 and
from November 1966 plays were produced regularly. This institution
flourished until 1990, when the building was demolished to make way for
a new National Theatre. An exact replica of the Drama Studio was built
next to the Institute of African Studies at the University. In addition, Sutherland
was the founder of the Ghana Society of Writers, later the Writers'
Workshop in the Institute of African Studies, and the creator of
Kodzidan, a community theater place in Ekumfi-Atwian. "I started the
Writers's Society [...] to get more people interested in writing,
primarily for children," she said in an interview. The organization was
supported by such authors as J.B. Danquah, J.H. Kwabena Nketia, and
Michael Dei-Anang. (Nkyin-kyin:
Essays on the Ghanaian Theatre by James Gibbs and James Morel
Gibbs, Amsterdam-New York, NY: Rodopi, 2009, p. 98) In 1968 she
formed the Kusum Agoromba (Kusum Players), a touring theater group,
which performed at schools, churches, and training colleges. Its name
was Akan and meant "the right thing to do." Sutherland's Drama Studio was originally a workshop for children's writers, but soon it soon became a training ground for playwrights, and the essential vehicle for the creation of new theatre. Playtime in Africa, self published in Accra in July 1960, signalled the emergence of written children's literature in Ghana. In 1961 Sutherland co-founded the cultural journal Okeyame. She was also a central figure in establishing of Afram Publications Ghana in the early 1970s. In 1962 Sutherland joined the staff of the New School of Music and Drama, headed by the distinguished musicologist J.W.C. Nketia. She worked with the National Commission on Children and also was a consultant to the Du Bois Center for African Culture, the former home of the black American scholar and Pan-Africanist W.E.B. Du Bois (c. 1868-1963), who had moved in 1961 to Ghana. They both had attended the Afro-Asian Writers' Conference in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, in 1958. Sutherland called the conference "A step toward unification of the disrupted soul of man." (The Autobiography of W.E.B. DuBois: A Soliloquy on Viewing My Life from the Last Decade of Its First Century by W.E.B. Du Bois, New York: International Publishers, 1968, p. 41) Her Ghana Drama Studio also collaborated with the Workers' Brigade Drama Group, founded by Félix Morrisseau-Leroy. When Ama Ata Aidoo studied drama at the University of Ghana in the early 1960s, her mentor was Sutherland. With Experimental Theatre Sutherland travelled around the
country,
performing on the streets of the newly independent Ghana. She emphasized the importance of performing in Ghanaian
languages. Under its
first president, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah (1909-1972), Ghana became a
socialist state in 1964, but following a financial chaos, Nkrumah was
deposed in 1966. From the colonial English-language traditions in
theatre turned to the popular village theatre, based on oral
storytelling. With the means of drama, Sutherland could reach people who
had problems with the written word. Theatre had not only an important
role in educating and entertaining people. Through achievements in
culture Ghana also gained attention and prestige on the international
scene. The American television network ABC made a documentary film in
1967 on her Atwia Experimental Community Theatre Project. As a writer, Surtherland published essays, articles, short stories, poems, non-fiction, and plays. Her plays for children, many of which remained unpublished, include The Pineapple Child, Nyamekye, Tweedledum and Tweedledee (after Lewis Carroll), Ananse and the Dwarf Brigade, Wohyee Me Bo, and Children of the Man-Made Lake. Some of Sutherland's writing for children was both in English and Akan. In the 1980s Sutherland served as advisor to the president of
Ghana,
Jerry Rawlings, who led a cop in 1981, and started economic reforms.
Her proposal for a Pan-African cultural celebration, the PANAFEST, was
adopted by the Ghanaian state. The movement sought to uplift and
reunite African and diaspora peoples through the arts. Sutherland retired from the University of Ghana in 1984. Her
final
years she devoted to the Ghana National Commission on Children.
Efua Sutherland died on January 2, 1996. "The poets said it once so well:
You were Mother Courage with a Heart the size of Love, large
enough for your children's tears for your nation's fears. You were
Foruwa the young gazelle who tip-toed into our dawn, rearranged the
world you found, gave life a new meaning, disappeared before we could
think of saying Thanks." ('Mother Courage' by Kofi
Anyidoho, in FonTomFrom:
Contemporary Ghanaian Literature, Theatre and Film, edited by
Kofi Anyidoho and James Gibbs, Amsterdam-Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 2000, p. 84) A central theme in Sutherland's plays is the experience of women, but she resisted being defined solely by her gender. "Somehow, I find prescriptions like Women writers very entertaining, and can't manage to respond seriously to it," Sutherland said. ('Introduction,' in Women Writers in Black Africa by Lloyd W. Brown, Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1981, p. 5) Foriwa (1962), sub-titled "a
story-telling drama", was written for performance "in a street in any
of many small Ghanaian towns," in the spirit of national awakening and
demonstrated the importance of self-help. A young university-educated
stranger, Labaran, camps in Kyerefaso, a neglected and apathetic town. Labaran is a
Hausa from the northern part of the country. He wants to bring new hope
to the community. Foriwa is a beautiful girl, the daughter of the town's Queen Mother, who becomes Labaran's
ally in building a bridge between traditions and progress. The marriage
of Labaran and Foriwa also connects north and south and different
ethnic groups. Foriwa was a dramatized version of Sutherland's
short story 'New Life at Kyerefaso,' anthologized in Voices of Ghana.
Edufa (1967) was based on Euripides's Alcestis. Edufa is a Western-educated modern man, who is obsessed with his own longevity. A diviner tells him that he can avert his death if he can find someone to take his place. Ampoma, his wife, promises that she would die for him unaware of Edufa's intentions. Ampoma accepts her approaching death, and expresses love for Edufa. The play was first produced in 1962 at the Drama studio. At the time its director was Joe Coleman de Graft (1924-1978). Marriage for Anansewa told about a cunning and dishonest father, Ananse, the spider or trickster figure in Akan oral narratives. As a trickster Ananse can take different forms, and in the story he is an old man. Ananse tests the suitors of his daughter, Anansewa, who is a Western-educated urban woman. He tries to gain money by demanding a bride price and playing with the hopes of the four suitors, four ethnic chiefs. At one point he tests them by declaring his daughter being dead. Following the oral technique Sutherland used a storyteller who stood outside the action and mediated between the actors and the audience. With the actors, the audience could participate in singing or recounting mboguo, musical performances that comment on the story. Andrea Y. Adomako has noted that "Sutherland has often been ignored in conversations around African women's writing despite her litetrary influence." ('Efua Sutherland and African children's literature: representations of postcolonial childhood' by Andrea Y. Adomako, in New Perspectives on African Childhood: Constructions, Histories, Representations and Understandings, edited by De-Valera N.Y.M. Botchway, Awo Sarpong, Charles Quist-Adade, 2019, p. 67) Vulture! Vulture! (1968) and Tahinta
(1968) were rhythm plays, in which one-line statements were commented
by an unvarying chorus line. The Voice in the Forest,
(1983) a
book of folklore, was a retelling of an Akan folktale. A man named
Bempong brings Samantha, a wood nymph, to his village, and cuts off her
overgrown curly Black hair. Samantha curses the villagers: they are
left without food. Afrum, a childlike fool, frees
the community from her powers, and is named chief of the village. In
between the lines there is a message of tolerance and respect. For further reading: 'Efua Sutherland and African children's literature: representations of postcolonial childhood' by Andrea Y. Adomako, in New Perspectives on African Childhood: Constructions, Histories, Representations and Understandings, edited by De-Valera N.Y.M. Botchway, Awo Sarpong, Charles Quist-Adade (2019); 'Efua Sutherland, Ama Ata Aidoo, the State, and the Stage,' in Black Performance on the Outskirts of the Left: a History of the Impossible by Malik Gaines (2017); Nkyin-kyin: Essays on the Ghanaian Theatre by James Gibbs and James Morel Gibbs (2009); The Legay of Efua Sutherland: Pan African Cultural Activism, edited by Anne V. Adams and Esi Sutherland-Addy (2007); 'Translation and Transliteration in Efua Sutherland's "The Marriage of Anansewa"' by Kwawisi Tekpetey, in Obsidian, Vol. 8, No. 2 (Fall/Winter 2007); FonTomFrom: Contemporary Ghanaian Literature, Theatre and Film, edited by Kofi Anyidoho and James Gibbs (2000); 'Efua Theodora Sutherland (1924-1996)' by Adaku T. Ankumah, in Postcolonial African Writers: A Bio-bibliographical Critical Sourcebook, edited by Pushpa Naidu Parekh and Siga Fatima Jagne (1998); Moorings and Metaphors by Karla F.C. Holloway (1992); Binding Cultures: Black Women Writers in Africa and the Diaspora by Gay Wilentz (1992); 'Storytelling as Experimental Drama: A Study of Efua Sutherland's The Marriage of Anansewa' by Austin O. Asagba, in Lore and Language 8.2. (1989); 'The Didactic Essence of Efua Sutherland's Plays' by Adetokunbo Pearce, in Women in African Literature Today 15 (1987); The Development of African Drama by Michael Etherton (1982); Women Writers in Black Africa by Lloyd W. Brown (1981); 'Parallelism versus Influence in African Literature: The Case of Efua Sutherland's Edufa' by Chinyere Okafor, in Kiabara 3.1. (1980) Selected works:
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