Africa on the Contemporary London Stage by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783319945088
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

‘Us’ and ‘Them’ Class Hierarchies

Osita Okagbue identifies a focus on class as one of the fundamental differences between the preoccupations of playwrights of immediate African descent when compared with their African-Caribbean counterparts who focus on race: ‘whereas African dramatists perceive and present relations of social inequality between the rich and the poor, or between the aristocrats and the commoners, the African-Caribbean writers see such social positions as a direct product of racial origins’ (2009, 87). These differences emerge from what Okagbue perceives as a lessened need to focus on racial issues in Africa, following the demise of colonisation, and an increased focus on the social inequalities that arise from economic wealth and class status.

Agboluaje’s examination of class relations focuses on interactions between an upper-class Nigerian family and their house servants, reflecting a commitment to highlighting how large discrepancies in achievement and opportunity result from class distinctions:I used to say to myself, if I have the opportunity to write a play about Nigeria, I’m going to write it in a very conservative, traditional class setting, but I will look at the characters from a class [conscious] point of view, so in The Estate, you have the driver telling the house-girl they need to strike … trying to conscientize her about what’s going on in the country and their place in it. (Quoted in Fatunla 2013)

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