Simon Gikandi

Wow! A powerful play based on a real-life event. To quote from Soyinka's Author's Note at the beginning of my edition,
"   The bane of themes of this genre is that they are no sooner employed creatively than they acquire the facile tag of 'clash of cultures', a prejudicial label which, quite apart from its frequent misapplication, presupposes a potential equality in every given situation of the alien culture and the indigenous one, on the actual soil of the latter. ... It is thanks to this kind of perverse mentality that I find it necessary to caution the would-be producer of this play against a sadly familiar reductionist tendency, and to direct his vision instead to the far more difficult and risky task of eliciting the play's threnodic essence."

With this in my mind as I read the play, I tried to not focus on the conflict between the English colonial government and the Yoruba natives but on the transition between life and death that the King's Horseman is facing.… (mer)

A play about an incident that occurred in Nigeria i 1946, in which the British governor decided to prevent the suicide of the King's horseman, an important chief, following the death of the king. By local custom, the king's horseman was supposed to follow him into death .The play looks at the interplay between British colonizers and the subjects of colonization. The author detests the idea that it is about a clash of cultures, but it is hard to get past that interpretation. The sympathy obviously lies with the Nigerians who wish the suicide of their chief, and not with the British who believe this should be prevented. Ultimately, it does raise the question of values - should we prefer the values of the west, even when they violate the customs of other cultures? For this reason, it is still a relevant play today, but the long speeches and pedantry of this work probably would make it not the play of choice for American audiences, at least, on this topic. It does tend to drag at times, even for someone who does not mind long monologues and a bit of pedantry now and then.… (mer)