Brecht in pidgin: Oladipo Agboluaje's mother courage in Africa

Abstract

African British performances and dramas mutually share their collective interest in the tempestuous afterlife of colonialism and post-independence and the different vibrations they carry into the present but in Africa’s performance forms and the various cultural ‘beats’. Regardless of their routes to Europe, Africans living in new national spaces of the diaspora yearn for Africa; hence, African British performances that emerge are caught between the longing to present Africa, which they left behind or one that is fading in their memories, and the diaspora with its pervasive pitiless demands. The interpretation of African British plays demands a more nuanced appreciation not only because of the multi-stranded and multi-voiced identities, but because they share a collective interest in the complex ‘afterlife’ following political independence of Africa from the colonialists to the present. Oladipo Agboluaje’s Mother Courage demonstrates that theatrical presentation, informed by the African British playwrights’ identification with the African continent reproduce local, transnational and/or trans-border dimensions. The essay traces the dialogue between Agboluaje’s adaptation of Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage and Brecht’s original text, focusing on how the African playwright’s travel between different ‘worlds’, across borders develops into a new web of ideas, characters, and words.