POST-COLONIAL ENGLISH DRAMA

POST-COLONIAL ENGLISH DRAMA

Also by Bruce King THREE INDIAN POETS: Ezekiel, Ramanujan and Moraes MODERN INDIAN POETRY IN ENGLISH THE NEW ENGLISH LITERATURES: Cultural nationalism in a changing world CORIOLANUS HISTORY OF SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLISH LITERATURE MARVELL'S ALLEGORICAL POETRY DRYDEN'S MAJOR PLAYS Books edited by Bruce King THE LATER FICTION OF NADINE GORDIMER THE COMMONWEALTH NOVEL SINCE 1960 WEST INDIAN LITERATURE A CELEBRATION OF BLACK AND AFRICAN WRITING LITERATURES OF THE WORLD IN ENGLISH INTRODUCTION TO NIGERIAN LITERATURE CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN THEATRE DRYDEN'S MIND AND ART TWENTIETH-CENTURY INTERPRETATIONS OF ALL FOR LOVE: A collection of critical essays Series editor MODERN DRAMATISTS ENGLISH DRAMATISTS

Post-Colonial English Drama Commonwealth Drama since 1960 Edited by Bruce King

Chapter 1, Editorial matter and selection Bruce King 1992 Chapters 2-16 inclusive The Macmillan Press Ltd 1992 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1992 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1P 9HE. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. First published in Great Britain 1992 by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-1-349-22438-8 ISBN 978-1-349-22436-4 (ebook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-22436-4 First published in the United States of America 1992 by Scholarly and Reference Division, ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, INC., 175 Fifth A venue, New York, N.Y. 10010 ISBN 978-0-312-07969-7 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Post-colonial English drama: commonwealth drama since 1960 / edited by Bruce King. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 978-0-312-07969-7 1. Commonwealth of nations Drama <English)-History and criticism. 2. English drama-20th century-history and criticism. 3. Decolonization in literature. I. King, Bruce Alvin. PR9083.P67 1992 822'.914099171241-<1c20 92-8828 CIP JO 9 8 (, 5 04 03 02 01 00 99 98 97

To Sarah Mahaffy

Contents Notes on the Contributors ix 1 In trod uction 1 Bruce King Australia 2 Australia 17 Margaret Williams 3 David Williamson 35 Dennis Carroll 4 Louis Nowra 50 Veronica Kelly Canada 5 Canada 67 Eugene Benson 6 George F. Walker 82 Chris Johnson 7 Women Dramatists: Sharon Pollock and Judith Thompson 97 Diane Bessai India 8 India 118 Karen Smith New Zealand 9 New Zealand 133 Sebastian Black vii

viii Contents South Africa 10 Athol Fugard 150 Brian Crow 11 The New South African Theatre: Beyond Fugard 165 Anne Fuchs South Pacific 12 Papua New Guinea and Fiji 181 Regis Stella West Africa 13 Ghana and Nigeria 186 Eliane Saint-Andre Utudjian 14 Wole Soyinka 200 Thomas R. Whitaker West Indies 15 Jamaica and Trinidad 217 Pierrette M. Frickey 16 Derek Walcott 236 Renu luneja Index 267

Notes on the Contributors Eugene Benson is Professor of English at the University of Guelph, author of J. M. Synge and co-editor of the Oxford Companion to Canadian Theatre. Diane Bessai is a Professor of English at the University of Alberta, Edmonton. Her many publications include Playwrights of Collective Creation: Theatre Passe Mumille, the general editorship of the Prairie Play Series for NeWest Press, editor of Prairie Performance and (with Don Kerr) Showing West and NeWest Plays by Women. Sebastian Black teaches in the English Department at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. He was guest editor of the impressive New Zealand issue of Australasian Drama Studies. Dennis Carroll is Professor in the Department of Theatre and Dance, University of Hawaii at Manoa. His publications include Australian Contemporary Drama 1909-1982: A Critical Introduction and David Mamet. Brian Crow lectures in the Department of Drama and Theatre Arts at Birmingham University. He previously taught in Nigeria and Australia and is author of Studying Drama. Pierrette M. Frickey teaches French and Spanish at West Georgia College. She is editor of Critical Perspectives on Jean Rhys and often writes on West Indian literature. Anne Fuchs is English and teaches Comparative Literature at the University of Nice Sophia-Antipolis. She has published Playing the Market: The Market Theatre, Johannesburg, 1976-1986. Chris Johnson is in charge of the Theatre Programme in the Department of English at the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg. Renu Juneja taught at the University of New Delhi before moving to the United States where she is a Professor of English at Valparaiso ix

x Notes on the Contributors University in Indiana. She often writes about West Indian and Renaissance literature. Veronica Kelly teaches in the English Department, University of Queensland. She is author of Louis Nowra and co-editor of Australasian Drama Studies. Bruce King is co-editor of the Modern Dramatists series, editor of the English Dramatists series, author of Coriolanus, Dryden's Major Plays, Three Indian Poets, Modern Indian Poetry in English, New English Literatures: Cultural Nationalism in a Changing World, History of Seventeenth Century English Literature and other books. Eliane Saint-Andre Utudjian is Professor of English at the University of Paris XII Val-de-Marne. Her 1977 A Bibliography of West African Life and Literature was followed in 1985 by a 1487 page dissertation on West African drama in English and many articles and translations. Karen Smith is an actress, dancer, former tutor in drama at Adelaide University and Flinders University, Australia and author of articles on Indian theatre in New Literatures Review and Commonwealth Quarterly. She is currently living in Bangladesh. Regis Stella teaches post-colonial literatures in the Department of Language and Literature at the University of Papua New Guinea. Thomas R. Whitaker is Professor of English and Theatre Studies at Yale University. His many publications include Tom Stoppard, Fields of Play in Modern Drama and books on W. B. Yeats, Tennessee Williams and others. Margaret Williams is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Theatre Studies at the University of New South Wales, Australia. She is general editor of a series of books on Australian drama as well as author of Australia on the Popular Stage and, in the Australian Writers and their Works series, Drama.