The Use of Folk-Hermeneutics in Analysing Dramatic Play Texts

Academic Paper , 2022 , 22 Pages

Theater Studies, Dance

This paper aims to propose a model for interpreting and understanding the cultural worlds represented in a dramatic play text. The qualitative method which this study captures as a hermeneutic understanding process is utilised to explicate how folkism and hermeneutics work in play analysis and how both can be used in analysing and understanding the culture embedded in dramatic play texts.

In the humanities, interpretative tools in research are a means to an end, and are often deployed as keys to analysing works. As such, exploring how analysis is carried out in a dramatic play text is paramount in theatre studies. However, there seem to be a dearth of theories that can be used in interpreting and analysing play texts which document cultural nuances in theatre studies. It is a known fact that in every dramatic play text, characters are represented in action often within a cultural setting; as such, interpretation and analysis requires readers to dig into the dialogue in order to uncover the cultural world inherent in the play by paying rapt attention to context. This is with a view to interpreting and understanding the concerns of the folk as captured in a play.

Abstract

In the humanities, interpretative tools in research are a means to an end, and are often deployed as keys to analysing works. As such, exploring how analysis is carried out in a dramatic play text is paramount in Theatre studies. However, there seem to be a dearth of theories that can be used in interpreting and analysing play texts which document cultural nuances in theatre studies. It is a known fact that in every dramatic play text, characters are represented in action often within a cultural setting; as such, interpretation and analysis requires readers to dig into the dialogue in order to uncover the cultural world inherent in the play by paying rapt attention to context. This is with a view to interpreting and understanding the concerns of the folk as captured in a play. This paper aims to propose a model for interpreting and understanding the cultural worlds represented in a dramatic play text. The qualitative method which this study captures as a hermeneutic understanding process is utilised to explicate how folkism and hermeneutics work in play analysis and how both can be used in analysing and understanding the culture embedded in dramatic play texts. Findings show that through the use of folk hermeneutics which pays rapt attention to the dialogue and world of the play, the mind of the playwright with respect to the concerns of a folk is revealed. This paper proposes a folk hermeneutic theoretic approach to interpreting and bringing to light the cultural nuances within context in dramatic play texts.

Introduction

One of the purposes of any academic activity is to engage in the creation of knowledge through developing new ways for understanding the world. While disciplines vary in the domain of knowledge they seek to create and the main means for creating it, interrogating existing knowledge and proposing new understanding and explanation are common in all branches of scholarly activity. This paper which is concerned with the process of analysing play texts aims to contribute to a better conceptual understanding of how folkism and hermeneutics can be creatively fused for a mutually enriching analysis of dramatic play texts. To advance understanding in the area of analysing dramatic play texts, the paper develops a conceptual foundation based on the folkism and hermeneutic philosophy.

The Interplay between Dramatic Play Texts and Folkism

The origins of drama go back to the most archaic activities of humankind (rituals) which sees drama as texts developed from ancient fertility rituals. Later on, dramas were also written specifically to be read. From this, two basic forms of drama originated from the culture of the people; the performance and the text. With specific emphasis on the text, it is expedient to state that in every dramatic play text, there is always a culture that surrounds the text which the playwright captures. Often times, reading dramatic play texts gives a special challenge to the reader. It contains the dialogues of characters which is sometimes filled with blank holes and lacks adequate information because of the minimal descriptions. Thus, how the reader fills these holes and gaps in order to gain true understanding of the play’s cultural setting is pertinent.

Suffice to state that dramatists deploy the medium writing to capture the society. One among the diverse ways is through creating dramatic play texts. With regards, Nigeria has produced innovative playwrights and significant works of drama which oftentimes, capture the ways of life in the society. As such; their plays play a significant role in the society as an agent of cultural projection. This explains why Ohaeto (1996 p 37) states that “there has been an enrichment of plays through the use of diverse cultural features that widen the communal vision and creative horizon of the writers.” When drama is compared to other literary forms, one would realize that the special attribute of the dramatic play text is that it uses words to create action through dialogue of the characters in a specific setting.

A play text often times, reflect the society in which the playwrights exist. This explains why playwrights often capture the cultural setting inherent in the society. For this reason, Ojemudia (2015 p 37) states that

In the African (and indeed Nigerian) society, traditional art productions and oral literature dominate the socio-cultural landscape. Evidence of the unique artistic legacies of the traditional society could be found in the people’s pottery, cloth making as well as myths, folktales, proverb, incantations and folksongs.

The above point to the fact that the existence of the African people is indeed, embedded in diverse cultural practices as such; playwrights’ often times document these through the medium of their plays. This explains why drama is seen as a vital and persistent aspect of human experience utilised as a tool for documenting vital aspects of culture. Often times, the images evoked by the plays send powerful signals. Playwrights such as Ngugi wa Thiongo, Wole Soyika, John P. Clark, Femi Osofisan among others have embedded these artistic projections of African culture in their works. These writers have given the society through their works, the cultural nuances of a people thus, depicting their sense of place, history and self. One major way through which culture is depicted is through the playwrights’ choice of words. With regards the playwright’s use of diction, Ebua (1981 p 395) states that there are two ways of utilising language in dramatic play texts. Accordingly, he states that;

One way is to follow a form of Yoruba dialogue as used by Rotimi, which tries to translate the Yoruba nuances of expressing into literal English. Another is to attempt transposing these nuances into rich, poetic expression in English language.

The second way of using language has been widely followed by Nigerian playwrights. This explains why Bardolph (1989 p 49) states that the polyphonic nature of a play in theory should accommodate a wide selection of registers and voices. Thus, the use of proverbs, folksongs, riddles etcetera which all capture the culture of a people is often deployed by playwrights, showing an effective use of materials from Nigerian cultural traditions in the writing of their plays. To a large extent, their works counter Michael Etherton conclusion that it is only when the drama moves away from the particularized African references that it becomes more internationally accepted on the African continent (Etherton 1979 p 60)

For this reason, Ohaeto (1996 p 34) states that one of the abiding qualities of the cultural imperative in modern Nigerian drama lies in the artistic use of language to enhance the theatrical qualities of the plays. This lies in the fact that in dramatic play texts, cultural nuances are often ingrained thus, there is the need to understand how culture plays out among a folk as documented in the plays. Therefore, assessing a play text in relation to the concepts surrounding the environment and dialogue inherent in the play is pertinent. Another pertinent reason is that the culture of a folk is the framework of their lives as such; understanding such cultures within the context of the plays setting becomes expedient. Therefore, interpreting and creating understanding of the cultural nuances captured in plays helps to highlight and comment on these cultures for greater understanding. In view of the above, exploring, interpreting and analysing these cultural nuances demands the use of frameworks that pay attention to such hence, the need for folkism.

Folkism was coined by Sam Ukala as a response partly to the prevalent criticism of Nigerian literary plays as irrelevant and unpopular, and partly to the findings that the unpopularity and relative irrelevance of Nigeria literary plays derive from their unfamiliar dramaturgy which are alien to the folk and a majority of the supposed educated audience. For this reason, Ukala (1993 p 285) states that;

Nigerian literary plays draw their subject matter from the histories and cultures of Nigerians and yet many of them are not accessible to the populace because of their difficult language, their distortion of source material beyond recognition, complex sentence structure, and mode of presentation that is foreign and strange. Because of these, the audience finds it difficult to comprehend and identify with the plays.

The problem of such plays arose because of the language which prompted the search for a relevant tool that can aid interpretation and analysis. It is therefore the quest to understand the play texts that informed the use of folkism.

Folkism according to Ukala, (1993) refers to an indigenous dramatic aesthetic principle which may derive from the use in the African literary theatre of folk linguistic, structural and performance styles. He defines folkism as the tendency to base literary plays on history, culture and concerns of the folk and to compose or perform them in accordance African conventions for composing and performing plays in accordance with the peoples. This is to say that folkism must be grounded in the culture and mores of the people. Folkism is therefore is a skillfully hybridized theatre mold, deriving from the syncretism of Nigerian’s indigenous theatre forms and the Western oriented dramatic conventions, in such a way that the Nigerian elements constitute the dominant and basic structural frame of the artistic combination. As captured by Akpuda, (2008 p15) Ukala conceives this theory, with its practical dimensions, as an aesthetic principle which may provide remedies for deficiencies of African literary theatre, through its quality of “clear communication and popularity among the folk, its use of relevant subject matter that reflects the recent history, aspirations, and culture of Nigerians without distorting them beyond recognition.

Thus, as stated by Akpuda, (2008 p 15) folktale is the bedrock for the literary theatre created by Sam Ukala calledFolkism.The folktale as identified is an oral performance that is based on the stories of the people. They could either be tales about ancestors, spirits, animals and inanimate objects which help to teach morals, values and the way of life of the community. He further argues that Nigerian folktales are suitable indigenous sources upon which to evolve a popular literary theatre in Nigeria, since folktales, in themselves, are popular narratives which embody the comprehensive worldview of the Nigerian people and are performed through a complete set of replicable conventions with which the greater majority of English-speaking Nigerians may readily identify.

Folkism is therefore an emergent aesthetic principle noted for its clear communication and its popularity among the folk, (a people/culture). This is one, among the many reasons why it provides a matrix for folkism. The main aim is for passing meaning and attaining aesthetic experience. It is truly an African form that marries the traditional forms with the written theatre. Therefore, Folkism encompasses the communal lore that has sustained the identity and common pool of philosophy of a people

In playwriting, this theory has been a potent means of creating literary works that are rooted in the African culture. Therefore, it is a bold attempt at addressing the question of the gap between the traditional forms and literary theatre in modern dramatic play texts. In view of the above, one can say that folkism as a theory can be applied both in text and performance. As regards, its application in text, Ukala (1996 p 279) aptly notes that in his playwriting style, he has bent towards the call to be Afrocentric, touching on the didactic perspective where moral lessons are encouraged in plays. Banham (1994 p 68) describes this as a process of indigenization and modelling African cultures, where contemporary Nigerian dramas draw from the cultures of the people as such; this paper explicates the use of folkism in dramatic play texts. This is seen in the discipline of the writer to strictly underscore the cultural sensitivities within the context of the play. In other to achieve the afore stated, the language of the play is domesticated through the use of traditional speech elements such as, proverbs, ironies, personification and other imageries that are common in Nigerian expressions, which make them relevant. In other words, plays that adhere to the convention of folkism must be rooted and grounded in the culture and mores of a people. This simply suggests that through the use of folkism, Ukala reconciles the use of English language with the distinctive needs of the Nigerian people in a way that embraces many language groups and cultures. Therefore, as a relevant theatre Ugwu and Orjinta (2013 p 79) avers that;

As a relevant theatre, a play text or its stage performance must portray the aesthetic and contextual features that can be fully identified with, and valued by Nigerian readers or theatre goers. The compositional elements of such a theatre must be familiar with Nigerians.

In view of the above, playwrights ought to study the aesthetic habits of the Nigerian people to create a relevant and viable theatre. Since playwrights often reflect these cultural and traditional nuances in their plays often as a means of cultural preservation and promotion, interpreting and analysing the culture of a folk becomes paramount especially in research. An attempt to deploy this theory in a performance was carried out by Eregare (2017). Firstly, Eregare (2017 p 150) avers that “folkism presents the best way to create drama and performing it in a way that will most suitably, capture the real African mode of performing the folktale”. Using the playIredi Waras a folk script, Eregare notes that the play has some folkist tendencies considering that it was is culled from the history of the Owa kingdom during the colonial period. As captured, the history of a people constitutes on of the cultural elements that folkism deploys. Therefore, in analysing this play in relation to folkism as a performance theory, he recommends that the theory should constantly be engaged by writers and directors for it to be improved upon. This brings to bare the fact that in the aspect of writing and using it as a tool in analysing plays, there seem to be a gap.

As such, validating this theory in the use of textual analysis has not adequately been approached and utilised as such, this paper makes a valuable contribution in that light. Particularly, some of the cultural and indigenous elements deployed by playwrights include storytelling, local songs, proverbs and adage, myth and superstition, historical beliefs and cultural values. Thus, because most play texts, written by Nigerian playwrights contain these indigenous elements, it is imperative that they are not judged using Western literary and aesthetic canons instead; the cultural elements should be made bare for praxis. As such, this paper proposes the following tools as yardstick for analysing the indigenous elements inherent in play texts. They include the philosophy, the moral and values of the cultures portrayed in the plays. These elements will assist in the understanding and interpretation of the local aesthetics inherent in the plays. Through this, the relationship that exists between theatre and culture shall be brought to fore.

Philosophy: Philosophy is an important part of every culture. Tosam (2016 p 34) refers to it as a means by which every culture provides itself with justification for its values, beliefs and worldview which serves as a catalyst for progress. Philosophy critically questions and confronts established beliefs, customs, practices and institutions of a society. He further describes philosophy as a linked way to life; a form of enquiry intended to guide behaviour. Thus, cultures constitute the raw data from which an analytic experimentation is done. This is because no philosophy develops from a vacuum. It emanates when individuals begin to critically distance themselves from their culture to question and confront established beliefs, customs and practices. Philosophy in the context of folk-hermeneutics refers to the wisdom that emanates from a society of the play often garnered through the experience of the characters. It conceptualizes philosophy as an academic discipline which focuses on the continual search of truth through reasoning as well as empirical facts. From a scholarly perspective, there is no consensus on the definition of philosophy as such, its etymological definition which is “love for wisdom shall be used. To achieve this, the context of use in the play texts will be useful in bringing this to fore hence; the context of the plays shall play a major role. The essence is to gain a critical understanding of the worldview that unfolds in the world of play texts studied. Therefore, a panoramic view of the African philosophy in terms of the wisdom it portrays shall be used to account for the philosophy inherent in the plays.

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• Course: Theatre Arts
• Author: Ihuoma Okorie (Author)
• Publication Year: 2022
• Pages: 22
• Catalog Number: V1248216
• ISBN (PDF): 9783346684035
• ISBN (Book): 9783346684042
• Language: English
• Tags: folk-hermeneutics, analysing, dramatic, play, texts