Retelling History Through Historical Playwriting: the Example of Ben Tomoloju’S Aminatu Queen of Zazzau

International Journal of Humanitatis Theoreticus. Vol. 4. (Issue: 2); December, 2020 Retelling History Through Historical Playwriting: The Example of Ben Tomoloju’s Aminatu Queen of Zazzau By Emmy Unuja IDEGU Department of Theatre, Film and Carnival Studies, University of Calabar, Calabar. Introduction One of the most relished aspects of typical Africans is their revered past. There is hardly any time reference is made to this part of our lives that nostalgic feelings do not erupt. Those events in the past that delight us are such that remind us of our being, our totality as Africans and the essence of our individual or collective personality. In instances that were not so favourable, we tend to redefine, restructure and reinterpret them towards glorifying even salient challenges that were to the contrary of our expectations. While historians basically concern themselves with documenting our past, the role of the historical playwright goes beyond mere documentation of the past. Through dialogue, action and other dramatic elements, the historical playwright activates the passive history by getting it theatricalised through the vibrant medium of dramaturgy. The past which the historical playwright discovers and expresses through the play text is not really a dead past, but a past which in several ways is still living and relevant in the present. The past is only meaningless to the historical playwright when he cannot comprehend the thoughts (overt and covert) about the events. His understanding of such hidden and open thoughts will in no small way aid his recreation of conflict around the event as history gives or the fresh creation and manipulation of conflict and characters to embellish and pragmatise the seemingly dead and inactive past in a number of ways, Yerima in Idegu (2004:102) attests to such when he opines that the use of historical materials in a work of art is the attempt by man to further explain the significance of the historical event in a ‘less serious’ storytelling version or style even while using the facts of the historical event. The study of a historical play, like Tomoloju’s Aminatu Queen of Zazzau, is not devoid of contradictions and challenges because no matter how well the historical playwright manipulates the historical materials at his disposal, his dexterity and mastery of presentation notwithstanding, on several occasions, the facts of history hardly ever get to us in play texts exactly as they happened. That is why Simon Gikandi, cited in Embu, Reuben & Idoko O. Festus (2019:214) asserts that literature is about real and familiar worlds of culture and human experience of politics and economics…rerouted through a language and structure at odds with history or geography books. Those events do not and cannot exist in absolutely unaltered form, principally for that piece of history to be recreated, presented and even interpreted to suit the creative artistic demands and desires of the playwright. In surmounting the creative challenges, the historical playwright should never be unaware of the choices available to the historical personalities in their days and as they affect even the present. This is what Chaim Shoham (ed) (1995:9) sums up when he asserts that the choices and dilemmas facing the heroes are meaningful and relevant not only to their own time, but also to the generation of the modern playwrights, readers and theatre audiences. Therein is the objectivity of the playwright’s interpretation, for after all, where the facts of history may be of little relevance to a people, the interpretation of the same past could generate controversy, animosity and in some cases rejection of the recreated history by the owners of that history. This way the playwright enjoys or endures the complementary relationship between him and his historical materials in a continuous process of molding and reshaping. This reciprocal action also involves reciprocity 99 International Journal of Humanitatis Theoreticus. Vol. 4. (Issue: 2); December, 2020 between the present and the past since the historical playwright is part of the present and the facts belong to the past. In instances where the playwright was part of an immediate past history at his creative disposal, or where events were passed unto him in oral tradition, the place of memory comes handy. It behooves on the historical playwright to be sharp, alert and sensitive to the dictates of his memory; principally because while history can be a problematic and incomplete reconstruction of what is no longer here but a representation of the past, memory ceaselessly reinvents tradition, linking the history of his ancestors to the undifferentiated time of heroes, origins and myths. Babawale (ed) (2011:62) History, to the playwright therefore, is a continuous process of interaction between the writer and his facts, an unending dialogue between the present and the past. It should be noted that in this dialogue, most often than not, in an attempt to artistically create or recreate history, the playwright consciously or otherwise, excludes the ritual essence (where applicable) of the event. In this process, the work of art loses some of its unique qualities and value. This equates what Walter Benjamin defines as aura: it loses the presence of the original (which is) the prerequisite to the concept of authenticity. The authenticity of a thing is the essence of all that is transformable from the beginning, ranging from its substantive duration to its testimony to the history which it has experienced. According to this definition, Benjamin explicitly takes into consideration that past experience is enclosed in the aura of the work, and that experience may be lost in the process of deritualizing the work. This is the source of this ambivalence towards the loss of aura, since he also praised the freedom that the work of art gained by moving from cultic praxis into that of pure art, which is achieved in, for example, the theme. Avraham Oz (ed) (2000: 172). In this entire histo-theatrical process, the culture of the people whose history is been retold must be respected as nothing can be so artistically unfulfilling to the historical playwright than a rejected historical play by the owners of the culture from which the history and of course the play, emerged. Since culture is the way of life of a given people, representing that way to the contrary of the people’s acceptance can be catastrophic. This is why, in reacting to the meeting point between culture and theatre, Okwori (ed) (2004:143) submits that the way and manner a group of people do things, say things and react to things constitute in its entirety, the culture of such a people. Although culture is dynamic, it remains essentially conservative. It is however transmitted from one generation to another. And it is this transmission that has as direct bearing and latitude with theatre. Theatre on the other hand is widely known to be a structured performance before an audience. The nexus between culture and theatre is largely transportational. While culture generates codes on which a people’s behavioural pattern is anchored, theatre provides the vehicle with which these codes are passed from one generation to another. Theatre and culture are therefore largely environmental phenomenon. They interplay at various levels to produce a picture of the casual complexes that characterize a society. African Patriarchy and Women Adventurism There is hardly any meaningful study of the role and or place of women in the socio- cultural and political spheres of Africa without reference to the patriarchal nature of most African societies. This is a social system in which the male gender role as the primary authority figure is central to social organization, and where fathers hold authority over women, children and property. Patriarchy implicitly is an institution of male rule and privilege, and entails great elements of women subordination. Simply put, it refers to a society or government in which men hold the power while women are remarkably excluded from it. http://oxforddictionaries.com. Scholarship, discourse and analyses of patriarchy are as elastic as its seeming endless contradictions. Some scholars are of the view that male domination here does not necessarily mean that all men are powerful or all women are powerless only that the most powerful roles in most sectors of society are held predominantly by men, and the least powerful roles are held predominantly by women. Patriarchy is inherently organized around 100 International Journal of Humanitatis Theoreticus. Vol. 4. (Issue: 2); December, 2020 an obsession with control, with men elevated in the social structure because of their presumed ability to exert control (whether rationally or through violence or the threat of violence) and women devalued for their supposed lack of control. http://gray.intrasun.tcnj.edu It is however, pertinent to note that even within contemporary cultural milieus; there are conscious and deliberate actions that still undermine the place of the woman, even in play writing where strong women character formation is frowned at. Take the experience of one of Nigeria’s greatest playwrights Ahmed Yerima in his writing of Attahiru for instance. A committee was set up by the Sokoto Caliphate to vet whatever Yerima had to project about “their own” hero and former leader, Attahiru. When the draft of the play was given to the said committee, Yerima (in an interview dated April 3, 2003), talking about their assessment says; ...the first draft was okay, but there was the need to place things deeper and further within the religious and historical context of the environment which the play was written. In the first draft for instance …, even the issue of women being on stage was looked at. In my first draft, in the early stage of the play I wrote, ‘there is pandemonium and women are running on the stage’.

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