University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2017 Dramatic License: Histories Of Kenyan Theater, 1895-1964 Elizabeth Burns Dyer University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the African History Commons, and the Theatre and Performance Studies Commons Recommended Citation Dyer, Elizabeth Burns, "Dramatic License: Histories Of Kenyan Theater, 1895-1964" (2017). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 2819. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2819 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2819 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Dramatic License: Histories Of Kenyan Theater, 1895-1964 Abstract This dissertation demonstrates how theatrical performances allowed for African political interventions into many of the most significant political moments in enyK a’s colonial history. Though the African majority was largely blocked from participation in the white settler colony’s centralized political institutions, many Africans found roles as musicians, audience members, and even actors within their colonizers’ ubiquitous pastime of amateur theater. By refashioning themselves as performers, disenfranchised people of color reinvented themselves as political actors—arming themselves with the language and ideology of the imperial state and using that language to both participate in and to undermined colonial politics. Bringing expressive culture to bear on Kenyan history, suggests that East African political culture has a dual nature that complicates narratives of collaboration or resistance. The great body of studies published on Kenyan colonial history to this point have given us a rich understanding of both ethno-historical forces and the frameworks of major political tensions. Because Kenya was a deeply divided colony, one in which both African and British ethnic nationalisms demanded central roles, it is easy to be drawn into a fragmented understanding based on historically entrenched cultural difference. The study of theater in this period gives us a more integrated and accurate way to understand the period’s many dynamics, because it shows that Africans, through their expressive culture, all the while moved back and forth across constructed cultural boundaries. They took repressive elements in the colonial armory and undermined them. They played scenes against the apparent grain to find ways for strong political and social self-expression. To reconstruct Kenyan theater as a regional practice, in addition to pursuing official colonial papers and archives in Nairobi, London, and Oxford, I also conducted two years of fieldwork in enyK a. What distinguishes my method of research, is the inclusion of photographs, films, theatrical programs, musical scores, and scripts—archival materials that historians rarely consider. These sources make clear that colonial-era actors were neither sellouts nor transgressors, but cultural interpreters who understood their fast-moving, divisive worlds and used the stage as a middle ground and a mediating voice. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group History First Advisor Steven Feierman Keywords African History, Colonial History, East Africa, Kenya, Performance Studies, Theater Subject Categories African History | Theatre and Performance Studies This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2819 DRAMATIC LICENSE: HISTORIES OF KENYAN THEATER, 1895-1964 Elizabeth Dyer A DISSERTATION in History Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2017 Supervisor of Dissertation ____ __________________ Steven Feierman, Professor History and History and Sociology of Science Emeritus Graduate Group Chairperson ______ ________________ Peter Holquist, Ronald S. Lauder Endowed Term Associate Professor of History Dissertation Committee: Eve M. Troutt Powell, Christopher H. Browne Professor of History; Kathleen M. Brown, David Boies Professor of History; Joseph C. Miller, T. Cary Johnson Professor of History Emeritus at University of Virginia DEDICATION For Kashuo ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Before writing this dissertation, I did not grasp the essentially collaborative nature of historical research and writing. Far from a solitary pursuit, at every turn I have benefitted from archivists and actors, supporters and guides without whom this project would quite simply not exist. I am grateful to the Social Science Research Council, the American Historical Association, the Mellon Foundation, the U.S. State Department, and the University of Pennsylvania for the grants and fellowships that allowed me to conduct this research and complete this writing. First, I wish to thank my professors and colleagues in history at the University of Pennsylvania. I am so fortunate that my PhD advisor, Professor Steven Feierman, agreed to take me on as his final advisee, even as the role impinged on his retirement. Steve actively advised me with seriousness, patience, and wisdom at every stage of this process. In fact, Steve has the dubious distinction of having read every draft of everything I have ever written as a graduate student. That he is still willing to take my calls, tells you considerably more about him than it does about my prose. It is through his gentle criticisms and probing questions that I have learned much of what I now know about historical research and the literatures that shape our field. I have come to believe that Steve’s own brilliant work and his legions of devoted advisees speak to his remarkable ability to strip away preconceptions and suspend what is “known” in order to be entirely intellectually present and inquisitive about a new idea. I am honored to be Steve’s student and forever altered by the experience. From the moment I arrived at Penn, Professor Eve Troutt Powell took me and my ideas seriously. Always pushing me to deepen my analysis, Eve helped me to turn an interest in cultural history into something altogether more rigorous. As a teacher and an administrator, I greatly admire the way in which Eve combines warmth and kindness with a iii powerful, direct style of communication. She is an incredible role model to so many women asking how should a person be in the Academy, and I am certainly among them. Professor Kathleen Brown witnessed the first written stumblings towards this dissertation topic in her theory and methods course during my first year at Penn. To call Kathy a generous reader is to put it mildly. Even in its earliest and roughest form, she pushed me to be creative in my research and professional in my tone. Her enthusiasm for the project has been unceasing— as has her willingness to engage closely with draft after draft. I am particularly grateful for Kathy’s readiness to address the detailed pragmatics of research, writing, and professional obligation right alongside big, abstract ideas. Professor Joseph Miller’s devastatingly critical and charismatic introduction to Early African History at the University of Virginia combined with his role as my undergraduate senior thesis advisor, inspired me to pursue a PhD in the same field. Over the past year, I have been extremely lucky to have him join my dissertation committee as an outside reader. Once again, I find myself thrilled by his intellectual energy and willingness not just to engage my thinking, but to wrestled with it in ways that reveal its shortcomings and silences. He inspires elaboration, never as a matter of didacticism or disciplinary training, but through intensive discourse. There is nothing more exciting than talking and thinking with Joe, so much so, that it becomes easy to forget the great favor he has done me by engaging my thinking with such seriousness from the beginning. At Penn, I benefited Professor Lee Cassanelli’s classroom instruction and introduction to the rich literature on Africa and the Indian Ocean World. Lee’s extensive East African networks helped me to secure a Visiting Scholar position at Kenyatta University, on which my Kenyan research clearance hinged. During my third year at Penn, Professor Robert Saint George was kind enough to introduce me to the world of folklore iv and performance studies—obviously, an encounter from which I have not yet recovered. Professor Cheikh Anta Babou has been a constant source of guidance and support. For many years now, Cheikh has asked probing questions about the dissertation which continue to shape my thinking. At critical junctures, Professors Lynn Lees, Benjamin Nathans, Sally Gordon, and Beth Wenger have each extended me kindness and support that propelled this project forward. It is one thing to be inspired by the seasoned scholars with whom I have been fortunate enough to work, but it is another experience entirely to be stimulated by one’s peers. Throughout my time at the University of Pennsylvania, I have been extremely fortunate to work alongside talented, witty, and generous colleagues who continue to keep me grounded, motivated, and laughing. I wish to extend my warmest thanks to Katie Hickerson, Matthew Kruer, Jeremy Dell, and Marissa Mika—who have hosted me on research trips otherwise not feasible to Oxford, London, and Kampala, and who have gifted me with the very best of company. Beyond Penn, I am particularly grateful to Amiel Melnick, Emma Park and Sophia Balakian for their