Theatre

Many people believe that the theater in Africa appeared only with the coming of the Europeans. This is only partly true. In fact, the traditional Africa might have not had such refined theatrical traditions as Japan or Indonesia, but it is wrong to view this continent as a “theatrical desert”. However, it is difficult to separate elements of theater from rituals, and the Sub-Saharan Africa did not use to have professional theater groups.

The Bamana people in Mali still have a traditional theater called koteba which means “a large snail”. It received its name due to the fact that any performance is preceded by a long dance, during which the dancers move one after another in concentric circles. When the dancers get tired, the performance begins in the style of Commedia dell'arte. During the performance the most typical vices are derided: a womanizer, a greedy merchant, a Marabout charlatan, gossiping women. In some villages, however, a koteba is limited to a dance and is not accompanied by a theatrical performance.

The Tonga people in Zimbabwe each year in December-January have a chivare ceremony, during which young men, supervised by the elders, meet young girls who are to become their future wives. This ritual is accompanied by numerous songs and pantomime dances that explain to the future newly-weds the difficulties of a married life and their responsibilities to each other.

The performances of the Manding griots also remind of a professional theater. Griots are a caste of musicians and bards, the keepers of an oral epic tradition. Normally, griots perform alone or in pairs, accompanied by a xylophone or a harp-lute: one griot tells a tale of ancient heroes and their deeds, the other interrupts him with rhetoric questions and echoes, thus creating an illusion of a conversation. Such performances usually last for hours. Sometimes such narration of an epos is accompanied by several musicians and a whole choir of griots, and then it looks very much like an ea

Performance of jeli casted bards from the Kuyate clan.  Guinea. The Maninka. Ye. V. Perehvalskaya. 2006.