Nduka Onwuegbute

This play has a powerful message: it is asking tyrants and dictators to stand down, to allow others to be free. That said, the message in the book isn't entirely clear. I think the play could benefit from an explanatory prologue explaining the author's point of view. Also, considering this book is promoting freedom and equality, I found the few hints of sexism in it jarring.

That said, it was a quick and enjoyable read, quite evocative in setting, although the play could benefit from ...more This play has a powerful message: it is asking tyrants and dictators to stand down, to allow others to be free. That said, the message in the book isn't entirely clear. I think the play could benefit from an explanatory prologue explaining the author's point of view. Also, considering this book is promoting freedom and equality, I found the few hints of sexism in it jarring.

That said, it was a quick and enjoyable read, quite evocative in setting, although the play could benefit from being slightly longer: even knowing that the dancing is a metaphor for the right to vote etc, I would have appreciated more explanations about why people die when they dance.… (plus d'informations)

Hard to review this because I didn't fully understand it. This will make my observations seem negative, as I'm sure I have missed the point – and without that, no story can work.

The premise is that dance has been made taboo, because anyone who dances dies. The characters we see most of are in their teens and have never seen anyone dance; it is their father who banned it. Two of them break the taboo, and die. Why this follows dancing still perplexes me. Why the father's response is to decide to do a dance is also a puzzle. The blurb tells me it is a political allegory, and the play's ending seems to be saying it works differently for different generations.

If I arrived in an African village I would feel foreign and bewildered, and that feeling is part of what I'd enjoy about the experience. But I would begin to get to know people and understand their way of speech. I didn't ever reach that point, reading 'Drums that Dance in the Dark'.

My confusion would be helped by a cast list; to start with I didn't know the characters on stage were younger than adult, for example. And fro a future edition it would definitely be worth using a professional translator. I don't mind 'incorrect' English – its quirky phrasing adds to the Africanness, which is something I love about this work – but when meaning becomes unclear it needs correcting. There are plenty of strange sentences such as:

'Though asleep, he at no time snores; making him half asleep and assumable dead to the goings-on around him.' (This seems self-contradictory.)

As a linguist myself I can see this translation was done one word at a time, in places, with prominent use of the dictionary. It needs a native English speaker. I'd offer myself, but I know no African languages!

A sense of foreignness is one thing, but a sense of being excluded is another, and here my disorientation just made me feel left out. I start apologetic for my ignorance of Africa – but for a play to speak to anyone beyond the already-converted, it needs revising on the back of feedback from some of us 'outsiders'.

Having said this, some of the characters have stayed with me. The daughter and the mother primarily, probably because their experience is closer to my own, and the town crier because he is comical.

Had I known it was a play script I wouldn't have requested it, but that does make it a quick read. I imagine it would be about an hour in performance – and really that ought to be stated, for potential producers of the play. I did come away thinking I'd like to see it on stage. That's why I have bumped it up to 3 stars. I don't think it's the kind of limp material that requires excellent actors to make it tolerable; I think with enthusiastic acting, it could be emotionally strong. Still not sure it would make sense.… (plus d'informations)

This play and performance, set explicitly by the author in no specific place or time, extols the pain of a culture through its focus on the right, and consequences, of dance. At times heartfelt or ironic, it dwells on the existentialist nature of life in the every-village of Africa, and the struggle within classes and families for the right to express and ultimately sacrifice. It is through works such as these that non-Africans can get some sense of the real Africa, that exists behind the orientalized impressions of Africa as colony or periphery. What may be seen by some readers as arbitrary results disconnected from actors is really the expression of culture through more classical language, akin to the Greek Tragic experience.… (plus d'informations)