₦airaland Forum

Sonja Darlington, October 18, 2014 (www.tessosonweme.com)

Good Afternoon, Distinguished Guests. I am delighted to be here with you to honor the work of the eminent University Professor of Global Letters at the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire, Tess Onwueme, whose materials, including letters, scholarly papers, and original manuscripts of plays are being donated to the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire Foundation and then to the Special Collections & Archives Department of the University of Wisconsin Library, where they will be accessible to scholars, students, and teaching faculty worldwide.
LET ME BEGIN
The following remarks about the playwright Tess Onwueme, born in Ogwashi, Uku, Nigeria in 1955 and educated at the University of Ife for her Bachelors and Masters Degree and then at the University of Benin for her Ph.D in African Drama,
focuses on her trajectory as a pioneering female playwright and contextualizes her work as a writer who for several decades dominated the literary landscape of Nigeria as the female playwright. During this time, she won many awards for her academic merits, among them four literary prizes from the Association of Nigerian Authors, the Fonlon-Nichols Award from the African Language Association, the Phyllis Wheatley/Nwapa Award for outstanding black writers and an appointment to the Public Diplomacy Speaker Program in India by the US State Department. She also held distinguished faculty positions at Wayne State University and the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire and served as the first woman President of the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA). Among the institutions that she presided as a faculty member are Imo State University in Okigwe Nigeria, Montclair University in New Jersey, and Vassar College in New York.
As a landmark figure in Nigerian literature, she is renown for being the “first radical female playwright in Nigeria and the second published female playwright of that country” (Udengwu 163) A very important aspect of her legacy, which includes more than 15 plays, is that she was the first to unabashedly critique the conditions that contributed to limiting women’s creative abilities in her society. She entered the Nigerian literary scene when men, such as Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka and C.P Clark-Bekederemo, dominated and were becoming legendary for creating a unifying identity that celebrated a Nigerian aesthetic. Their dramatic works emphasized a retrospective look at folklore and legends, so as to distinguish the more positive aspects of pre-colonial traditions and experience. At the same time, in literature Nigerian women were often voiceless and negative images were prevalent. For Nigerian women in the theater, the stage was a public space often controlled by political forces, which benefitted from stigmatizing women in theater as immoral or frivolous. As performers, their unequal treatment included many of them leaving their occupation when they married or became pregnant (Migraine-George).
According to critics Pius Adesanmi and Chris Dunton drama in Nigerian literature flourished since the 1960s, and by the late 1990s more than 500 plays appeared in print (12). As part of this remarkable legacy, Onwueme was one of only two Nigerian female playwrights, the other being Zulu Sofola, who experimented in the early years with the dramatic form and developed an international career. In 1985 Tess Onwueme won the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) award for her first play, The Desert Encroaches, which won significant popular literary attention (Obafemi 93). The allegory, in which the main characters are a parrot, dove, donkey, bear and lion, represents a clash of interests over resources among the world’s political forces in the North/West, the East and the South. Omofolabo Ajayi called this early work, along with A Hen Too Soon and The Broken Calabash thematically and technically ambitious. As precursors for her later plays, they constitute the “total theater in the tradition of classical African theater” (119), which includes the non-verbal arts of music and dance, an original form of African total theater.
Expression through music and dance are indeed integral to Onwueme’s theatrical performances. Choruses chant and actors sing, drum, and dance. As Ajayi notes, her technical devices are “replete with creative use of symbolic representations, metaphoric allusions, vivid imagery, masks, verbal puns, proverbs and comedy that drive the plot, enhance meaning and underscore the message” (119). In Onwueme’s plays, “the proverb is the horse of discourse,” and music and dance are the dramatic means by which she integrates the non-verbal arts and language into performances to make what has been called African total theater. For example, in the Reign of Wazobia the unmasking of Wazobia as the Queen of Idu, involves a whole community caught up in music and dance during the coronation rites. When she is being crowned, each subject dances in turn, and Wazobia majestically exclaims, “I am woman! I carve my own path” (121), while she commands attention by dancing as she is accompanied by drumming.
In her early years, by challenging the Nigerian literary establishment that adored Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka, Tess Onwueme broke through the glass ceiling, which had limited the development of many African women writers. With plays such as Tell It to Women and Shakara, which also both won the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) award in 1995 and 2001 respectively, Onwueme defied a field replete with male literary figures, a spat of early critics patronizing her talent, and a political climate that did not want to engage in women’s issues. These plays, rather than becoming a mere representation of Nigerian society and its politics, realistically depicted issues, such as the misuse of patriarchal power and particular social and economic circumstances that women found oppressive in their daily lives. For example, Tell It to Women examined the struggles of women’s groups and their activities, so that women’s roles as mother, nurturer, and homemaker came under scrutiny. In addition, the distinctions attributed to the categories of ethnicity, race, gender, and class became the thematic core for the scenes in which characters such as Daisy and Ruth (western educated city women) and Yemoja and Sherifat (traditional Nigerian rural women) squared off over the meaning of social progress and economic development.
As part of the second generation of Nigerian writers that included her mentor Femi Osofisan, Onwueme advocated for changing societal norms through protest, resistance, and activism. Her compelling dramatic works between 1983 and 2004 addressed issues of inequality among social classes, injustice among rural and urban citizens, and inequity among political and economic regimes. In more recent critical scholarship, her theatrical style has been compared to that of Bertold Brecht, because of her desire to disturb the complacent attitudes of her audience. By using the ‘Verfremdungseffekt’ or ‘alienation effect’ that Brecht championed, she hoped to evoke audience participation for the purpose of social transformation. As she herself has emphasized, “I feel that history is made, not by accepting history as it is, but people rewriting it” (Onwueme 1993, 11). In other words, she “use[d] art to transcend [it] for the sake of ethical awareness” (Over 178).
Of particular significance is the fact that Onwueme’s plays were originally written for the Nigerian National Theater and the Lagos university community, where she focused on women’s identity and on the multiple subcultures within Nigeria at a time of postcolonial liberation. According to Mabel Evwierhoma, Onwueme tackled issues of leadership in the newly independent African nations and exercised the “freedom [for a woman writer] to foreground herself in history, politics, economics, geography, poetics, and so on; to make a point in a Masculinist world” (43). Paradoxically, as she critiqued postcolonial governments, she also involved herself in community productions for the Theater for Development. This form of Community Theater was frequently coopted into promoting the work of government by both Nigeria and the West. Thus, while Onwueme resisted state power that asserted itself through the agendas and policies attached to specific development programs, she distinguished herself as a writer, director and producer of her own plays, as in The Broken Calabash and also responded to feminist trends in Workshop Theater as in Go Tell It to Women. As Kanika Batra has noted, Onwueme’s prolific dramaturgy, is remarkable for being located within the tradition of cultural activism that challenged the corruption of the Nigerian postcolonial government, while simultaneously celebrating indigenous women’s agency. Within the contextualized space of local Nigerian theater and as a Nigerian intellectual living and teaching in the West, she accomplished shuttle diplomacy.
Justifiably then, in a comprehensive study of Contemporary Nigerian Female Playwrights, Ngozi Udengwu states that “Onwueme has the singular credit of being the first Nigerian female playwright to radically review the image of women in her society” (161). Her female characters were what she called “sheroes,” women with ambition and potential. The robust quality of their dialogues and actions, informed by Onwueme’s sensitivity to complex issues of gender and class suggests her literary compatibility with colleagues such as Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Sembane Ousmane, with whom she shared a creative affinity to empower women and to depict the vicissitudes of the poor. Critics have argued, the complexity of Onwueme’s positionality on gender defies simple labels, because she opens up possibilities for her female characters to gain and lose social, economic and political power. As she herself has emphasized in a Vanguard Arts interview, “Woman must not be idealized. She must be seen, heard, projected, and portrayed in all her ramifications” (Nwachukwu McPhillips and Nwagbo Nneyelike). Thus, she is admired by many activists as well as scholars around the world for developing a strongly satirical voice that allows for social contradictions, political hypocrisies and the marginal existences of women to be examined.
Following the strong women characters portrayed in Tell It to Women and Shakara, in 2003, as a recipient of a Ford Foundation research grant, she wrote What Mama Said, a significant work about global corporate greed, which toured the Niger Delta. The play investigates the national and global politics of the region, which as the sixth highest source of oil in the world, has seriously harmed Nigerian people’s lives. In What Mama Said women challenged the multinational oil corporations that polluted the soil, air and water, and they held the corporate elite responsible for the mass deaths, high unemployment rates, and broken community trust. As a critic speaking to the importance of Onwueme’s work, Theresa Migraine-George commented in her book African Women and Representation that “more than any other African woman playwright, Tess Onwueme has relentlessly scrutinized the impact of global practices and ideologies on African communities” (157).
Finally in trying to place Onwueme’s remarkable literary work in a context that reaches far beyond local spaces and into the pantheon of significant literary figures of both the 20th and 21st centuries, one of my favorite descriptions of Onwueme is that of an artist who uses “language, imagery, allegory, symbols, songs, music and dance” so that, as Omofolabo Ajayi, says, “it all come[s] together like a complex jigsaw puzzle” (109). In the puzzle-like complexity of her artistic works, she has been adept at addressing issues in the fields of sociology, economics, philosophy, religion, literature, women and gender studies and also ecology. As part of the jigsaw puzzle complexity in her works, William Over notes that Onwueme’s relationship to her audience as well as to the characters in her plays is neither simplistic nor dualistic, but rather unfolds in complex battles among generations, religions, and genders.
He describes her characters as psychologically “among the most developed in Nigerian literature” as they engage in politicized dialogue and action (183). His analysis of Onwueme’s political dramas, published in Contemporary Justice Review, centers on the way in which she sought to empower women and promote political change for the purpose of social justice and human rights in the three plays: The Broken Calabash, Parables for a Season and The Reign of Wazobia. Aside from the attention by contemporary critics, such as Over, for her astute depiction of social justice issues, more recent scholars, such as Jeremiah Methuselah and Scott Slovic, have noted the importance of her ecological position in literature. In the 2009 World Literature Today Journal, Slovic chose Onwueme as one of five Nigerian writers to be recognized for her contribution to international environmental literature.
In particular, What Mama Said (2003) has been hailed by critics, including Maureen Eke, as a significant play based on capitalist business practices that have had a devastating human and environmental impact. With this work, Onwueme linked local concerns to larger global issues and reinforced her commitment as a community activist to engage in performances on stage meant to transform citizens into agents for change. The power of oil in the Niger Delta about which she wrote held many people hostage, include Ken Saro-Wiwa, the Nigerian writer and environmental activist executed by the Abache government for his outspoken criticism of the multinational petroleum industry. However, despite the horrific actions that led to such events, Onwueme is guardedly optimistic “that social structures can be improved fundamentally through solidarity movements” (Over 186).
In the Epilogue to What Mama Said, even though the brutal regime’s policies--- that of Sufferland, otherwise known as Nigeria-- destroyed many lives and caused an ecological disaster, Oshimi, the leader of the market women says to the chorus of prisoners, “You are now free. Let the world hear your stories. Tell your stories. Who can silence the drums” (195)? Clearly, Onwueme as done just that—tell her stories. She has drawn upon her skills as a gifted writer and honed her craft over 40 years, in order to communicate on topical issues that have brought her to the attention of local, national and international audiences. Her works have been performed in many locations, including Nigeria, Ethiopia, Sweden, and the US. And, students have read her plays at Cornell and New York Universities, Smith College and Beloit College, where I teach.
In terms of summing up her literary work, for her many plays and for her contributions as a cultural critic, distinguished professor, international conference presenter, and winner of numerous awards, I am one among many to recognize her exceptional achievements and contributions to World Literature and Drama. Tess Onwueme’s creative endeavors, have led some to call her the “Ibsen” of Nigeria and others to rank her artistic contributions with Toni Morrison, Anton Chekov, Albert Camus and Buchi Emecheta. It is indeed an honor to be part of this event today on October 18th, 2014, which celebrates the remarkable Archival Collection that represents her life’s work.
To conclude my remarks about your Distinguished Professor of Cultural Diversity and English at the University of Wisconsin- Eau Claire, I would like to leave you with a comment that Tess Onwueme made about what she considers the most important issue for our times, as it demonstrates her deepest ongoing concern. In her prophetic voice she said, “To me, if as W.E.B. Dubois states “that the problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color-line, the problem of our 21st century is the problem of (socio-economic) Class inequality” (Nwachukwu McPhillips and Nwagbo Nneyelike). Tess, all of us here today want to express our gratitude for the work your Archival Collection represents. Among the many accolades you have rightfully attained, you have contributed in the most significant way to a deeper understanding of the complex issues around class as well as ethnicity, race and gender with your unrelenting pursuit to transform dire circumstances into spaces for hope and action. Through what you have accomplished you have inspired us, and for your life’s work as a public intellectual and activist, we are most grateful. Thank you!

Homepage for Tess Onwueme: www.tessosonweme.com

Africa's Groundbreaking Pioneer Female Playwright.