African Folklore: An Encyclopedia - Marshalls University

African Americans 943
being performed. In its shifting, nonliterate, analytical approach, Theater for
Development is a committed, open-ended theater.
At its best, it operates through a series of very simple principles:
1. It recognizes people’s existing skills in performance, analysis and articulation;
2. It uses as its story-line, the experiences of the people within the community where it is
being created;
3. It fictionalizes that account so that no one is compromised by being personally named
or identified;
4. It contributes through discussion to an understanding of the issues raised;
5. Its performers are from within the community;
6. Its audience is the community;
7. It offers no fictional resolution to the crisis within the drama, but interacts in a direct
manner with the community throughout the performance and in post-performance
discussion and action.
References
Abah, Oga Steve. 1997. Porforming Life: Case Studies in the Practice of Theater for Development.
Zaria, Nigeria: Shekut.
——. 2002. Creativity, Participation and Change in Theatre for Development Practice. In The
Performance Arts in Africa: A Reader, ed. F.Harding. NY: Routledge.
Boal, Augusto. 1979. Theater of the Oppressed. London: Pluto Press.
Freire, Paulo. 1972. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. London: Penguin Books.
Harding, Frances. 1998. Neither “Fixed Masterpiece” nor “Popular Distraction”: Voice,
Transformation and Encounter in Theatre for Development. In African Theatre for
Development: An for Self determination, ed. K.Salhi, Exeter, UK: Intellect Press.
——. 1998. Fifteen Years Between: Benue & Katsina Workshops. In African Theatre in
Development, ed. M.Bnaham, J.Gibbs, and F.Osofisan. Oxford, UK: James Currey.
Kilo, Asheri. 2002. The Language of Anglophone Cameroon Drama. In The Performance Arts in
Africa: A Reader, ed. F.Harding, NY: Routledge.
Mda, Zakes. 1993. When People Play People: Development Communication through Theatre.
Johannesburg, South Africa: University of Witswatersrand; London: Zed.
FRANCES HARDING
See also Government Policies toward Folklore
THEATER: YORUBA FOLK THEATER
Centered in western Nigeria, the Yoruba folk theater has its origins in Alaringo (traveling
dance troupe). Alaringo first emerged from the dramatic roots of the Egungun
masquerades, which honored the ancestors, and initially all participants came from the
same patrilineage. But when Ologin Ologbojo, the head of the court entertainment during
the reign of Alaafin Ogbolu, died, the kingship was given to Esa-Ogbin, a maternal