On the stage of the world, the world is haiku. "For the vast majority of West Africans, men, women and children are characters, playing stories of struggle to survive all day long. Although the propaganda reports are exaggerated, the living conditions of the vast majority of local people are still very poor compared to developed countries. "The increase in the amount of foreign aid, the improvement of the living environment and the increase in the number of people working still do not mask the fact that West Africa is now unable to escape the threat of hunger, poverty and unemployment. Ten of the twenty lowest-ranking countries in the Global Human Development Index are located in West Africa. ”（O. O. Philip,“Foreign Aid and Poverty level in West African Countries: New evidence using a heterogeneous panel analysis”. Australian Journal of Business and Management Research, Vol. 3, No. 04, 2013) In such an environment, life and drama form a unique and mutually influencing relationship. West African culture is rife with rituals, and the hardships of survival have not deprived life of its celebratory sense of ceremony. Weddings and funerals, births, old age, illness and death, prayers for rain, sowing and harvesting, etc. are highly valued by all ethnic groups in West Africa, and the ceremonies carefully prepared for this purpose are always carnivals in which the people are happy to participate. Sometimes the celebrations can last for days or even weeks, and the symbolic meaning of each experience is perfectly interpreted and interpreted in the context of West African culture, "what is presented between people is the relationship between role-players (social roles), and social life becomes a carefully choreographed drama". Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994）。 From this point of view, life in West Africa is a drama that touches the heartstrings, and the drama in West Africa is a staged reality.
First, the flow of Africa's development drama
Theatre for Development (TFD) arose in third world countries in the 1970s and was heavily influenced by the ideas of Brazilian educator Paul Freire and Brazilian director Augusto Boal about liberating people (the oppressed), with the aim of making theater a useful tool for intervening in social change to promote social development and improve people's lives.
The history of African development drama can be traced back to the African colonial period. "Back in the 1930s, colonial health workers, secondary school teachers, agricultural and community extension workers had used drama to promote the merits of modernization, cash crop production and fiscal soundness." （P. M. Mlama, Culture and development. The Popular Theatre Approach in Africa. Uppsala: Nordiska Afrkainstituet, 1991) Theatrical staff travels from village to village, organizing theatrical performances, discussions and presentations based on topics such as cash crop production, taxation and disease eradication. In this process, the arrangement of the play, the collection of information and the preparation of the script are all the responsibilities of government employees. Apparently, the colonial rulers were aware of the instrumentality of drama and knew to use it as a powerful tool of enlightenment. In essence, however, this developmental drama is an expression of a narrow assumption that "the colonized need to be enlightened in a special way, completely disregarding their indigenous forms of knowledge and aesthetic cultural output" (C. J. Odhiambo, Theatre for Development. Bayreuth: Bayreuth Africa Studies, 2008）。 The dominant development drama at that time took an absolute, top-down approach to disseminating developmental messages, paying no attention to the views of the local population, because the colonists regarded the use of development drama as part of cultural domination, believing that it was essential for colonial rule, and favoring only the dramatic elements that helped them instill European values in the African people. Guided by this mindset, the pre-independence development drama of african countries was designed to meet the needs of the colonizers to "perfect" the local population, rather than to give them real opportunities for development.
After the end of colonial rule, Africa ushered in a violent wave of cultural revival, fully releasing the local cultural potential that had long been suppressed by the colonial system, and providing a better platform for the development of dramatic practices with strong community cohesion. It was during this period that another form of developmental drama emerged. Theatre practitioners from African universities such as Ibadan, Maccaréry, Dar es Salaam, Lusaka, Nairobi and Botswana, in order to move away from class-dominated tendencies, began to explore a popular-based theatrical practice and launched the "University Free Tour Theatre" or "Wheel Theatre", essentially conceptualizing the "necessity of handing theatre to the people" (ibid.). This practical activity completely deviated from the colonial tradition of producing plays on the basis of cities, and made an important contribution to the catalysis and improvement of the development of plays. On this point, African theater practitioners such as Muda, Ngugi, and Cole have affirmed it. However, the new type of development drama has been subjected to various criticisms and doubts. Some argue that the concept of "handing over the drama to the people" implies false assumptions, which not only creates a sense of alienation between the play and the people, but also threatens to impose the idea of "outsiders" on the people, directly leading them to become passive recipients of foreign ideas. In addition, the touring troupe's focus on the entertainment of the work rather than the seriousness of the work is also far from the original intention of making the public aware of the deep-seated problems of society.
Criticism of the new development of theatrical and the urgent need to effectively address its limitations led to the experimental experiment of the development of drama by Lezza Batanani of Botswana in 1974. They hope to stimulate people's participation in development through the development of drama, so as to effectively solve the real problems brought about by the government's indifference to the development of the region. They combined the popular forms of storytelling, song and dance, and pantomime with drama, forming a mixed practice model for the development of drama. Because the model "introduces a two-way communication process that is important in development communication," people can understand their situation and are encouraged to conduct critical analysis and then take action to address identified problems, thus moving away from the role of passively accepting government information. The experiment was a great success and was widely recognized by scholars and practitioners from all over Africa. Over the next dozen years, the development drama of African countries flourished. Workshops and workshops organized by Kamiritu in Kenya (1976), Soba (1977), Masca (1979) and Pomo (1980), Mureva in Zimbabwe (1983), Kumba in Cameroon (1984) and Leondai (1986) in Malawi are all strong evidence of the further extension of the development of theatrical practice.
Today, the naming of development drama has changed greatly because of the specific application and the positioning of practitioners, and has been labeled as such as applied drama, popular drama, liberation drama, community drama, case drama, propaganda drama, forum drama, political drama and so on. No matter how the title changes, the purpose of development drama to focus on "public participation and development" has not changed, and in essence, development drama is still popular drama.
The paradigm and connotation of the development drama in West Africa
The paradigm of development drama in West Africa is usually divided into "propaganda and agitation type" and "sharing participation type" and "enlightenment education type". The first type of performance is undertaken by professional theatre companies, the content is mostly related to local livelihood, and the audience does not participate in the performance, such as the Ogund Theatre in Nigeria and the mobile theatre troupes in Sierra Leone, Ghana and Togo. The second type of drama is based on the daily lives of the people, and there is no lack of audience participation, but the voice of the performance is controlled by professionals, such as the community theatres in Guinea-Bissau, Burkina Faso, Mali and Benin. In contrast, the third category of performances is the most popular, such as rural forum drama in Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Niger and other countries, in which all community members join in some form, either to create or participate in performances.
The preference of development drama for a certain type of drama often reflects the connotation and tendency of a "development" paradigm. The "modernization" paradigm echoes the Western concept of "development", and its efforts are directed to promote the transformation of the less developed countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America from traditional agricultural societies to capitalist industrialized societies. In order to make the aspirations of social development quickly understood by as many audiences as possible, the priority media for the implementation of development projects in West Africa is often not drama, but radio, television and newspapers. Among the few use cases, the focus of the drama plot is on the adoption and benefit of foreign technologies, such as "Dawn Chicken Cry" in Nigeria in the 1980s. This kind of "propaganda-in-agitation" drama emphasizes manipulation rather than dialogue, reflecting the traditional style of West African leaders: valuing popular mobilization rather than popular enlightenment, and having absolute say in the agendas, projects and strategies involved in development communication. Thus, the promotion of the vision of the ruling elite and the support of the people for the set task naturally became the guidelines and policies that led the communication.
Researchers of development communication have also noted the obvious shortcomings of the "modernization" development paradigm, such as lack of information feedback, disregard for the initiative of local people, neglect of cultural sensitivity, and long-term dependence on external aid, so they have proposed the "participation" paradigm. The development process of "broad participation" means the intervention of the grass-roots people and the two-way flow of information, and only in this context can a genuine exchange of views and exchanges of views be possible. The parties to the exchange regard each source of information as the recipient of the information and each recipient of the information as the source of information. Essentially, the "participatory" paradigm opposes macro-control at the national level, seeing the populace as a driver of development and arguing that power should be shared among the populace rather than a small elite. "Shared-participation" drama echoes the "participatory" paradigm and has considerable flexibility in improvisation and popular participation, but the direction of theatrical performance and the post-production of theatrical criticism are controlled by the top. In 1983, for example, Guinea-Bissau staged a series of plays on the theme of "health vaccination". The development of this paradigm of drama has formed the following characteristics: the plot is simple, inclusive and participatory, performed in the local language, and the local tradition is strong.
The "Enlightenment" paradigm, which is more radical than the one described above, is a further extension of the "participation" paradigm, whose core idea originates from the Brazilian Paulo Freire. Freire firmly believes that the process of "enlightenment" that awakens and empowers marginalized groups begins with a "free critical dialogue" among the oppressed (Paul Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, translated by Gu Jianxin, Zhao Youhua, and He Shurong, East China Normal University Press, 2001). The "Enlightenment" paradigm is concerned with how to give people freedom and power, helping them to get rid of various types of dependence, which is the essential difference between this paradigm and other paradigms. In the view of the proponents of the "Enlightenment" paradigm, spiritual colonization was far more restrictive to the people than economic and political slavery. Only a spiritual awakening can liberate the population from oppression and marginalization. The "Enlightenment educational" drama that matches the "Enlightenment" development paradigm is not controlled by experts and does not have any presuppositions, calling for maximum public participation. Most of the theatrical scenes are improvised, and the people in the community are not spectators but participants in the creation and performance of the plays. The "Village Drama" series staged by Soba in Nigeria in 1977, the "Educational Drama" series in Ghana's Greater Accra region in 1984, and the "Health Guide Drama" series staged by Nwam in Nigeria in 1990 are typical examples of such paradigms. However, in the eyes of the West African people, "enlightenment education" drama is still a new thing. Due to the pursuit of maximum participation, such plays are very demanding for directors and people, and the performance process is "a time-consuming process that takes a long time to achieve results" (When People Play People: Development Communication through Theatre. London: Zed Books, 1993）。
Trends and prospects for the development of drama in West Africa
The development of drama in West Africa has undergone a mixed evolutionary process, which is due to the different origins of the integrated dramas, the objects and purposes of services are not the same, in order to meet the needs of development and dissemination, the development of drama must be constantly adjusted to make up for the inherent deficiencies between the genres. However, this adjustment is not isolated, and it is impossible to avoid the impact and impact of many trends.
Global localization is clearly a trend that cannot be ignored. As part of the social system, theater has always been rolling forward in the wave of mass culture. Theatre and culture are intertwined and influence each other. Although undiluted traces of folk culture abound in today's underclass in West Africa, the cultural core of West Africa is no longer pure traditional culture. On the whole, West African culture presents a "pseudo-modern" landscape in which modern Western culture and traditional African culture blend, which is embodied in music, clothing, food, religion and communication media. Driven by the rapid development of popular culture in Europe and the United States, the rich traditional culture of the local area is dying out.
The composition of all West African countries is characterized by cultural and ethnic pluralism, and the prosperity of cities has promoted the integration of cultures. The combination of traditional folk culture and Western culture has both positive and negative sides, and popular theater is also undecided about whether to choose Western literary drama or African folk drama. In the pre-colonial period, Popular Theatre in West Africa was dominated by folk drama, which was not lacking in high popular participation but less involved in serious themes. After entering the colonial period, Western literature and drama immediately gained the upper hand. In the face of this new medium that valued self-expression, the well-educated community of African dramatists was excited, and great playwrights and actors continued to emerge to create some popular works, such as Charles Nocomb's Abraham Boku, Voley Soyinka's Death and the King's Coachman, Atta Kofi's Golden Throne, Segun Oyequinle's Click on the Couchhead, and so on. Either through the shaping of historical figures or the description of the current socio-political situation, they make "awakening the people" a frequent and clearly recognizable theme in the play. However, some positioning and practices of literary drama are not conducive to development and dissemination. For example, the positioning of literature and theater, which hopes to gain a higher degree of recognition, alienates the large number of uneducated people in the local area. The "transplantation and adaptation" of Shakespeare, Eliot, brecht, etc., which pervades the works of Soyinka, Rotimi, Maddie, Nyerere, Casoma and others, hints at the problems of effective dissemination of literary drama. For the low-educated local people, the character plots of these dramas are unfamiliar and difficult to understand. This indirectly reflects the attempts of literary dramatists to expand their influence, contrary to the goal of gaining widespread recognition from the local population. Literature and drama tend to focus on macro-level issues, but are less focused on issues that are relevant to the local population and therefore cannot meet the needs of any particular community.
The independence of literature in no way means that literature can exist apart from politics. "The nature of theatrical art determines that it must be able to serve the political struggle most directly, quickly and effectively", so "the politicization of drama is an inevitable and inevitable development trend" (Chen Shixiong: "The Trend of Politicization of Western Drama in the Twentieth Century", in Drama, No. 1, 2001). The trend toward politicization has not only had an impact on the positioning of popular theatre itself in West Africa, but has also affected its effectiveness in serving development communication.
West African theatre has long been inextricably linked to politics. The relationship between politicians and theatre artists is sometimes friendly and sometimes hostile. Ideally, the presence of government can provide protection for civil society and provide a good atmosphere for social interaction, while the prosperity of drama is to serve multiple social exchanges and inject lubricant into the good functioning of civil society. In the struggle of West African countries to overthrow colonial rule, the trend towards the politicization of drama played an indispensable role. However, after the country gained independence, the good cooperation between politicians and theater artists was rifted by differences in ideas. At the beginning of the independence of the countries of West Africa, everything was in ruins. Politicians hope that theater artists will once again exert their strengths to promote the realization of national construction goals with good appeal and persuasion. Regrettably, the pair, who had worked together, were unable to come to a consensus on defining what nation-building meant. Theater artists hope that with the support of the government, they can legitimately use drama as a mass medium to promote social development. For example, the development of dramas features exhortatory themes and prosocial messages, promoting positive forces such as nationalism, health care, cultural literacy and professional ethics on the one hand, and criticizing antisocial practices such as tribalism, corruption and drug trafficking on the other. Due to problems left over from history, the image of West African countries actively striving for international recognition and vigorously developing national economies was soon shrouded in the shadow of postcolonialism. Because of the problems of religious belief, resource allocation, cultural practices and other aspects between various ethnic groups, western developed countries have found opportunities to take advantage of. Motivated by the defense of their right to speak, various political forces have launched round after round of games through the mass media, including drama. Politicians who had experienced the anti-colonial struggle and eventually seized power knew that the combination of politics and drama could both help national development and inject momentum into political movements. Based on a deep understanding of the latter, politicians prefer to promote the political agenda and ensure that the country forms a unified ideological understanding.
West African governments have never denied the important role of drama in national development. But the decisive power of theatre and other media as to what exactly is going on is not in itself but in political culture. As a form of speech, the vitality of drama comes from the soil of democratic interaction. In West Africa in the mid-twentieth century, however, this became almost a luxury. It is difficult for governments with varying degrees of totalitarianism in various countries to accept political views that go against the will of the state, and those in power try to control various mass media, including drama. In their view, freedom of speech is a luxury that cannot be afforded in the construction of emerging countries, and cannot be separated from state regulation. Such a mindset is tantamount to denying the role of drama in the spread of development. Forum dramas and community dramas in rural West Africa are the closest to the people, and the participation of the people is relatively high, but the effectiveness of the dissemination is affected by the government's involvement. With the end of the Cold War, the decline of totalitarianism in African countries, and the change in the policies of Western powers toward Africa, the peak of the wave of "multi-party democratization" that affected the turbulent situation in Africa has passed. Although there are still ethnic conflicts in West Africa, they have generally stabilized and grown rapidly. In this case, the trend of politicization may change the negative image of the totalitarian system of the year and inject new energy into the development of drama.
In addition to the trend of global localization and politicization, the impact of the trend of commercialization on the development of drama in West Africa cannot be underestimated. Fueled by commercialization, the traces of modern technological intervention in popular theater are becoming heavier and heavier, and theater practitioners are becoming more and more professional. With the injection of commercial funds, the innate deficiencies of traditional drama were compensated. Projection, electronic display, virtual imaging, mixed audio, radio, television, Internet and other supporting facilities allow the construction of complex scenes, the generation of mixed sound effects, the synchronous transmission of live performances, and the interaction between the audience and the scene. Not only that, but the specialization of theater practitioners is also beneficial to the development of popular theater. Since independence, many universities in West African countries have introduced drama courses. Teachers and students work together to continuously improve the quality of their works. Initially this initiative seemed to have moved in the direction of high art, with both English and French plays introduced being performed by intellectuals. Subsequently, the intellectual community became sensitive to the fact that folk drama was more easily recognized by the public than Western drama. As a result, more and more plays adapted from Western dramas with strong local characteristics. Eventually, folk drama and Western drama blended with each other and stabilized, forming today's West African popular theater. Many West African dramatists have gone out of their study halls to go deep into the local community to absorb nutrition, and to improve their creative and performance level by exchanging ideas with locals, so that their creations are closer to the people. Professionally trained university theatre groups, sponsored by non-governmental organizations, enter communities and help people organize forum plays to actively explore a variety of community-related topics. In this way, community dramas that were originally loosely organized and did not have a low level of performance received professional guidance and advice, and the quality of performances and the effectiveness of information dissemination were guaranteed. Folk theatre performers in rural areas were tapped into by commercial organizations and funded as heirs of intangible culture to become professional actors, singers and dancers. Many people have also received great social attention and social respect.
However, in the vast countryside of West Africa, not to mention radios, televisions and the Internet, even the most basic lighting electricity is not guaranteed. As long as policymakers focus on information coverage, they will immediately realize that drama combined with modern technology can only cover cities and elites, and is not yet an effective channel for development and dissemination. In order to improve the efficiency and speed of information transmission, some governments in West Africa have tried to provide public radio or television viewing centers for communities. Only when modern technology is no longer a high-quality consumer goods that are out of reach in the eyes of ordinary people, can drama use the power of technology to efficiently serve development and communication. But when the barriers to popularization and consumption were overcome, the drama that incorporated modern technology, because of its commercial nature, could not allow ordinary people to control or participate in its production process. Thus, when West African popular theatre is linked to developmental communication, the commercialization trend has two sides, both redemptive and harmful.