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Gebruiker:Klaas van Buiten/Efua Sutherland

< Gebruiker:Klaas van Buiten

Efua Theodora Sutherland (27 June 1924 – 21 January 1996)[1] was a Ghanaian playwright, director, dramatist, children's author, poet, educationalist, researcher, child advocate, and cultural activist. Her works include the plays Foriwa (1962),[2] Edufa (1967),[3] and The Marriage of Anansewa (1975).[4][5] She founded the Ghana Drama Studio,[6] the Ghana Society of Writers,[7] the Ghana Experimental Theatre, and a community project called the Kodzidan (Story House).[8] As the earliest Ghanaian playwright-director[9] she was an influential figure in the development of modern Ghanaian theatre, and helped to introduce the study of African performance traditions at the university level.[10] She was also a pioneering African publisher, establishing the company Afram Publications in Accra in the 1970s.[11]

She was a cultural advocate for children from the early 1950s until her death, and played a role in developing educational curricula, literature, theatre and film for and about Ghanaian children.<ref name=About /><ref name=Groundology /> Her 1960 photo essay Playtime in Africa, co-authored with Willis E. Bell, highlighted the centrality of play in children's development and was followed in the 1980s by her leadership in the development of a model public children's parks system for the country.[12]

Sutherland's pan-Africanism was reflected in her support for its principles and her collaborations with African and African diaspora personalities in a range of disciplines, including interactions with Chinua Achebe, Ama Ata Aidoo, Maya Angelou, W. E. B. Du Bois and Shirley Graham Du Bois, Margaret Busby, Tom Feelings, Langston Hughes, Martin Luther King and Coretta Scott King, Femi Osofisan, Félix Morisseau-Leroy, Es'kia Mphahlele, Wole Soyinka and Ngugi wa Thiong'o. Having in 1980 written an original proposal for a pan-African historical theatre festival in Ghana as a cultural vehicle for bringing together Africans around the globe, Sutherland was the inspiration behind the biennial Pan-African festival of theatre arts known as PANAFEST, first held in 1992.[13][14]

Efua Sutherland died in Accra aged 71 in 1996.<ref name=LUCAS />

Education and early career bewerken

She was born as Efua Theodora Morgue in Cape Coast, Gold Coast (now Ghana), where she studied teaching at St Monica's Training College in Mampong.[15][16] She then went to England to continue her education, earning a BA degree at Homerton College, Cambridge University — one of the first African women to study there — and studying Linguistics at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London.[6][15][17]

Returning to Ghana in 1951, she taught first at Fijai Secondary School at Sekondi, then at St. Monica's School (1951–54), and also began writing for children.[15] She would later say: "I started writing seriously in 1951. I can even remember the precise time. It was at Easter. I had been thinking about the problem of literature in my country for a very long time. I was on teaching practice with my students once in a village and I got positively angry about the kind of literature that the children were being forced into. It had nothing to do with their environment, their social circumstances or anything. And so I started writing."[17]

In 1954 she married Bill Sutherland, an African American and Pan-Africanist who in 1953 had moved to Ghana[18] (they had three children: educationalist Esi Sutherland-Addy, architect Ralph Sutherland, and lawyer Amowi Sutherland Phillips)[19][20] and she helped her husband in the establishment of a school in the Transvolta area.[21][22]

Literary production bewerken

When the Gold Coast became the independent nation of Ghana in 1957, Efua Sutherland organised the Ghana Society of Writers (later the Ghana Association of Writers),[23] which in 1960 brought out the first issue of the literary magazine Okyeame, of which she eventually became editor.[24][25]

Sutherland experimented creatively with storytelling and other dramatic forms from indigenous Ghanaian traditions. Her plays were often based on traditional stories, but also borrowed from Western literature, transforming African folktale conventions into modern dramatic theatre techniques.[26] Many of her poems and other writings were broadcast on The Singing Net, a popular radio programme started by Henry Swanzy,[27][28] and were subsequently published in his 1958 anthology Voices of Ghana. The 1960 first issue of Okyeame magazine contains her short story "Samantaase", a retelling of a folktale.[25] Her best known plays are Edufa (1967) (based on Alcestis by Euripides), Foriwa (1967), and The Marriage of Anansewa (1975).[6]

In 1958, Sutherland founded the Ghana Experimental Theatre, which was based at the Ghana Drama Studio built by Sutherland and launched by President Kwame Nkrumah in 1963 with Joe de Graft as its first director. Sited in downtown Accra, the Drama Studio became a training ground for a range of theatre practitioners from all over Africa. In 1962, she joined the staff of the new School of Music and Drama, headed by J. H. Kwabena Nketia.[21] In 1963, when Sutherland took on the role of Research Associate at the Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana,[15][29] she brought along with her the Ghana Drama Studio, which became an off-campus training space, called the University of Ghana Drama Studio. Sutherland, in addition to her field research and teaching in African Dramatic Forms, was a core member of the team that conceptualised and established the School of Performing Arts. Also concerned with traditional storytelling and developing community theatre, she founded the Kodzidan (Story House) in Ekumfi-Atwia, Central Region, which was recognised worldwide as a pioneering model in theatre for development.[15][26][30]

Sutherland mentored and was in turn inspired by many of Ghana's accomplished writers, including Ama Ata Aidoo, Kofi Anyidoho and Meshack Asare.

In the early 1970s, Sutherland co-founded the publishing company Afram Publications, which was incorporated in 1973, and in March 1974 began operating from her private studio in "Araba Mansa", her compound at Dzorwulu, Accra.[11] Sutherland remained involved in Afram's editorial work until her death.[31]



  1. ↑ (en) Google celebrates Efua Sutherland. www.ghanaweb.com. Geraadpleegd op 13 april 2019.
  2. ↑ (en) Sutherland, Efua Theodora (1967), Foriwa: A Play. State Publishing Corporation.
  3. ↑ (en) Sutherland, Efua T. (1979), Edufa. Longman. ISBN 9780582642720.
  4. ↑ The Marriage Of Anansewa. www.goodreads.com. Geraadpleegd op 13 april 2019.
  5. ↑ Sutherland, Efua Theodora Morgue, 1924–1996 (1975), The Marriage of Anansewa: a storytelling drama. Longman, London. ISBN 058264139X.
  6. ↑ a b c Merriam Webster's Encyclopedia of Literature. Merriam-Webster (1 april 1995), 1081. ISBN 0-87779-042-6.
  7. ↑ Danquah, Moses, "Ghana, One Year Old: a First Independence Anniversary Review", Accra: Publicity Promotions, 1958.
  8. ↑ Thrash Murphy, Barbara (1 december 1998), Black Authors and Illustrators of Books for Children and Young Adults. Routledge (UK). ISBN 0-8153-2004-3.
  9. ↑ Busby, Margaret, "Efua Sutherland", Daughters of Africa: An International Anthology of Words and Writings by Women of African Descent (1992), Vintage, 1993, p. 314.
  10. ↑ Banham, Martin (13 May 2004), A History of Theatre in Africa. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-80813-8.
  11. ↑ a b Our History. Afram Publications. Geraadpleegd op 25 March 2021.
  12. ↑ Simoes da Silva, Tony, "Myths, Traditions and Mothers of the Nation: Some Thoughts on Efua Sutherland's Writing", EnterText 4, no. 2 (2005): 256.
  13. ↑ "History", Panafest website.
  14. ↑ The Legacy of Efua Sutherland: Pan-African Cultural Activism. Ayebia Clarke Publishing, Banbury (2007). ISBN 978-0-9547023-1-1.
  15. ↑ a b c d e "Sutherland, Efua (1924–1996)", Women in World History: A Biographical Encyclopedia. Encyclopedia.com.
  16. ↑ "Sutherland, Efua (1924–1996)", Dictionary of Women Worldwide: 25,000 Women Through the Ages, Gale, 2007.
  17. ↑ a b Busby, Margaret, "Efua Sutherland: Reaching out to young Africa" (Obituary), The Guardian, 27 January 1996.
  18. ↑ Interview with Bill Sutherland (19 July 2003), for William Minter, Gail Hovey, and Charles Cobb Jr. (eds), No Easy Victories: African Liberation and American Activists over a Half Century, 1950–2000, Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2007.
  19. ↑ "ESI SUTHERLAND ADDY PERSONALITY - PROFILE FRIDAY ON JOYNEWS (14-3-14)", My JoyOnline. YouTube.
  20. ↑ "Board of Directors", Mmofra Foundation.
  21. ↑ a b Liukkonen, Petri, Efua Sutherland. Books and Writers (kirjasto.sci.fi). Kuusankoski Public Library. Gearchiveerd op 29 december 2008.
  22. ↑ "US anti-apartheid activist dies", News24 Archives, January 6, 2010.
  23. ↑ Ghana Association of Writers website.
  24. ↑ Gikandi, Simon, "Sutherland, Efua Theodora", Encyclopedia of African Literature, Routledge, 2003.
  25. ↑ a b Gibbs, James, "Efua Sutherland: The 'Mother' of the Ghanaian Theatre", in Nkyin-kyin: Essays on the Ghanaian Theatre (Cross/Cultures 98), Rodopi, 2009, p. 101.
  26. ↑ a b Owonoyela, Oyekan (23 August 2002), A History of Twentieth-Century African Literatures. University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 0-8032-8604-X.
  27. ↑ "Efua Sutherland", Encyclopædia Britannica.
  28. ↑ Akidiva, Arbogast Kemoli, "Radio and Literature in Africa: Lee Nichols' Conversations with African Writers", p. 229. University of Alberta dissertation, Spring 1997.
  29. ↑ Collins, Stephen (2011), "Playwriting and postcolonialism: identifying the key factors in the development and diminution of playwriting in Ghana 1916-2007", MPhil(R) thesis, p. 15, University of Glasgow.
  30. ↑ Gibbs, pp. xv, 111.
  31. ↑ Anyidoho, Kofi, and James Woods (eds), FonTomFrom: Contemporary Ghanaian Literature, Theatre and Film, p. 80.
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