and space that is very different. What we call the audience is for the African an integral part of the arena of conflict that is the drama and contributes spiritual strength to the protagonist through its choric reality, which must first be developed and established, defining and investing the arena through offerings and incantations. There would be no drama except as set against this symbolic representation of earth and cosmos (Soyinka 37-39).
Theater is one of the first arenas in which we know that human beings attempted to come to terms with the spatial phenomenon of being. Ritual theater such as that in Africa establishes the spatial medium not merely as a physical area for simulated events but as a manageable contraction of the cosmic envelope in which human beings exist. This attempt makes every manifestation in ritual theater a paradigm for the cosmic human condition. The unvoiced fear in each case is whether the protagonist will survive confrontation with forces greater than himself, and the act of the protagonist is one taken on behalf of the community so that the welfare of the individual is inseparable from that of the entire community. This sense of ritual is essential to an understanding of the cathartic processes of the great tragedies. The very roots of the dramatic experience are to be found in an affirmation of the communal self. Ritual theater tries to reflect through physical and symbolic means the archetypal struggle of the mortal being against external forces (Soyinka 41-43). This sense of the individual standing in for the community and standing against forces greater than himself is evident in Soyinka's poetry, including his lengthy work "Chimes of Silence."
In that work, the poetic voice represents the human being and the human condition, and Soyinka's own life experience had prepared him for understanding the plight of man in such circumstances. Wole Soyinka was born in Abeokuta, Nigeria in 1934...