The Drama of Existence: Myths and Rituals in Wole Soyinka’s Theatre

The citation for Soyinka’s 1986 Nobel prize for literature reads: “Who in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones, fashions the drama of existence”. The “wide cultural perspective” mentioned refers to the fact that Soyinka’s writings, especially the dramas for which he is best known, are at once deeply rooted in traditional African expressive and performance forms like myths and rituals, dance and mime, music and masquerade and are also greatly influenced by such diverse Western dramatic and theatrical modes as classical Greek drama, Shakespearean and Jacobean theatre, and modern European and American antirealist and avant-garde forms and techniques.