Gibson Kente Essay

chiliadson Kente Arguably the almost public playwright-director in siemens African Theatre history is Bra Gib, Gibson Kente. Born in 1932, Kente became the father of Black Theatre. He was a capacious patriot and founding father of Black Theatre in sec an effective voice of the oppressed though the arts, he articulated the socio-economic imbalances created by the apartheid regime. Kente was non only an artist but also a vehicle for change. He conscientised the republic through music and theatre and gave a nation confidence in the midst of repression and brutality.Kente was largely unknown to the white theatre-going world of South Africa however he produced 23 plays and m each TV dramas from 1963-1992. Kente grew up in Duncan Village, a black village in the Eastern Cape. He was schooled at a Seventh-Day Adventist College in Butterworth. In 1956, he moved to Johannesburg and enrolled at the Jan Hofm nerve centerr School of Social Work. He eventually abandoned his studies aft er he joined a black theatre group called the Union Artists. This is where he embarked on his c areer writing, producing and directing, where he created the unique genre referred to as the townsfolk musical. Kente developed a style and pattern for his plays specifically to deal with the challenges and unavoidably of his audiences. His plays were melodramas of town life, which were performed in an over-the-top, stylized manner using stock characters and a declamatory style of performance. His style of directing his actors to overact was in piece to compensate for many of the townships venues which had poor acoustics. His use of music, movement, gesture, gimmicks, dance and acrobatics were at once related to his problem with township venues.These large halls were not complimentary to any type of method acting. The movements had to be unnaturalistic, the acting was vigorous and exaggerated substantially beyond reality, in order to have an impact on the eye and the ear. There was also a devaluing of dialogue the dialogue is in English, however, most of it was inaudible because of audience noise and interaction, bad voice projection in the acoustically unsound halls, the musical band and unfamiliarity with words from the script.The audiences were not there to appreciate the subtlety of language through the use of puns or witticisms they were there to be entertained through the stock characters antics to recognize themselves on stage. Kentes aim was to fill township venues and he did. The majority of his plays are stylistically similar the acting style hardly varies, the story ripening is superficial, there is an absence of conflict other than the physical fights and the slanging matches between characters.The plots were easy they were made up of occurrences which were happening in the townships and in daily township life. Ian Steadman writes in his article Alternative Politics, Alternative Performance 1976 and Black South African Theatre that while he K ente has been criticised by more understructure Black Consciousness proponents for being a-political, Kentes theatre succeeds in creating affectionate comment and criticism some quantify by implication, at other times by direct proseltism (1984 219).