The Swamp Dwellers
The Swamp Dwellers
Description
In this rarely produced masterwork from 1958, Nobel Prize-winner Wole Soyinka finds stunning universal resonance in a quietly tragic tale steeped in Yoruba myth and lore and set in a rustic hut in the Niger Delta. An ageing couple living on chronically flooded land, awaiting one of their twin sons from the city, is visited by a complacent Yoruba holy man and a blind Muslim beggar who trigger a terrible crisis of faith and trust. Corrupt religion, family betrayal, environmental disaster, post-colonial exploitation, urban modernity encroaching on rural tradition: the themes of this searing and heartbreaking drama are both timeless and palpably contemporary. Director Awoye Timpo (Obie Award winner, Wedding Band) returns to collaborate with TFANA for another seminal mid-century work.
Design by Paul Davis Studio / Paige Restaino
By Wole Soyinka
Directed by Awoye Timpo
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Artist Bios
wole soyinka
Writer
Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986, Wole Soyinka has published more than thirty works, and continues to be active on various international artistic and Human Rights organizations such as the International Theatre Institute, the UN Commision on Human Rights and the International Parliament of Writers of which he was the immediate past President. A Yoruba born in Western Nigeria and educated in Ibadan, Wole Soyinka continued his studies at the University of Leeds, England, earning an Honours degree in English, then joined the Royal Court Theatre, London, as a play-reader. In 1960, he was awarded a Rockefeller grant and returned to Nigeria, where he researched theatre, and founded a theatre company.
Soyinka’s first plays, The Swamp Dwellers and The Lion and the Jewel, were written in Leeds and London, first performed at Ibadan in 1959, with The Lion and the Jewel receiving its London premiere at the Royal Court Theatre, London in the sixties. His later play, Death and the Kings Horseman has been produced all over the world, including at the National Theater in London in 2009, at Lincoln Center in New York City and in 2022 at the Stratford Festival in Canada. Other works for theater have included The Trials of Brother Jero, Jero’s Metamorphosis, A Dance of the Forests, Kongi’s Harvest, Madmen and Specialists, The Strong Breed, The Road, A Play of Giants, Requiem for a Futurologist. He has adapted The Bacchae for the British National Theatre where it was performed under the title The Bacchae of Euripides, Opera Wonyosi from John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera and Bertolt Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera, set in an African context, and King Baabu from Alfred Jarry’s King Ubu. His adaptation has been described as taking Ubu’s savage satire to the limits of the grotesque.
Soyinka has written three novels, The Interpreters, Season of Anomy and Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth was published in 2023, listed as a NY Times Notable Book of the Year. Autobiographical works include The Man Died: Prison Notes and Aké: The Years of Childhood and IBADAN, The Penkelemes Years. Literary essays are collected in, among others, Myth, Literature and the African World and Art, Dialogue and Outrage while his political and other thematic writings are contained in The Open Sore of a Continent and The Burden of Memory, Muse of Forgiveness. His poems are collected in Idanre and Other Poems, Poems from Prison, A Shuttle in the Crypt, Ogun Abibiman, Mandela’s Earth and Other Poems, SAMARKAND and Other Markets I have Known. Wole Soyinka has held several university positions and still lectures extensively.
awoye timpo
Director
Awoye Timpo is a Brooklyn-based Director and Producer. Her recent New York credits include Elyria by Deepa Purohit (Atlantic Theater), Wedding Band by Alice Childress (Theatre for a New Audience), In Old Age by Mfoniso Udofia (New York Theatre Workshop), Carnaval by Nikkole Salter (National Black Theatre), Good Grief by Ngozi Anyanwu (Vineyard Theatre and Audible) and The Homecoming Queen by Ngozi Anyanwu (Atlantic Theater Company). Regionally she has directed at the Huntington, Studio Theatre, Paradise Blue, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Berkeley Rep and Marin Theatre Company. Other projects include concert performances for independent artists as well as for the NBA, Ndebele Funeral (59E59, Edinburgh, South African Tour), “Black Picture Show” (Artists Space/Metrograph), and “Bluebird Memories“ (Audible). Awoye is a Creative Arts Consultant for the African American Policy Forum and the Founding Producer of Classix, a collective of 5 artists created to explode the classical canon through an exploration of dramatic works by Black writers and Black performance history, theclassix.org.
Season Sponsors
Deloitte and Bloomberg Philanthropies are the 2024-2025 Season Sponsors.
Principal support for Theatre for a New Audience’s season and programs is provided by the Bay and Paul Foundations, The Marlène Brody Foundation, the Howard Gilman Foundation, the Jerome L. Greene Foundation Fund at the New York Community Trust, The Dubose & Dorothy Heyward Memorial Fund, The Polonsky Foundation, The SHS Foundation, The Shubert Foundation, and The Thompson Family Foundation.
Theatre for a New Audience’s season and programs are also made possible, in part, with public funds from the National Endowment for the Humanities; the National Endowment for the Arts; Shakespeare in American Communities, a program of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with Arts Midwest; the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature; and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
