Artistic integrity and style: Wole Soyinka's writing style is sophisticated, drawing deeply on Yoruba culture, mythology, and intricate poetic language. Appropriating his unique literary voice is a form of artistic creation that I cannot replicate with authenticity. Creating a derivative work also raises concerns about originality and plagiarism.
Legal and ethical considerations: Remaking a modern classic requires a deep understanding and respect for the original author's intent, themes, and characters. While the original 1946 event that inspired Soyinka's play is in the public domain, the copyrighted play itself is not. Producing a large-scale adaptation could infringe upon the original work.
The nature of adaptation: A successful adaptation is not a simple retelling; it requires identifying fundamental themes and reinterpreting them through a new lens. A short, single response cannot fully explore the layers of cultural confrontation, duty, and colonialism that define the original work.
However,in a framework for a reimagining of Death and the King's Horseman
This outline shifts the perspective of the story and centers on the market women, who are the spiritual and social pillars of the community. It focuses on the clash between tradition and modern corruption from an internal, rather than colonial, standpoint.
Core concept: The Empty Shrine
In this version, the focus is not on the colonial district officer, but on the internal fractures and compromises of the Yoruba community. The tragedy lies in the decay of tradition from within, with the arrival of the colonial power serving as a catalyst rather than the primary cause. The ritual fails not because of British interference but because of the Horseman's own spiritual corruption, driven by modern, material desires.
Characters
Iyalode: The new leader of the market women. She is fiercely protective of tradition but fears that her authority is weakening. She carries the heavy burden of upholding a fragile heritage.
Segun: The new King's Horseman, a formerly respected man now seduced by the allure of colonial wealth and modernity. He outwardly embraces tradition but secretly plans to avoid his fate.
Iyaloja's Daughter: A young woman promised to the ritual, but she and Segun have developed a forbidden relationship. She represents the younger generation caught between traditional duty and personal desire.
The Praise-Singer: Older and wiser, the praise-singer senses the impending doom but is caught in a conflict of loyalty between praising his Horseman and honoring the ancestors.
Officer Williams: A minor British colonial officer. Unlike Pilkings in the original play, he is a peripheral figure, more interested in bureaucratic rules than cultural understanding. His presence highlights the growing indifference of the colonial gaze.
Structure of the play
Act I: The Marketplace Awakes (approximately 10 pages)
Scene 1: The play opens in the vibrant, bustling marketplace. The market women prepare for the funeral rites of the recently deceased king. Drumming and chants are full of life, celebrating the king's journey to the afterlife.
Scene 2: Iyalode and the Praise-Singer engage in a dialogue that, while ostensibly about the King's passing, reveals their quiet anxieties about Segun. The Praise-Singer recounts the myth of the "Not-I Bird" in a more hesitant, less confident manner than in the original play, suggesting the tale has lost some of its spiritual power.
Scene 3: Segun enters, resplendent in fine robes but with a nervous, guarded energy. He engages in a boastful display of his vitality, but the praise-singer's chants take on an ironic, slightly mocking tone. Segun's casual dismissiveness toward the ritual is subtle but alarming to the older women.
Act II: The Colonial Shadow (approximately 15 pages)
Scene 1: The scene shifts to the edge of the marketplace, near the colonial offices. Officer Williams speaks with his aide, oblivious and condescending toward the local culture. He mentions hearing about a "barbaric ritual," and orders his subordinate to look into it, but it is clear he has no real understanding of its significance.
Scene 2: Segun meets secretly with his lover, the Iyaloja's Daughter. He reveals his plan to fake his death and use the money he has secretly amassed from his colonial dealings to escape. He promises her a life of modern luxury and freedom from tradition. She is torn, questioning her duty to her family and her love for Segun.
Scene 3: The market women prepare the "bridal" ceremony for Segun, but the atmosphere is tense. Iyaloja confronts her daughter about her distracted state and hints at the spiritual consequences of betraying the ancestors. The scene ends with a chilling image: The bride is dressed in white, but the women mournfully chant her fate.
Act III: The Fading Song (approximately 15 pages)
Scene 1: It is the night of the ritual. The drumming is frantic but lacks its usual spiritual resonance. Segun enters the ceremonial grounds, accompanied by the market women. His performance is perfunctory; he is merely going through the motions. The praise-singer’s chants, meant to guide his journey, fall on deaf ears.
Scene 2: Back in the colonial office, Officer Williams receives a vague report about the ritual. He makes a half-hearted attempt to intervene, but his actions are clumsy and based on a complete misreading of the situation. He appears incompetent rather than a powerful obstacle.
Scene 3: Segun, about to enter the final stage of the ritual, is confronted by Iyaloja's Daughter, who has realized the gravity of his deception. She begs him to honor his duty, not for the king, but for the sake of the community and the ancestors. He scoffs at her pleas, blinded by his own greed.
Act IV: The Silent Dirge (approximately 10 pages)
Scene 1: The ritual is a failure. The King's spirit, unguided, wanders. The market women's dirge, instead of guiding a soul, is an aimless, mournful chant. The atmosphere is heavy with the feeling of a broken covenant. Iyaloja's Daughter is brought in, her face stricken with grief. She has made a tragic decision.
Scene 2: Segun is found hiding, alive but spiritually dead. The women are not angry; they are resigned to his spiritual corruption. He tries to justify his actions with money and modern logic, but the women are unmoved.
Scene 3: Iyaloja’s Daughter reveals that she has taken on the duty herself. The final scene depicts her, not Elesin, fulfilling the necessary sacrifice. Her act is not a replacement but a spiritual correction, a reaffirmation of tradition in the face of internal weakness. Her final words passage expands on Act II, focusing on the clandestine conversation between the new Horseman, Segun, and Iyaloja's Daughter, exploring the internal conflict that corrupts the ritual from within.
ACT II, Scene 2
SETTING: A secluded corner of the compound, away from the bustle of the marketplace. The moonlight casts long, shifting shadows. The sound of distant drumming from the market is a persistent, hypnotic throb, but here it is muted, almost an afterthought. The air is still, thick with the scent of damp earth and night-blooming flowers.
IYALOJA’S DAUGHTER enters first. She is young, beautiful, dressed in simple, unadorned robes. Her face, usually bright and expressive, is etched with worry. She wrings her hands, listening. After a moment, SEGUN emerges from the shadows. His face is tense, a stark contrast to the performative gaiety he showed earlier. He carries a small, leather satchel, which he clutches tightly.
IYALOJA’S DAUGHTER: You came.
SEGUN: Of course I came. The drumbeat is our timekeeper, no? The same drum that sings of my passing also signals the thief to steal his neighbor’s hen. The meaning is not in the drum, but in the ears that hear it.
IYALOJA’S DAUGHTER: Do not jest. The earth is listening.
SEGUN: And the heavens are blind. There is no one here but you and me.
IYALOJA’S DAUGHTER: The ancestors. They see everything.
SEGUN: The ancestors sleep on pillows stuffed with dusty praise. They care for nothing but the echo of their own names. Let them sleep.
Segun draws her into a hurried embrace, a gesture both tender and frantic.
SEGUN: You still worry. I thought my words would have quieted the flapping wings of your little bird-heart.
IYALOJA’S DAUGHTER: Your words promise a new kind of world. But the promises of this world are all I have ever known. My mother… her heart is with the earth, Segun.
SEGUN: Her heart is with the ghost of a dead king. She is too old to look forward. I have looked forward, my love. I have seen the new world, where a man makes his own future, and his own sacrifice.
He pulls the leather satchel open just enough for her to see the glint of coins and paper.
SEGUN: This is our new life. The coin that has no face, the paper that carries the Queen’s portrait. This is the language they speak now, the only song that echoes in their houses. I have learned to sing it.
IYALOJA’S DAUGHTER: What have you promised them for this?
SEGUN: I have promised them nothing but the sweet music of their own arrogance. They hear what they want to hear. I have told them a man of the cloth can speak to the dead, so they leave me to my preparations. The rituals are meaningless to them, so they are nothing to me.
IYALOJA’S DAUGHTER: But they are not meaningless! They are the song of our people, our roots in the earth! My mother says that if the ritual is broken, the earth will hunger and the crops will rot in the fields.
SEGUN: Old woman's tales for old women. The earth is fed by the rain, not by the spilling of a man's blood. Do you not see? Their God is a jealous God, and their King is still alive. The ritual was old, it was tired. It needed a push. I have given it one.
IYALOJA’S DAUGHTER: Is it not you who is pushing it into the dust? Is your soul not already in exile?
Segun stiffens, releasing her.
SEGUN: Do not speak to me of souls. My soul is my own to keep. I will not trade it for the empty honor of a title. I have spent a lifetime as the King’s Horseman, a shadow trailing the scent of another man's glory. And for what? For the privilege of an early grave?
IYALOJA’S DAUGHTER: No. For the promise of a glorious crossing, for the sake of the people. Your words once spoke of this, of the great honor...
SEGUN: My words were a performance, an echo of the praise-singer’s chant! A man is a performer, my dear. He dances for the crowd, but his heart is his own stage. You loved my dancing, but you never saw the man behind the mask. The man who saw the white men building their bridges, their roads, their houses—and realized our path was ending.
IYALOJA’S DAUGHTER: So your path is to join them?
SEGUN: My path is to survive them! We cannot fight their iron horses with our songs, their paper money with our beads. I will take what I can from them and build a new life, for us. In their world, a man does not die for his king. He lives for his family. I am doing this for you.
IYALOJA’S DAUGHTER: But what of the curse? What of the generations to come, who will say, "Here walked a coward, who traded his birthright for a few trinkets of the white man"?
SEGUN: They will not say it. They will envy me. When the hunger comes, and the old ways fade, they will look to my sons and say, "There is the man who saw the wind change and built his house of stone, not straw." We will have a new dynasty, a new line of horsemen who ride not for the dead, but for the living!
A loud, insistent drum-call cuts through their conversation. It is closer now, more urgent. It is the call to prepare the final rites.
IYALOJA’S DAUGHTER: The drumming… it quickens.
SEGUN: I must go. Remember what I told you. Do not falter. Do not speak. Watch, and wait. When the time comes, I will send for you.
He kisses her, a desperate, silencing gesture. He turns to leave, but she grabs his arm.
IYALOJA’S DAUGHTER: You will live? You will truly live?
SEGUN: My life is a river, and tonight, I am changing its course. Do not stand on the bank and watch me drown.
He pulls away and melts back into the shadows, the leather satchel disappearing with him. Iyaloja’s Daughter stands alone, the persistent, urgent beat of the drums surrounding her, trapping her. She places a hand over her womb, a gesture of silent grief and profound, terrifying uncertainty.
FADE OUT.
ACT II, Scene 3
SETTING: The market square, later that same night. The atmosphere is charged and expectant. The drumming, though powerful, has lost its celebratory tone and has taken on a more frantic, insistent rhythm. Market women, led by IYALODE, are preparing the final ceremonial rites for the Horseman. A beautiful, ornate white shroud is laid out on a low, wooden platform. The women move with practiced grace, but there is a undercurrent of anxiety in their movements.
The PRAISE-SINGER is present, but his voice, usually booming with epic verse, is now strained. He watches IYALOJA'S DAUGHTER as she moves through the crowd, her face a mask of detached solemnity. She avoids eye contact, her hands working mechanically on the ceremonial cloth.
PRAISE-SINGER: [Chanting, his voice a gravelly whisper]
The bird of passage waits for its rider.
It waits. And waits.
But what is the scent that lingers on its feathers?
The scent of a strange land.
Of a strange time.
The scent of a song that has been sung in another tongue.
Is the rider ready?
Or is his spirit still entangled in the net of yesterday’s dreams?
IYALODE: [Approaching the Praise-Singer, her voice low and sharp]
Your chant has a new tune, Praise-Singer. Where did you learn to sing the song of doubt?
PRAISE-SINGER: The song is not mine, Iyalode. It is the wind that sings it. It blows from the market, from the houses of the elders, from the heart of the Horseman himself. The wind whispers of a hollow drum.
IYALODE: It is your job to fill that drum with the song of honor. Do not fail us now.
PRAISE-SINGER: A drum cannot sing if it has no skin. And the skin of the Horseman's honor is stretched thin, Iyalode. He has taken the seed of another man and sowed it in barren soil.
Iyaloja’s Daughter freezes, her hands still. She looks up, her eyes meeting Iyalode's. Iyalode’s gaze is hard, accusing. Iyaloja’s Daughter looks away quickly, returning to her work.
IYALODE: Do not speak in riddles. Let the gods speak their own truth.
PRAISE-SINGER: The gods are hungry, Iyalode. They have sent their messenger, and he has returned with the scent of a foreign meal on his breath. He who feasts on the food of strangers cannot guide the king. He is clogged with the fat of another man's pig.
A young market woman, her face full of innocent excitement, begins to sing a celebratory song. It is immediately silenced by the sharp, authoritative clap of Iyalode’s hands.
IYALODE: Not that song! The time for celebration is past. We must now prepare for the silent journey.
She turns to Iyaloja’s Daughter.
IYALODE: My daughter. Come here.
Iyaloja’s Daughter slowly approaches her mother. Iyalode takes her hands in hers and speaks in a low, tender voice, audible only to her daughter.
IYALOJA'S DAUGHTER: My mother.
IYALODE: I see the shadow on your face, my child. And in the shadow, I see his face.
IYALOJA'S DAUGHTER: I do not know what you mean.
IYALODE: The womb of a woman is a sacred vessel. It holds the seed of the future. The Horseman chose you. And in choosing you, he chose our past. Do not bring the taste of foreign honey to a sacrament of our own earth.
IYALOJA'S DAUGHTER: He loves me, Mother.
IYALODE: His love is a cheap trinket, given to distract you from the truth. The love of a Horseman is a testament to duty, not desire. When he holds you, his arms must feel the weight of our entire people. But his arms are empty. His promises are empty. And his path is empty.
She releases her daughter's hands. The girl returns to her place among the other women. The Praise-Singer continues his hushed, ominous chanting, a counterpoint to the insistent drumming.
PRAISE-SINGER: [Chanting, low and mournful]
The King rides his white horse to the heavens.
His horseman should be a mirror of his own spirit.
But what is this?
A mirror that shows a foreign face?
A mirror that shows the face of a beggar,
With the king's jewels in his hand?
The King rides alone tonight. The horseman is a fraud.
The scene ends with the women finishing their preparations, a somber, silent ritual that speaks of a profound spiritual loss. The drums grow louder, a desperate, frantic sound. The market is full, but the air is empty.
FADE OUT.
ACT III, Scene 1
SETTING: A clearing near the edge of the forest, where the ceremonial path begins. It is the final hour before dawn. A single, small bonfire illuminates the space. Segun stands alone, dressed in the full, magnificent regalia of the Horseman. He has a determined, almost panicked look on his face. The leather satchel is hidden beneath his robes.
SEGUN: [Muttering to himself, pacing nervously]
The fool. The old fool. What is this madness? The world has moved on. We have lights that banish the night, medicine that defeats the sickness, money that buys all the honor one could ever need. And yet they cling to this… this funeral pyre! They demand a man throw his life away for a dead ghost. Not I. Not I.
The sound of a single, powerful drumbeat thunders through the forest, shaking the earth. Segun flinches, his bravado wavering. He quickly pulls out the leather satchel and checks its contents, the glimmer of money and documents a momentary reassurance.
He hears a rustling in the bushes. He pulls his knife, ready to fight.
No comments:
Post a Comment