SLOGANEERING CHRISTIANITY IN SONG: METATHEATRICALIZING COMMUNAL EXPLOITATION IN NGUGI WA THIONG'O AND NGUGI WA MIRIIS' I WILL MARRY WHEN I WANT
SLOGANEERING CHRISTIANITY IN SONG: METATHEATRICALIZING COMMUNAL EXPLOITATION IN NGUGI WA THIONG'O AND NGUGI WA MIRIIS' I WILL MARRY WHEN I WANT

Summary/Abstract: Metatheatre is a long established theatrical tradition which has been sufficiently calibrated in William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, put into a utilitarian proclivity in Anton Chekhov's The Seagull, and fully aestheticized in Jean Genet's The Balcony and The Blacks. It is also a tradition which has been successfully exploited in Wole Soyinka's Madmen and Specialists; Athol Fugard's Sizwe Bansi is Dead; Femi Osofisan's The Chattering and the Song, and skilfully grounded in Segun Oyekunle's Katakata for Sofahead. In I Will Marry When I Want, metatheatre is utilised by Ngugi wa Thiong'o and Ngugi wa Mirii to satirize the duplicitous sloganeering of Christian salvation by the Kenyan Christian elite, in its iniquitous attempt to pauperise and dehumanize the peasants. This paper deals with how Ngugi wa Thiong'o and Ngugi wa Mirii have steeped a metatheatre into the interface of politics and religion in I Will Marry When I Want, in order to foreground the hypocrisy of Christianity as underscored by the exploitation of the downtrodden masses, by the land grabbing Christian elite of the Kenyan society.

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