Bole Butake and the development of Anglophone Cameroon drama: An interview with Eckhard Breitinger

Abstract

This interview is a “three-legged stool”.  One leg, the interviewer, Naomi Nkealah has a PhD in African Literature from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. She has published widely on various human rights concerns. The second leg is the interviewee, Eckhard Breitinger, who is now deceased. Breitinger has written numerous works of criticism, edited several books and organised many conferences.  The third leg is the topic of the interviewer, Bola Butake, the most famous Anglophone playwright, and author of such plays as Lake God, The Survivors and Palm Wine Will Flow. In this interview the late Professor Breitinger explains how his fascination with Butake’s drama derives from his (Breitinger’s) witnessing the 1992 Bamenda women’s revolt.  This sets the tone for Nkealah’s probing questions about the extent of Butake’s “feminist” and revolutionary approach to Anglophone Cameroonian drama.  In this dialogue (or perhaps more accurately “trialogue” Nkealah tends to play devil’s advocate, while Breitinger, for the most part, defends Butake’s plays.  The interview concludes with a discussion of the influence which Butake’s plays have had on a younger generation of dramatists within Cameroon and beyond.