Drama in the Classroom: Adapting and Preserving African Folktales into Plays by Teachers and Learners

Taku Victor Jong

Jul 2024 · Notion Press

About this ebook

In this masterfully written book, the author, Dr. Taku Victor Jong, not only provides a thoroughly researched insight into the sheer evanescent state of the African oral narrative but also proposes an academic solution geared at bringing it back into the mainstream of the people’s collective consciousness.

The study, which spans the heydays of the folk narrative, passing through the reasons for its decline in the present day context will undoubtedly prove to be a useful tool in the hands of classroom teachers of English language and Literature, history, civic and moral education, lecturers of Drama and theatre arts and pedagogues of other subjects.

As an educationist and a high-profile adept of cultural studies, drama and performing arts, the author’s carefully thought-out proposals on adapting the Cameroonian oral tale into plays with the aid of Process Drama as well as in the context of modern audio-visual entertainment, is not only very workable but will go a long way to save this highly pedagogic aspect of African folk tradition from being completely and irretrievably lost.

By NGOLLE-METUGE Terence (Poet, teacher of English Language and Head of Department of English at the Institut Polyvalent Prive de Bonamousadi (IPPB) in Douala-Cameroon).

About the author

A self-directed, resourceful, creative, talented and visionary playwright and teacher, Dr.Taku Victor Jong is specialised in the teaching of Drama, Cultural Studies and Script Writing.His research in African Orature gave him an insight into the cultural realities of the forests and grassfields of Cameroon and other African countries. As playwright and adapting artist,he has written and directed twenty-five radio plays currently being broadcast over the Cameroon Radio and Television Corporation (CRTV).One of his radio plays, Red Marks: A Play Against Sexually Transmissible Marks in Secondary Schools and Universities has been adapted for stage and published by Notion Press in India.He is current Head of Performing and Visual Arts Department at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Buea in Cameroon.