Bate Besong

BB: A Dramaturgy of the Oppressed Workers

By Professor Ada Ugah (Sunday Chronicle January 6, 1991)

The art of writing is essentially a revolt against the existing status quo. Imbued with visionary fervour, the literary artist seeks to negate the existential stasis in which he finds himself by temporalizing his dreams and aspirations.

Thus the writer’s private fears and frustrations assume a societal dimension by act of identification by the readers of such author’s work. This act of identification is even more immediate in a dramatic rendition. It is this feeling of total and engaging identification that readers and viewers of Bate Besong’s latest play are immersed with when confronted with the dramatic portrayal of unitary Cameroon’s national question.

Bate Besong by Chris Dunton

Culled from Chris Dunton, Nigerian theatre in English : a critical bibliography / . - London ; Munich [u.a.] : Zell, 1998. - IX, 366 S. ; 24 cm. - (Bibliographical research in African literatures ; 5). - ISBN 1-873836-71-6 :

76. Besong, Bate. The Most Cruel Death of the Talkative Zombie (a faery play in three parts with a revelry at the Requiem). (Limbé): Nooremac Press, (1986). (For a biographical note on Besong, which addresses the question should his work be discussed as a contribution to Nigerian or Cameroonian literature, see Bernth Lindfors, "Response to Dunton on Bate Besong", Journal of Commonwealth Literature, xxx / 1, 1, 1995, pp107-08. A more recent discussion of Besong’s work (Matumamboh 1997) identify him unambiguously as a "Cameroonian playwright";

The Political Grotesque as Reelected in Bate Besong's "The Most Cruel Death..."

By Alfred Matumamboh
The Herald, Nov. 18-19, 2002

Bate Besong’s dramaturgy generally deals with political decadence in the higher echelon of the political structure. In The Most Cruel Death of the Talkative Zombie, the grotesque form of the play provides the energy that animates and amplifies its political content. The play deals with organized state terrorism inflicted on a people in that some of the members of this region are "secessionists" and "subversives". So in a bid to crush the so-called separatist element, hell is let loose on the region. Indiscriminate arrest, torture and massacre are carried out. The character Toura, at the end of the play summarizes the point, "And to trap a handful of secessionists, he decided to Hiroshima a whole region".

Multiculturalism and the Politics of Nation Building in Recent Cameroon Anglophone Theatre

By Tiku Takem

Applied Theatre Researcher/IDEA Journal Number 4, 2003

Abstract
The works of Bole Butake, Bate Besong and Victor Epie Ngome have become classics of Cameroon Anglophone drama today. The performances discussed here show that not only do they articulate the authors’ attitudes, but they also seek to influence the attitudes of audiences towards the nation. Cashing in on a popular desire for change in a society characterised by widespread disillusion, Anglophone theatre presents varying perspectives on reconstructing the nation, based on the vision of each dramatist, ranging at times from mutual reconciliation and recognition of socio-cultural identities to outright usurpation of despotism to usher in democracy.

Bate Besong Preaches Morality Through Theatre

By Emmanuel KENDEMEH (Cameroon Tribune, Tuesday, march 16, 2004)

His three plays The Achwiimgbe Trilogy were launched in Yaounde last March 11.

Dr Bate Besong , a prolific Cameroonian dramatist andplaywright of English expression, opts for a world in which the oppressed are spurred to get up and make the right choices for their betterment. His three plays named the "The Achwiimgbe Trilogy" were launched in a heavily attended ceremony at the Yaounde British Council on Thursday March 11. The plays are Once Upon Great Lepers (74 pages), Beasts of no Nation (60 pages) and The Banquet (85 pages).

Change Waka and His Man Sawa Boy

Change Waka and His Man Sawa Boy. [Théâtre]. Yaoundé, Éditions CLE, 2001, 65 p.

Reviewed by Pierre FANDIO

Bate Besong n’est pas à proprement parler un inconnu de l’émergente littérature camerounaise d’expression anglaise. En effet, il est auteur d’un ensemble de poèmes et de pièces de théâtre. Si sa poésie reste confinée dans quelques journaux et revues, son théâtre se décline en des textes disponibles en librairie tandis que certaines de ses pièces ont connu un certain succès en représentation. Ses publications comprennent ainsi, entre autres, Beasts of no Nation (1991), Requiem for the last Kaiser (1991), The Banquet (1994), Just above Cameroon (1998), etc.