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).
In the three plays, Bate Besong mirrors post independent Cameroon. He exposes social problems ofthe period such as injustice, corruption, social, political and economic instability, as well as the sharp inequalities plaguing the African continent and Cameroon in particular resulting in human suffering.
Bate Besong’s works appear to be a platform geared toward the denunciation of the oppression inflicted by the tyrants on the helpless masses resulting in tensions, violence and lack of social, economic and political instability. He uses a blend of rare unsettled images in " Beast of no Nation" to represent the stinking and sour Cameroonian society. His choice of words like "shit", "beasts" and characters like Nightsoilmen, Cripple and Blind man clearly depict the rottenness of the society.
"Once Upon Great Lepers" is a metaphorical representation of the inversions that have engulfed the Cameroonian State apparatus since reunification . Bate Besong used the book launch ceremony to state that writers in Cameroon were saddled with numerous problems but they must keep on writing.
He insisted that a writer has as responsibility "to portray the predicaments of his people so that they can get up and make the right choices". To him "a writer must call things by their names". According to Bate Besong, oppressors had rendered Cameroon " a modern waste land of squandered opportunities", but remained optimistic when he said that "we must have the courage to accept our failures so as to achieve positive things".
The Rector of the University of Yaounde I, Prof. Sammy Beban Chumbow who chaired the occasion said that Bate Besong’s plays " are intended to be lived and not read. They are to be staged and lived as life plays because they are an avalanche of song, dance and theatre". Prof. Chumbow praised Bate Besong for being a nationalist, patriot, visionary and a social critic who wants to use theatre to build a prosperous Cameroon. He announced that staging of plays stopped since 1991, will soon start again in the University of Yaounde I.
Prominent writers of English- expression, teachers, playwrights, actors and Bate Besong’s classmates from St Bedes College Ashing- Kom and University of Ibadan, Nigeria thronged the British Council for the event. Dr Bate Besong presently lectures Theatre History, Playwriting and Critical Theory at the University of Buea.
PUBLISHED BY EDITIONS CLE, YAOUNDE 2003 AND PRINTED BY IMPRIMERIE SAINT PAUL, YAOUNDE
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