Māniʻ, Samīrah Arasanayagam, Jean

Description

Samīrah Māniʻ, a dramatist from Iraq, reads from her play 'Only A Half,' which deals with the segregation of men and women in the Arab world and then she discusses the relationship between men and women in Iraq. Jean Arasanayagam, a dramatist from Sri Lanka, talks about the real drama of life that exists in Sri Lanka through folk drama and English drama, which came with colonialism. He talks about how the British introduced Shakespeare to the people of Sri Lanka. He uses plays to deal with current social problems. He talks about street drama, which is made up as the play goes on. In his plays he doesn't give names to his characters because he believes that giving a character a name makes you begin to create the character in your head before the character even comes on stage. An audience member asks a question and many people begin talking, making it hard to hear what is being said for a brief period of time. F. D. Imbuga, a dramatist from Kenya, then talks about what influenced him to become a dramatist. Imbuga has also written a novel while staying in Iowa City. Imbuga talks about the relationship he sees between reality and drama. Imbuga talks about his play 'Betrayal in the City,' which openly criticizes the Kenyan government. Contact the VWU Webmaster: https://www.writinguniversity.org Originally recorded on audio cassette and converted to wav and mp3 files. Master digital recording available in .wav format.