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African drama is a tradition that has unique themes and forms with sources in African rituals, languages, gestures and folklores. It links up with the traditional popular African theatre with its combination of dance, music, and action.

Background
The question whether in precolonial Africa "real drama" has existed is one of those typical examples of western ethnocentric thinking. Several Europeans have denied the existence of African drama, before the arrival of the colonizer. Meanwhile, Africans deployed a more complex and mixed set of literacies. Cornevin even dedicates his book on African drama to the father or the "bon oncle" of African drama, Charles Béart, director of the Ecole Supérieure of Bingerville in the thirties in colonial French West Africa. .

In his book The Intercultural Performance Reader, Patrice Pavis cites three general theses in relation to the question of the existence of an "African drama". He invokes the thesis of non-existence of such drama. This thesis is then modified and revised as other theses emerged. One of the new emerging ones, he cites the undeveloped nature of an African drama compared with European and Asian ones. He later defines a third thesis as being a subsumation of the first two while using a one-sided empirical apprehension of the Western cultural impact on Africa.

It would be absolutely incorrect to treat traditional drama-forms as one thing and the so-called modern drama as another thing.

It is worth noting that drama of the African continent is often viewed from a rather general perspective. It is often broadly referred to as African drama. However, drama is usually not only culture-specific but it is also region and country-specific.

Genres
each of these types of drama has its own distinctive characteristics which clearly differentiate it from the other types.

The idea of myth as a genre is difficult to define and most controversial.

Traditional Stories about common people, wise and foolish people, happy and unhappy people, exist in great abundance in Africa.

Another literary genre of oral tradition is the epic.

There are also a great many traditional stories about animals.

The last genre to be dealt with here is he farce. the short comic play, which existed also in the African tradition before the arrival of the Europeans. Its form is quite special. The farce is played by different actors, each of whom represents a well-known type of the village-life. Hunters, warriors or farmers play the principal part.

Ritual drama
Also known as Sacred dramas. They are in turn sub-divided into ancestral or myth plays, masquerades or plays by age groups and cults, rituals, etc.

Secular dramas
Secular dramas on the other hand, are distinct from sacred dramas and include sub-types such as civic dramas, dance or song dramas, etc.

Notable African dramatists

 * Wole Soyinka, 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature
 * Naguib Mahfouz, 1988 Nobel Prize in Literature
 * Ebrahim Hussein