Efua Theodora Sutherland (born 27 June 1924 – 2 January 1996) was a Ghanaian playwright, director, dramatist, children's author, poet, educationalist, researcher, child advocate, and cultural activist. Her works include the plays Foriwa (1962), Edufa (1967), and The Marriage of Anansewa (1975). She founded the Ghana Drama Studio, the Ghana Society of Writers,Danquah, Moses, "Ghana, One Year Old: a First Independence Anniversary Review", Accra: Publicity Promotions, 1958. the Ghana Experimental Theatre, and a community project called the Kodzidan (Story House). As Ghana's earliest playwright-director,Busby, Margaret, "Efua Sutherland", Daughters of Africa: An International Anthology of Words and Writings by Women of African Descent (1992), Vintage, 1993, p. 314. she was an influential figure in the development of modern Ghanaian theatre, and helped to introduce the study of African performance traditions at university level. She was also a pioneering African publisher, establishing the company Afram Publications in Accra in the 1970s. Sutherland was instrumental in nurturing a new generation of Ghanaian playwrights and poets through the Drama Studio, many of whom went on to shape modern West African literature.
She was a cultural advocate for children from the early 1950s until her death, and played a role in developing educational curricula, literature, theatre and film for and about Ghanaian children. Her 1960 photo essay Playtime in Africa, co-authored with Willis E. Bell, highlighted the centrality of play in children's development and was followed in the 1980s by her leadership in the development of a model public children's parks system for the country.Simoes da Silva, Tony, "Myths, Traditions and Mothers of the Nation: Some Thoughts on Efua Sutherland's Writing", EnterText 4, no. 2 (2005): 256.
Sutherland's pan-Africanism was reflected in her support for its principles and her collaborations with African and African diaspora personalities in a range of disciplines, including interactions with Chinua Achebe, Ama Ata Aidoo, Maya Angelou, W. E. B. Du Bois and Shirley Graham Du Bois, Margaret Busby, Tom Feelings, Langston Hughes, Martin Luther King and Coretta Scott King, Femi Osofisan, Félix Morisseau-Leroy, Es'kia Mphahlele, Wole Soyinka and Ngugi wa Thiong'o. Having in 1980 written an original proposal for a pan-African historical theatre festival in Ghana as a cultural vehicle for bringing together Africans around the globe, Sutherland was the inspiration behind the biennial Pan-African festival of theatre arts known as PANAFEST, first held in 1992."History" , Panafest website.
Efua Sutherland died in Accra aged 71 in 1996.
Education and early career She was born as Efua Theodora Morgue in Cape Coast, Gold Coast (now Ghana), where she studied teaching at St Monica's Training College in Mampong.Heyman, Neil M., "Sutherland, Efua (1924–1996)", Women in World History: A Biographical Encyclopedia. Encyclopedia.com. She then went to England to continue her education, earning a BA degree at Homerton College, Cambridge University — one of the first African women to study there — and studying linguistics at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London.Busby, Margaret, "Efua Sutherland: Reaching out to young Africa" (Obituary), The Guardian, 27 January 1996.
Returning to Ghana in 1951, she taught first at Fijai Secondary School at Sekondi, then at St. Monica's School (1951–54), and also began writing for children. She would later say: "I started writing seriously in 1951. I can even remember the precise time. It was at Easter. I had been thinking about the problem of literature in my country for a very long time. I was on teaching practice with my students once in a village and I got positively angry about the kind of literature that the children were being forced into. It had nothing to do with their environment, their social circumstances or anything. And so I started writing."
In 1954, she married Bill Sutherland, an African American and Pan-Africanist, who in 1953 had moved to Ghana.Interview with Bill Sutherland (19 July 2003), for William Minter, Gail Hovey, and Charles Cobb Jr. (eds), No Easy Victories: African Liberation and American Activists over a Half Century, 1950–2000, Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2007."The Passing of Two Giants of the Pan-African Struggle... Dennis Brutus And Bill Sutherland | Bill Sutherland, Pan African Pacifist, 1918-2010". Obituary by Kassahun Checole, 6 January 2010. They had three children – educationalist Esi Sutherland-Addy, architect Ralph Sutherland, and lawyer Amowi Sutherland Phillips)"ESI SUTHERLAND ADDY PERSONALITY - PROFILE FRIDAY ON JOYNEWS (14-3-14)", My JoyOnline, 14 March 2014. YouTube."Board of Directors" , Mmofra Foundation. – and she helped her husband in the establishment of a school in the Transvolta area."US anti-apartheid activist dies", News24 Archives, January 6, 2010.
Literary production When the Gold Coast became the independent nation of Ghana in 1957, Efua Sutherland organised the Ghana Society of Writers (later the Ghana Association of Writers),Ghana Association of Writers website. which in 1960 brought out the first issue of the literary magazine Okyeame, with Sutherland eventually becoming editor.Gikandi, Simon, "Sutherland, Efua Theodora", Encyclopedia of African Literature, Routledge, 2003.Gibbs, James, "Efua Sutherland: The 'Mother' of the Ghanaian Theatre", in Nkyin-kyin: Essays on the Ghanaian Theatre (Cross/Cultures 98), Rodopi, 2009, p. 101.
Sutherland experimented creatively with storytelling and other dramatic forms from indigenous Ghanaian traditions. Her plays were often based on traditional stories, but also borrowed from Western literature, transforming African folktale conventions into modern dramatic theatre techniques. Many of her poems and other writings were broadcast on The Singing Net, a popular radio programme started by Henry Swanzy,"Efua Sutherland", Encyclopædia Britannica.Akidiva, Arbogast Kemoli, "Radio and Literature in Africa: Lee Nichols' Conversations with African Writers", p. 229. University of Alberta dissertation, Spring 1997. and were subsequently published in his 1958 anthology Voices of Ghana. The 1960 first issue of Okyeame magazine contains her short story "Samantaase", a retelling of a folktale. Her best known plays are Edufa (1967) (based on Alcestis by Euripides), Foriwa (1967), and The Marriage of Anansewa (1975).
In 1958, Sutherland founded the Ghana Experimental Theatre, which was based at the Ghana Drama Studio built by Sutherland and launched by President Kwame Nkrumah in 1963 with Joe de Graft as its first director. Sited in downtown Accra, the Drama Studio became a training ground for a range of theatre practitioners from all over Africa. In 1962, she joined the staff of the new School of Music and Drama, headed by J. H. Kwabena Nketia. In 1963, when Sutherland took on the role of Research Associate at the Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana,Collins, Stephen (2011), "Playwriting and postcolonialism: identifying the key factors in the development and diminution of playwriting in Ghana 1916-2007", MPhil(R) thesis, p. 15, University of Glasgow. she brought along with her the Ghana Drama Studio, which became an off-campus training space, called the University of Ghana Drama Studio. Sutherland, in addition to her field research and teaching in African Dramatic Forms, was a core member of the team that conceptualised and established the School of Performing Arts. Also concerned with traditional storytelling and developing community theatre, she founded the Kodzidan (Story House) in Ekumfi-Atwia, Central Region, which was recognised worldwide as a pioneering model in theatre for development.Gibbs, pp. xv, 111.
Sutherland mentored and was in turn inspired by many of Ghana's accomplished writers, including Ama Ata Aidoo, Kofi Anyidoho and Meshack Asare.
In the early 1970s, Sutherland co-founded the publishing company Afram Publications, which was incorporated in 1973, and in March 1974 began operating from her private studio in "Araba Mansa", her compound at Dzorwulu, Accra. Sutherland remained involved in Afram's editorial work until her death.
Cultural activism and pan-Africanism Sutherland's work attracted the attention of creatives from the global African world. Maya Angelou's fifth volume of memoirs All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes testifies to the emotional support and entrée into Ghanaian society afforded her in the 1960s by Efua Sutherland who became a close friend.Angelou, Maya, All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes, 1986.
Sutherland had met Dr W. E. B. Du Bois when she led the Ghana delegation to the 1958 Afro-Asian Writers Conference in Tashkent (now the capital of Uzbekistan). She was to personally intervene, at his death in Accra, Ghana in 1963, to support Mrs Shirley Du Bois. In the 1980s Sutherland was instrumental in establishing the W.E.B. Du Bois Memorial Centre for Pan African Culture and mausoleum at the Du Bois' Accra home.Shipley, Jesse Weaver, and Jemima Pierre, "The Intellectual and Pragmatic Legacy of Du Bois's Pan-Africanism in Contemporary Ghana", in Mary Keller and Chester J. Fontenot (eds), Re-cognizing W.E.B. Du Bois in the Twenty-first Century: Essays on W.E.B. Du Bois, Mercer University Press, 2007, p. 79.
In 1980, Sutherland wrote a paper entitled "Proposal for a Historical Drama Festival in Cape Coast", underscoring the significance she attached to connections between Africa and its Diaspora. This inspired the venture that came to fruition as the state-sponsored PANAFEST, the first Pan-African Historical Theater Festival, which was held in Cape Coast, Elmina and Accra, Ghana, from 12 to 19 December 1992, under the theme "The Re-emergence of African Civilization".
Advocacy for children Sutherland presided over Ghana's ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (the first country to do so) and chaired the National Commission on Children from 1983 to 1990, a period that marked the most vigorous and comprehensive child advocacy on a national scale in the history of Ghana. In this capacity, she steered a number of innovative programmes, including a Child Education Fund to support underserved communities, the Mobile Technical Workshop extending science learning to poor or rural children, and the securing of land to seed model child-centred park and library complexes around the country. She laid the groundwork for the Mmofra Foundation, active since 1997 as a civic organisation dedicated to enriching the cultural and intellectual lives of all children in Ghana."About" , Mmofra Foundation. In 2012 the Playtime in Africa Initiative, inspired by her eponymous 1961 book, was launched to revitalise child-friendly public space advocacy.
Her final most significant work at the Institute of African Studies, Legon, was her Children's Drama Development Project, which was aimed at developing materials, methods and staff for programmes of creative dramatics in and out of school. Sutherland was invited by UNICEF to join a worldwide network of scholars to consider a code of human rights for the protection of children.
Florence Laast, founder of Accra's St Martin de Porres School, speaking of how her own life had been impacted by Sutherland's mentorship, described her as "one of the greatest thinkers of our time" who believed that "the home is our first classroom, and our parents the first teachers".
Legacy Following the 1992 construction of the National Theatre of Ghana on the site occupied by the Drama Studio, a replica of the Studio was constructed on the campus of the University of Ghana as part of the facilities of the School of Performing Arts. On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the university, the Studio was renamed the Efua Sutherland Drama Studio.