Theatre
Hatia
Not translated into English
Penina Mlama · 1972
Synopsis
Cheja, a young woman from her village, works in Dar es Salaam for Mr Sembuli, a friend of her family, in a big city where everyone goes about alone and where a fisherman warns her of the danger of walking there without looking. Disappointed by Juma Bakari, in whom she had placed her trust, she returns to the village to her parents, in a house dominated by an authoritarian and harsh father.
Context
The play appeared in 1972 in Nairobi, from East African Publishing House, and it is its author's first. Written in Swahili, like all her plays, it shares the hope of the early years of ujamaa, before her works of the nineteen-eighties became more critical; six other plays followed within ten years. It makes the city the place of danger, money, individualism and illusion, mocks the venal diviner and reverses the usual image of parents by giving the father the harsh role.
Who it is for
A play in Swahili, not translated. Some background on theatre for development and on the place of women helps with the subject.
Prizes and reception
The first published play by its author, it figures in studies of modern Swahili theatre alongside those of Ebrahim Hussein.