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From Zia, with Love employs a non-naturalistic theatrical style that combines political satire, tragedy, and surrealism. Wole Soyinka uses several distinct dramatic devices to critique the military regime and explore the plight of the detainees. Some of the key dramatic devices used in the play are split staging, metadrama, music, symbolism, parody, dramatic irony, slapstick, ritual, and disembodied broadcasts.
Split Staging
The play utilises a split-stage technique to present two parallel realities simultaneously and allow fluid movement between the macrocosm of the state and the microcosm of the prisoners. The stage is physically divided into a “half-arc” of cells on one side (the General Cell) and a “large cell” on the other (Cell ‘C’).
Lighting cues are used as a cinematic device to shift the audience’s focus without dropping a curtain. For example, stage directions dictate that a “spot traverses stage to reveal the general cell” or that “lights snaps out” to instantly transport the action from the political detainees to the mock government.
Metadrama
Metadrama, alternatively the play-within-a-play, is the use of role-playing and forced theatrical enactments in the play. It manifests specifically in the “Curriculum Vitae” (CV), where prisoners must re-enact the crimes that brought them to prison. The inmates use basic items like “broken stools, chairs, benches, camp beds, pillows, buckets, etc.” to deftly create sets for these enactments. The Commandant acts as the theatrical director of these enactments. He even proudly compares his skills and disciplinary style to the late Nigerian theatre maestro, Hubert Ogunde.
This device allows for seamless, fluid flashbacks. During the Student’s CV enactment, the scene is “swiftly altered to indicate the interior of SEBE’s home,” physically transporting the narrative out of the prison and into the criminal underworld without breaking the continuous flow of the play.
Music
From Zia, with Love frequently breaks naturalism through the use of songs, raps, and chants. Music is employed therein to function similarly to a Greek Chorus or Brechtian epic theatre. The inmates perform choreographed musical numbers like the “Ode to Commodore Hyacinth” and the “Song of Displaced Moralities” to provide thematic commentary on their own corruption and the decay of society.
The play culminates in the surreal “Rap of the Military Time-Machine,” where prisoners stomp on stage in bizarre military cast-offs, gas masks, and goggles. The playwright sets the regime’s horrific retroactive legal decrees to an upbeat, aggressive rap as an indication of the grotesque and performative nature of the dictatorship.
Symbolism
Soyinka relies on recurring symbols to convey the political themes of the play. One such symbol is the water hyacinths. These invasive weeds clog the lagoon outside the prison; they physically prevent boats from moving. Symbolically, they represent the choking corruption of the state and the criminal element. The inmates compare themselves to the hyacinths; they sing that they are a “monster from the sea” that “feeds on pollution.” Sebe Irawe further explains that these weeds thrive on the “excrement which they flush into the lagoon”; this advertently shows how the criminal underworld is fed by the moral rot of the ruling class.
Another symbol used in the conveyance of the political themes of the play is the football match. Detiba uses the metaphor of a referee changing the rules halfway through a football match to highlight the absurdity of the military regime’s retroactive death penalties. Similarly, the military time-machine is another discernible symbol in the play. It is a metaphorical construct used by the Wing-Commander to describe the regime’s use of retroactive laws. This construct allows the military to “go backwards and forwards at will, and in circles” to criminalise past actions.
Parody
The play uses the “mock government” in the General Cell to directly parody the actual military dictatorship running the country. The criminal inmates adopt titles identical to the real government, such as “Minister of Health,” “Director of Security,” and “Minister for Home Affairs,” and form an “Eternal Ruling Council.”
They use the exact same bureaucratic jargon as the real government (“situation report,” “counter-subversion,” “stability”) to discuss trivial prison matters. In one symbolic moment, the Commandant is seen “haranguing his INMATES in sync” with a military propaganda broadcast emerging from the loudspeakers. Simply put then, the rhetoric of the state and the rhetoric of a prison gang are indistinguishable.
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Dramatic Irony
Soyinka uses dramatic irony to heighten the tragedy of the political detainees’ final moments. Near the end of the play, the Superintendent informs Miguel, Detiba, and Emuke that they are appearing before a “Review Panel.” He leads the men to dress with “deliberate care” in the false hope that they will be able to appeal their sentences.
However, the Superintendent immediately drops this facade; he reveals that the “Review Panel” is just a lie to get them out of the cell quietly. The stakes for their execution by firing squad are “already being set up” in the prison yard. The audience is forced to watch the men prepare for an appeal that they know does not exist.
Juxtaposition
The play places conflicting elements side-by-side for emotional impact, most notably in its epilogue. Immediately following the tragic exit of the men to their execution, the play introduces three “Trusties” (privileged prisoners) who enter the vacated cell with spades and buckets. The profound tragedy of the political detainees’ deaths is violently juxtaposed with the mundane greed of the Trusties, who immediately begin scavenging the cell for leftover bits of rope, cigarette lighters, and spare change. They coldly complain that “bullets have no business sense” because the firing squad will ruin the clothes they intend to steal and sell.
Disembodied Broadcasts
To represent the omnipresent, oppressive nature of the military state, the play utilises hidden loudspeakers to broadcast propaganda directly into the prison environment. A disembodied “military voice” or “loudspeaker” abruptly interrupts the prisoners’ lives to lecture them on “discipline,” “self-reliance,” and the “Battle Against Indiscipline.”
This device acts as an invisible but inescapable character. It highlights how the regime’s rhetoric penetrates even the most isolated corners of the nation. At some point, the criminal Commandant in the General Cell is seen haranguing his inmates perfectly “in sync” with the military broadcast. This sync visually and audibly equates the country’s dictator with the prison gang leader.
Improvised Staging
Because the prisoners are forced to enact theatrical performances (their “curriculum vitae”) within a barren cell, the play relies heavily on the imaginative, transformative use of everyday prison objects. Packing cases, broken stools, chairs, benches, camp beds, pillows, buckets, etc. are used to create sets for the various enactments. The inmates use these sparse materials for costumes as well. One puts a loose Dansiki over a wrapper; another “stuff[s] rags into her ‘brassière’” to simulate different characters. This device shows the resourcefulness of the inmates as they bring to life the non-naturalistic, “poor theatre” aesthetic of the play.
Slapstick
Soyinka uses slapstick to underscore the utter absurdity of the regime and its mock counterparts. A perfect way to explain this is when the Commandant reaches his breaking point over political subversives, he doesn’t just yell; he demands to know, “Am I or am I not overdue for explosion?” His subordinate then pops an inflated paper bag to simulate a loud explosion, after which the Commandant exhausted sinks back into his chair to the applause of the inmates.
Besides, the inmates are subjected to frantic, physical drills. They are shoved and harried into a precise alphabetical line-up to perform a “parade-ground dance.” They also perform quick, choreographed “Ogunde-style” jigs. This physical exaggeration turns the horror of military discipline into a grotesque clown show.
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Related:
- Plot Summary and Setting of From Zia, With Love by Wole Soyinka
- Characters in From Zia, with Love by Wole Soyinka
- Themes in From Zia, With Love by Wole Soyinka
- Act 1 Summary and Analysis of From Zia, With Love by Wole Soyinka
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