Seeking the Founding Father

Summary

Kobina Sekyi's play The Blinkards was premiered in Cape Coast during 1916 and was warmly received by the local press. However, the impact of the production was not followed by the establishment of a theatrical tradition or even by any real circulation of the script of the play. When Sekyi died in 1956, obituarists made no mention of either the production or the text, and interest only revived in 1974 when, thanks to the efforts of J. Ayo Langley, Rex Collings and H. V. H. Sekyi, the playwright's son, the text of the play was published. Since then The Blinkards has been analysed and celebrated, studied and performed. While it has become a classic text for African drama in English, the circumstances and reception of the first staging have not been described. Errors in the Introduction prepared for the first edition in the early Seventies for the Rex Collings edition have been repeated, and Sekyi's involvement with the production has not been recognized. This paper uses Gold Coast newspapers of the time of the premiere to fill in something of the background to the first production. From research, it emerges, for example, that Sekyi took a major part in staging the play, indeed he was the driving force behind the event. Because of his involvement in the 1916 production, Sekyi must be recognised as an all-round man of the West African theatre.