John Ruganda
John Ruganda (30 May 1941 to 8 December 2007[citation needed]) was Uganda's best known playwright. Beyond his work as a playwright, Ruganda was also a professor at University of North, South Africa, University of Nairobi, and Makerere University.[1]
He was born in Fort Portal and died in Uganda's capital Kampala.
Ruganda's plays "reflect the reality of the East African sociopolitical situation after independence."[2] He was considered a shaping force of East African theater.[3] The Burdens (1972) and The Floods (1980) have become a regular part of curriculum in literature classes.[4]
Bibliography
[edit]Plays
[edit]- The Burdens, Kampala, Uganda, National Theatre, January 1970
- Black Mamba, Kampala, 1972
- The Good Woman of Setzuan, by Bertolt Brecht, translated into Swahili by Ruganda, Nairobi, Nairobi University Players, November 1978
- The Floods, Nairobi, French Cultural Centre, 1 March 1979
- Music without Tears, Nairobi, Nairobi University Players, February 1982
- Echoes of Silence, Nairobi, 1985
- Shreds of Tenderness
Television
[edit]- The Secret of the Season, screenplay by Ruganda, Voice of Kenya, March 1973
- The Floods, screenplay by Ruganda, Voice of Kenya, April 1973
- The Illegitimate, screenplay by Ruganda, Voice of Kenya, August 1982
References
[edit]- ^ African Books Collective. "John Ruganda". Retrieved 3 May 2011.
- ^ Imbuga, Francis. "John Ruganda". Gale Database: Dictionary of Literary Biography. Retrieved 3 May 2011.
- ^ Ssenkaaba, Stephen (18 December 2007). "Ruganda: The passing of a literary giant". New Vision Online. Archived from the original on 22 September 2012. Retrieved 3 May 2011.
- ^ East African Educational Publishers Ltd. "John Ruganda Passes On". Archived from the original on 29 November 2010. Retrieved 3 May 2011.
Further reading
[edit]- Horn, "Uhuru to Amin: The Golden Decade of Theatre in Uganda," Literary Half-Yearly, 19, no. 1 (1978): 22-49
- Peter Nazareth, "Africa under Neocolonialism: New East African Writing," Busara, 6, no. 1 (1974): 19-32
- Mineke Schipper, Theatre and Society in Africa (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1982).
