Efua Theodora Sutherland
Introduction
About
EFUA THEODORA SUTHERLAND
BIOGRAPHY
Efua Theodora Sutherland was a Ghanaian playwright, director, dramatist, children's author, poet, educationalist, researcher, child advocate, and cultural activist. Her works include the plays Foriwa, Edufa, and The Marriage of Anansewa.
She founded the Ghana Drama Studio, the Ghana Society of Writers, the Ghana Experimental Theatre, and a community project called the Kodzidan (Story House). As Ghana's earliest playwright-director, she was an influential figure in the development of modern Ghanaian theatre, and helped to introduce the study of African traditions at university level. She was also a pioneering African publisher, establishing the company Afram Publications in in the 1970s.
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, Felix 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.
DATE OF BIRTH: 27th June 1924
TIME OF BIRTH: 12:00noon
PLACE OF BIRTH: Cape Coast, Ghana
LONG: 1 W 1
TIME ZONE: GMT 0
LAT: 5 N 0
ASCENDANT: 3 Libra
SUN SIGN: 4 Cancer
MOON SIGN: 1 Taurus