KING BAABU

“Baabu, lutho, niks, nothing”. King Baabu is Wole Soyinka’s equivalent of Alfred Jarry’s Ubo Roi (King Ubo), with a splash of Macbeth and other raucous absurdities. The play lashes out at the infectious plague of African dictatorships and the story is set in the fictitious African country Guatu and chronicles the rise of General Basha Bash to dictator and King, Baabu (a word simply meaning “nothing”).

The production is played out by a large ensemble cast made up of second and third year Drama and Performance Studies students from the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg. Using carnivalesque techniques of clowning, acrobatics and buffoonery, this highly energetic play targets tyrannical systems that may govern us at home, at university or even through our own state.

The cast challenges the concept of dictatorship through ridicule and satire, making this absurd comedy as much fun as it is relevant. The latest country to fall into the hands of a military Dictator through a conventional coup de tat was Mali, only a couple of weeks ago.

King Baabu was written by Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka (Madmen and Specialists, Death and the Kings Horseman and The Lion and the Jewel) and is directed by William le Cordeur.

Performances take place from April 23 to 26 at 19h30 at the Hexagon Theatre, UKZN, Pietermaritzburg. Tickets R45 (R25 students and seniors) at the door only. Enquiries on email to: hexagon@ukzn.ac.za