Navigating the Worlds of John Ruganda’s "The Burdens" and "Black Mamba"

Abstract

Elam contends that the world of drama is constructed relative to the world of actuality, which the performer and spectator of drama inhabit. He says the dramatic world “is a spatio-temporal elsewhere represented as though actually present for the audience” but it is counterfactual; not real or factual (Elam, 1987, p.99). The interpretation of the dramatic world, therefore, is based on the conventionality of the world of actuality. This is to say that we access the world of drama from the position of the world of actuality. “The spectator assumes that the represented world, unless otherwise indicated, will obey the logical and physical laws of his own world,” (p. 104). The spectator, it is assumed, enjoys a shared semantic and cultural context with the dramatis personae of the dramatic world. This obtains because the semantic and cultural interactions that are observed in the dramatic world are modeled on those of the world of actuality. It is this shsred cultural awareness and socialization of the individual that enable the spectator to fill in the gaps that exist in the world of drama in order to make the same world complete and meaningful. This paper explores how past experiences of characters in John Ruganda’s plays, The Burdens and Black Mamba,bring into perspective the bearing their past has on their present and future.