BY MULUGETA GUDETA
Fikir Eske Mekabir (Love Unto the Grave), a novel by the late Ethiopian novelist Haddis Alemayehu is considered the greatest work of modern Amharic literature. Haddis Alemayehu was an Ethiopian novelist and foreign minister of Ethiopia. His Amharic novel Love unto the Grave is considered a classic of modern Ethiopian literature. Haddis was born in the Ethiopian town of Debre Markos on October 15, 1910 and died on December 6, 2003 in Addis Ababa. Fikir Eske Mekabir was written by Haddis Alemayehu in 1965and is since then considered to be a classic in Ethiopian modern literature. It was also translated into English by Sisay Ayenew and Ethio-American who is based in Washington DC, in 2005.
However, the novel is not a world classic since it has not been translated into the major international languages. It is not widely known by the international public. No major publishing house in the West or anywhere else has so far come forward to get the book translated and widely circulated. Love unto Grave still remains an Ethiopian classic without ever achieving the same status worldwide.
According to a more recent report, “Fikir Eske Mekabir, one of the masterpieces of Ethiopian literature has been translated into Norwegian language by Reidulf K.Molvar (PhD) a scholar who spent 14 years in Ethiopia since the 1990’s.” The translator is known to be well-versed in Amharic and Ethiopian literature and tradition. He is also well-known for his book, “Black Lions: The Creative Lives of Modern Ethiopia Literature Giants and Pioneers” in 1997.
There is presently a plan to turn the novel into a stage performance or a play by a group of Ethiopian playwrights and actors from various theatre houses in Addis Ababa. Turning a novel into a stage play is not an easy project anywhere in the world. There are many international classics that have been turned into plays or stage dramas. But no one has so far tried to make a play out of an Ethiopian novel as famous as the novel under discussion here.
According to a general theoretical formulation, “In a theatrical adaptation, material from another medium, such as novel or film is re-written according to the needs and requirements of the theater and turned into a play or musical.
Hundreds of studies have been made about theatre adaptations of famous novels but none have been made in Ethiopia at a scale comparable to the present effort to turn Fikir Eske Mekabir into stage adaptation. According to available information about theatre adaptation, “Some are direct page-to-page adaptations of famous stories such as Alice in Wonderland, Anne of Green Gables, the Wizard of OZ, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.” These are classic of Western literature that have been famously turned into theatre adaptations and enjoy wide audience both as written stories and stage performances.
One of the theories of adaptation in theatre says that, “the adaptor must make sure the chosen material speaks to the new audience with the urgency of their own time and place. It must reveal something deeply personal about the adaptor him/herself.” In other words, the novel to be adapted to the theatre needs to be relevant to the new generation of theatre goers who can see and relate to the adapted stage drama or that they must find something relevant to their time and condition in the adapted novel.
While trying to bring Love unto Grave to the stage is a lofty effort by the adaptor or adaptors, in case it is done by a group of professionals, the work that is turned into stage performance needs to be relevant to the present time. In other words, the themes and central ideas of Fikir Eske Mekabir should appeal to the new generation of theatre goers who may find important lessons from seeing the novel turned into stage performance.
The five elements of adaptation are given as plot, character, tension, language and spectacle that are evident in all successful stage dramas adapted from classic or best-selling novels. “Many people have written about what constitutes drama. One of the first most influential was Aristotle who concluded that there were 6 elements to drama: plot, character, thought, diction spectacle and acting.”
In other words, while adapting Fikir Eske Mekabir to the stage, those who are involved in this difficult undertaking need to make sure these elements of drama are realized in a way that moves and shakes the audience to the same extent that the plot and characterization has done to the book readers or even better.
Meanwhile, it is important to note that there are three examples of theatrical forms and that Fikir Eske Mekabir falls into one of them. “There are four basic theatrical forms either defined, implied or derived by or from Aristotle. They are; Tragedy, Comedy, Melodrama, and Drama. Any number of styles can be used to convey these forms.” Evidently, Fikir Eske Mekabir falls in the category of Tragedy as it involves the tragedy inherent in the relationship between the two lovers who came from opposite social backgrounds that ends in the death of the main protagonists. This is in fact the most moving part of the drama.
As an article in the blog page “The Grand Theatre” put it, “When you see an amazing show the theatre, you may leave thinking “What made that so great? Why did the play move me or make me nervous?” A play, film and or TV show can only become great when all the key elements of drama work together. From the above, we may conclude that stage adaptation of a novel is not merely a transposition of the story from the written word to the acted drama. It is more than that because it involves much more elements of theatre that may not be evident in the novel but are essential to the function of the stage drama.
The plot of Love unto Grave centers on a romance between the beautiful Seble, daughter of a nobleman called Meshesha. She remains unmarried as nobody is considered noble enough for her, but when a tutor arrives they fall in love.
Sahele Sellassie Berhane Mariam, an Ethiopian writer who was commissioned by Heinemann to write a report on the book, ahead of a potential translation wrote that, “Masterfully grafted to this love theme unfolds another more serious story –the relation of the traditional nobleman Meshesha and his peasants-tenants, a relation that ends in peasants’ revolt, and subsequent humiliation of the captured Meshesha. The leader of the peasant revolt did not kill Meshesha. He prefers to make him a laughing stock to all who know him by capturing him alive and taking him to the provincial court…”
Stage adaptation is not limited to the novel. Poems, short stories or children’s stories can be adapted to the stage. When we come to recent developments in Ethiopia in this area, is the local adaptation of “Husbands and Wives”, a film by American producer and actor Woody Allen that was translated into Amharic and adapted to the stage as “Balochina Mistoch”. This columnist had recently written a story about this in this same column saying that, “Adapting a film drama to the stage might be a daunting task for those who have already tried their hands at this kind of adaptation. Yet, according to Haregewoyin Assefa, veteran and well-established actress at the National Theatre, who acts in the play, “Husbands and Wives” is an experience worth talking about since it is well received by the Ethiopian theatre goers who found the play reflecting local family realities that they accepted with a lot of laughter and mirth.”
It may be much easier to adapt film to the stage than a novel because film and drama are both visual mediums using live performance and cinematic projection in the case of film. Second thing, in novel adaptation, the dialogue has to be re-written by the adaptor. This obviously involves a lot of work and imagination. In novel adaptation to the stage, the actors perform live while in the novel the readers imagine the characters and their actions.
The actors, producers, directors and designers who will be participating in the adaptation of Haddis Alemayehu’s novel need to pool their talents and produce something that will remain for posterity. In order to achieve this, all the participants in this project need to conduct research, learn how other people in other countries have turned their classical works into stage adaptations. It would also be necessary to do a lot of reading in the theories and practices of stage adaptations.
Since the novel is considered by many as an Ethiopian classic, they are also expected the stage production a classic of Ethiopian theatre that will serve as a lasting influence for the new generations of Ethiopian artists so that they would use it as a reference of what classical stage drama is. Since the adaptation of Fikir Eske Mekabir is at the conception, planning or organization stage, all those involved in the project need to give all they have in terms of talent and knowledge to the success of this grand project.
The Ethiopian Herald April 9/2023
