Literature & Ideas
Landmark
Janet Badjan-Young
born 1937
Playwright and the founder of Gambian theatre
Landmark is level 2 of 4 in the The Gambia Hall of Fame: a first that opened a door, or the pre-eminent figure of their generation in this country. See how the levels work.
Why they are here
The most prolific playwright The Gambia has produced, and the woman who built the country its first performing arts venue at seventy-four.
Janet Badjan-Young took a degree in drama in Britain in 1959 and a master's in communications in the United States twenty years later, and spent most of her working life outside The Gambia — in Sierra Leone, Kenya, Nigeria and the Caribbean, much of it with the United Nations.
She came home and set about building a theatre where there had been almost none. She has written more than a dozen plays, staged in The Gambia and beyond, which fold traditional storytelling, dance and music into a form she developed for Gambian audiences and use it on the things she wants talked about: child marriage, poverty, migration, the environment, human rights, and in Chains of Inspiration the Atlantic slave trade.
In 2011 she opened the Ebunjan Theatre at Kanifing, the first purpose-built performing arts venue in the country, and has run it as a working theatre and a training ground for young actors and technicians ever since. Gambian theatre essentially begins with her.
She came home and set about building a theatre where there had been almost none. She has written more than a dozen plays, staged in The Gambia and beyond, which fold traditional storytelling, dance and music into a form she developed for Gambian audiences and use it on the things she wants talked about: child marriage, poverty, migration, the environment, human rights, and in Chains of Inspiration the Atlantic slave trade.
In 2011 she opened the Ebunjan Theatre at Kanifing, the first purpose-built performing arts venue in the country, and has run it as a working theatre and a training ground for young actors and technicians ever since. Gambian theatre essentially begins with her.
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