Benjamin Leshoai
Benjamin Letholoa Leshoai (1920-). Journalist, novelist, playwright.
Also known as Bob Leshoai.
Contents
Biography
Born in Bloemfontein and educated at University of Fort Hare (majoring in English and Native Administration) and the University of Illinois (MA in Theatre Arts and Speech).
For a while, he was Principal at Lady Selborne High School. Later he became manager of Union Artists at Dorkay House.
Leshoai left South Africa in 1963 to teach in Zambia (Head of English at Mufulira Teachers' College) and in Tanzania (from 1968, as Associate Professor and Head of Department of Theatre Arts at the University of Dar-Es-Salaam). In 1974, he became Professor of Literature at the University of Bophuthatswana.
Contribution to SA theatre, film, media and/or performance
In 1964, Leshoai spent a month at the Cort Theatre on Broadway with the Alan Paton/Krishna Shah production of Sponono.
He wrote a number of plays, some of which were published, others banned. His one-act play Revolution (1972) for example was one of the first to advocate violence as a viable course of action for blacks, although his other one-act plays are concerned more with social themes.
Plays:
The Wake (one-act play, 1964)
Lines Draw Monsters (full-length play, written 1965, first performed by FUBA drama students under the direction of Sisho Maphisa at the Market Theatre in 1982).
The Weather Forecast (one-act play, 1971)
The Rendezvous (one-act play, 1972)
The Rightful Chief (one-act play)
Revolution (one-act play, 1972)
Morati of Bataung (full-length play, written for AMDA, 19**)
A collection of his plays was published in 1971 under the title The Wrath of the Ancestors and Other Plays (Nairobi: East Africa Publishing House).
Sources
(See Gosher, 1988)
Contemporary South African Plays (edited by Ernest Pereira, published by Ravan Press) in 1977.
Various entries in the NELM catalogue.
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