The Marriage of Anansewa

The Marriage of Anansewa (1975) is a comic play by the Ghanaian dramatist Efua Sutherland, rooted in the West African oral storytelling tradition of Anansesem (spider tales). It tells the story of Ananse, the trickster father, who schemes to marry off his daughter Anansewa to the wealthiest of four competing chiefs in order to escape poverty and fund her education.

The central conflict

Ananse simultaneously courts four chiefs on Anansewa's behalf, sending each flattering letters with her photograph and accepting gifts from all of them. As the chiefs' messengers converge to perform the head-drink ceremony (the formal engagement rite), Ananse faces exposure. His cunning solution is to stage Anansewa's death, using a fake funeral to test which chief truly loves his daughter. Three chiefs send condolences and funeral gifts but reveal selfish motives. Only Chief-Who-Is-Chief responds with genuine grief, sending a glass coffin and accepting full husbandly responsibility. Ananse then performs a mock libation, 'calling' Anansewa back to life, and awards her to the worthy chief.

Key concerns

The play examines marriage customs and bride-price, the ethics of trickery, the tension between material need and moral principle, the role of community and oral tradition, and the empowerment of women within patriarchal structures. Sutherland celebrates Ghanaian performance culture through songs (Mboguo), a Storyteller-narrator, and audience participation, making the play a living example of the Anansesem tradition it dramatises.