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Soyinka received a Rockefeller Research Fellowship from the University of Ibadan, his alma mater, for research on African theatre, and returned to Nigeria. After its fifth issue (November 1959), Soyinka replaced Jahnheinz Jahn to become co-editor of the literary journal Black Orpheus (its name derived from a 1948 essay by Jean-Paul Sartre, "Orphée Noir", published as a preface to the Anthology of New Poetry Black and Malagasy, edited by Léopold Senghor). He produced his new satire, The Trials of Brother Jero. His play A Dance of The Forest (1960), a scathing critique of Nigeria's political elites, won a competition that year as the official play for Nigeria's Independence Day. On 1 October 1960, it premiered in Lagos as Nigeria celebrated its sovereignty. The play satirises the nascent nation by showing that the present is no more a golden age than the past. Also in 1960, Soyinka established the Nineteen Sixty Masks, an ensemble of amateur actors to which he devoted considerable time over the next few years.
Soyinka wrote the first full-length play produced on Nigerian television. Titled My Father's Burden and directed by Segun Olusola, the play appeared on Western Nigerian Television (WNTV) on 6 August 1960. Soyinka published plays that satirised the "Emergency" in the Western Region of Nigeria as his Yorùbá homeland was increasingly occupied singapore whatsapp number and controlled by the federal government. Political tensions arising from the newly independent post-colonial regime eventually led to a military coup and civil war (1967–70).
With the Rockefeller Fellowship, Soyinka bought a Land Rover, and began travelling around the country as a research fellow in the Department of English at the University College of Ibadan. In an essay at the time, he criticised Leopold Senghor’s Negritude movement as a nostalgic and indiscriminate glorification of the black African past that ignores the potential benefits of modernisation. He is often quoted as saying: “A tiger does not proclaim its tigritude, it pounces.” But in fact, Soyinka wrote in a 1960 essay for the Horn: “The duiker will not paint ‘duiker’ on its beautiful back to proclaim its duikeritude; you will know it by its graceful leap.” In Death and the King’s Horsemen, he states: “The elephant draws no mooring ropes; that king is not yet crowned who will spear an elephant.”
Soyinka wrote the first full-length play produced on Nigerian television. Titled My Father's Burden and directed by Segun Olusola, the play appeared on Western Nigerian Television (WNTV) on 6 August 1960. Soyinka published plays that satirised the "Emergency" in the Western Region of Nigeria as his Yorùbá homeland was increasingly occupied singapore whatsapp number and controlled by the federal government. Political tensions arising from the newly independent post-colonial regime eventually led to a military coup and civil war (1967–70).
With the Rockefeller Fellowship, Soyinka bought a Land Rover, and began travelling around the country as a research fellow in the Department of English at the University College of Ibadan. In an essay at the time, he criticised Leopold Senghor’s Negritude movement as a nostalgic and indiscriminate glorification of the black African past that ignores the potential benefits of modernisation. He is often quoted as saying: “A tiger does not proclaim its tigritude, it pounces.” But in fact, Soyinka wrote in a 1960 essay for the Horn: “The duiker will not paint ‘duiker’ on its beautiful back to proclaim its duikeritude; you will know it by its graceful leap.” In Death and the King’s Horsemen, he states: “The elephant draws no mooring ropes; that king is not yet crowned who will spear an elephant.”