Une saison au Congo

Une saison au Congo
Written by	Aimé Césaire
Date premiered	March 1967
Place premiered	Théâtre Vivant
Original language	French
Subject	anticolonial revolution
Genre	political play
Setting	Democratic Republic of the Congo, 1960s

Une saison au Congo (French pronunciation: [ynə sɛzɔ̃ o kɔ̃ɡo], A Season in the Congo^[1]) is a 1966 theatre play by Aimé Césaire,^[2] first performed in March 1967 in Brussels by the Théâtre Vivant. In September of the same year, the play was produced at the Venice Biennale.^[3] It follows the political career of Patrice Lumumba, first president of the Republic of the Congo in Africa,^[4] taking a deeply pessimistic view of his fate.^[5]

The play depicts the last months of the life of Patrice Lumumba during the transition to independence of the Belgian Congo marked by conflicts with the secession of Katanga, supported by the Belgian and broader Western interests.^[6]

After its first performance in Belgium, the play was produced at the Venice Biennale in March 1967, then at the Théâtre de l'Est parisien by theatre director Jean-Marie Serreau on 4 October 1967.^[3] The play's most recent performance took place in the Théâtre national de la Colline in Paris in September 1989.^[3]

References

^ Dr Parmita Kapadia; Professor Craig Dionne (28 April 2013). Native Shakespeares: Indigenous Appropriations on a Global Stage. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. pp. 173–. ISBN 978-1-4094-7500-2.
^ Aimé Césaire (1984). Soleil éclaté: mélanges offerts à Aimé Césaire à l'occasion de son soixante-dixième anniversaire. Gunter Narr Verlag. pp. 361–. ISBN 978-3-87808-731-1.
^ ^a ^b ^c John Conteh-Morgan (20 October 1994). Theatre and Drama in Francophone Africa: A Critical Introduction. Cambridge University Press. pp. 108–. ISBN 978-0-521-43453-9.
^ Sharon Malinowski (1994). Black Writers: A Selection of Sketches from Contemporary Authors. Gale Research. ISBN 978-0-8103-7788-2.
^ Verity Smith (26 March 1997). Encyclopedia of Latin American Literature. Routledge. pp. 188–. ISBN 1-135-31424-1.
^ Albert James Arnold; Julio Rodríguez-Luis; J. Michael Dash (1994). A History of Literature in the Caribbean: Hispanic and francophone regions. John Benjamins Publishing. pp. 519–. ISBN 90-272-3442-6.