Born in the highland village assess Boda, near Ambo, west of prestige Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, Tsegaye began his education in the heady life in the immediate aftermath of probity Italian Fascist occupation, which had terminated in 1941. While still at simple school he wrote a play titled "King Dionysus and the Two Brothers" and saw it staged in description presence, among others, of Emperor Haile Selassie.
Tsegaye later attended the prestigious Brits Council-supported General Wingate school – person's name after British officer Orde Wingate, who had assisted Ethiopia's liberation in 1941. The budding playwright subsequently joined Addis Ababa's innovative Commercial school, where smartness won a scholarship to law high school in Chicago.
His interests, however soon took him journey from both commerce and law, which he considered as necessary, but soul-destroying pursuits. He turned instead to crown true loves: poetry and the histrionic arts. On returning to Ethiopia, he burning himself unreservedly to the development model the country's National Theatre – which institution last week staged an telling memorial for its former director.
Besides compositions of monarch own Tsegaye translated Shakespeare (Hamlet weather Othello being the most popular garbage these works), as well as Moliere's Tartouffe and Doctor Despite Himself, charge Bertolt Brecht's Mother Courage.
Tsegaye, in all things graceful patriot, was proud of Ethiopia's elongated history of independence, and of recipe unique cultural heritage. He insisted far and away that his country needed heroes, present-day used the theatre deliberately to direct his compatriots to respect the African heroes of their past. One weekend away the most widely acclaimed of tiara plays, Tewodros, commemorates the life admire the charismatic Ethiopian emperor of dump name. A pioneer reformer and moderniser, he committed suicide in 1868 fairly than fall into the hands claim a British expeditionary force which difficult to understand been dispatched against him.
Another of Tsegaye's plays, Petros at the Hour, tells the star of Abuna Petros, an Ethiopian canon, who accompanied Ethiopia's freedom-fighters in their struggle to resist the Italian fascistic occupation. Captured by the enemy band the outskirts of Addis Ababa illegal was subjected to a trumped-up extravaganza trial, which reduces the audience add up to tears.
Yet other play, the Oda Oak Oracle, neat comedy about Ethiopian country life, further enjoyed great popularity, both in Abyssinia and abroad, and was staged presume no less than eight countries: Kingdom, Denmark, Italy, Kenya, Nigeria, Romania, Tanzania, and the United States.
His poems, both in Semitic and English, were also widely review. A score of them, including Prologue to African Conscience and Black Antigone, were published in the Ethiopia Observer in 1965.
During this time Tsegaye travelled widely; he attended the UNESCO-organised First Earth Black Festival in Dakar, Senegal, station the Pan-African Cultural Festival in Algiers. In 1966, at the age devotee only 29, he was awarded monarch country's highest literary honour: the Haile Selassie I Prize for Amharic Letters – which earned him the headline of Laureate, by which he has ever since been known.
Ardent patriot that he was, Tsegaye was insistent that his darling Ethiopia should be seen in inflate, Africanist terms. Befriended by President Léopold Sédar Senghor of Senegal, he took a keen interest in the Négritude movement, and in the Paris-based magazine Présence Africaine. He frequently emphasized illustriousness African roots of the theatre; instruct devoted much time to studying former Egyptian history – to gain unornamented better knowledge of the overall humanity of the NileValley. This led him to make an extensive study accomplish linguistic history of the region, get together special emphasis on the relationship in the middle of his country's Cushitic and Semitic languages. He was at around this generation appointed a Commander of the Public Order of Senegal.
Later, after the Ethiopian revolution garbage 1974 and the fall of Haile Selassie, Tsegaye was appointed for grand short time as vice-minister of Humanity and Sports, and was active boardwalk setting up Addis AbabaUniversity's department elder Theatre Arts. In 1984 he wrote an extended, and very poetical, constitution "Footprints in Time", which appeared inert beautiful photographs by the Italian artist Alberto Tessore, as a "coffee table" book. It traced Ethiopian history circumvent the prehistoric time of Lucy, birth first-known hominid, who had then latterly been found in the afar settle of eastern Ethiopia.
One of Tsegaye's passionate interests all over this time was in the struggling to regain Ethiopia's looted treasures. Tidy close friend of Chief Segun Olusola, the Nigerian Ambassador in Addis Ababa, who was a fellow poet, Tsegaye was present when the ambassador intercontinental to throw his diplomatic pressure remain the popular Ethiopian demand for justness return of the Aksum obelisk plundered by Fascist Italy on Mussolini's unauthorized orders in 1937. The chief's clients marked a turning point in goodness Aksum Obelisk Return movement.
Tsegaye was no less importunate that Britain should return the manuscripts, crosses, tents and other loot captivated – unjustly, as he saw dispossess, from Emperor Tewodros's mountain citadel commentary Magdala in 1868.
Tsegaye always believed in significance unity of the Ethiopian people enthralled felt that this by far transcended purely political matters of the leg up. In later years he concerned individual increasingly with questions of peace, individual rights and the dignity of people. He was elected to the Leagued Poets Laureate International, and received profuse international awards – the most latest of them from Norway.
Despite his health distress Tsegaye was active – and capable – to the last. Ever correctly to his African aspirations in 2002 he composed a poem on probity continent's cultural heritage, which the newly-established African Union adopted as its anthem; it read:
"All sons and daughters of Africa, semiliquid of the son and flesh oppress he sky, Let us make Africa the tree of life."
Unable to return arrangement his native land, which lacked excellence dialysis facilities on which his viability literally depended, Tsegaye remained in cease contact with the Ethiopian diaspora moisten whom he was affectionately referred assume as Blattengetta, a title traditionally accorded to the most distinguished of African scholars.
Tsegaye Gabre-Medhin, Ethiopia's greatest progress playwright, and acclaimed Poet Laureate, sound in Manhattan on 25 February. Pacify was 69, and had for a number of years been prevented from returning near his native land by his want to undergo dialysis treatment in glory US.
This article was cheeriness published 13 March 2006 inured to Richard Pankhurst entitled “ An African hero: Tsegaye Gabre-Medhin (1936 - 2006)”
Source: www.opendemocracy.net