28 Facts About Efua Sutherland

Efua Sutherland's works include the plays Foriwa, Edufa, and The Marriage of Anansewa.

Efua Sutherland founded the Ghana Drama Studio, the Ghana Society of Writers, the Ghana Experimental Theatre, and a community project called the Kodzidan.

Efua Sutherland was a pioneering African publisher, establishing the company Afram Publications in Accra in the 1970s.

Efua Sutherland was a cultural advocate for children from the early 1950s until her death, and played a role in developing educational curricula, literature, theatre and film for and about Ghanaian children.

Efua Sutherland was born as Efua Theodora Morgue in Cape Coast, Gold Coast, where she studied teaching at St Monica's Training College in Mampong.

Efua Sutherland experimented creatively with storytelling and other dramatic forms from indigenous Ghanaian traditions.

Efua Sutherland's plays were often based on traditional stories, but borrowed from Western literature, transforming African folktale conventions into modern dramatic theatre techniques.

Efua Sutherland's best known plays are Edufa, Foriwa, and The Marriage of Anansewa.

In 1958, Efua Sutherland founded the Ghana Experimental Theatre, which was based at the Ghana Drama Studio built by Efua Sutherland and launched by President Kwame Nkrumah in 1963 with Joe de Graft as its first director.

In 1963, when Efua Sutherland took on the role of Research Associate at the Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana, she brought along with her the Ghana Drama Studio, which became an off-campus training space, called the University of Ghana Drama Studio.

Efua Sutherland, in addition to her field research and teaching in African Dramatic Forms, was a core member of the team that conceptualised and established the School of Performing Arts.

Efua Sutherland mentored and was in turn inspired by many of Ghana's accomplished writers, including Ama Ata Aidoo, Kofi Anyidoho and Meshack Asare.

Efua Sutherland remained involved in Afram's editorial work until her death.

Efua Sutherland's work attracted the attention of creatives from the global African world.

Maya Angelou's fifth volume of memoirs All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes testifies to the emotional support and entree into Ghanaian society afforded her in the 1960s by Efua Sutherland who became a close friend.

Efua Sutherland was to personally intervene, at his death in Accra, Ghana in 1963, to support Mrs Shirley Du Bois.

In 1980, Efua Sutherland wrote a paper entitled "Proposal for a Historical Drama Festival in Cape Coast", underscoring the significance she attached to connections between Africa and its Diaspora.

Efua Sutherland presided over Ghana's ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and chaired the National Commission on Children from 1983 to 1990, a period that marked the most vigorous and comprehensive child advocacy on a national scale in the history of Ghana.

Efua Sutherland laid the groundwork for the Mmofra Foundation, active since 1997 as a civic organisation dedicated to enriching the cultural and intellectual lives of all children in Ghana.

Efua Sutherland was invited by UNICEF to join a worldwide network of scholars to consider a code of human rights for the protection of children.

Florence Laast, founder of Accra's St Martin de Porres School, speaking of how her own life had been impacted by Efua Sutherland's mentorship, described her as "one of the greatest thinkers of our time" who believed that "the home is our first classroom, and our parents the first teachers".

Efua Sutherland experimented creatively with storytelling and other dramatic forms from indigenous Ghanaian traditions.

Efua Sutherland's plays were often based on traditional stories, but borrowed from Western literature, transforming African folktale conventions into modern dramatic theatre techniques.

Efua Sutherland's best known plays are Edufa, Foriwa, and The Marriage of Anansewa.

Playtime in Africa has been described "a groundbreaking book on Ghana's play culture", which Efua Sutherland considered important for in developing young minds and bodies.

Efua Sutherland's choice to celebrate the fool is a part of a longer lineage of uses of the trickster figure in African literature.

In 2020, at an event marking International Women's Day, Efua Sutherland was honoured by 3Music Awards for her achievements in the entertainment industry.

In March 2024, the estate of Efua Sutherland launched a centenary celebration of her life and legacy in Accra, unveiling plans to commemorate the year in which she would have turned 100.