Tony Harrison: Nigeria, Masque and Masks

Rachel Bower pays unprecedented attention to Aikin Mata, the version of Aristophanes’ bawdy comedy Lysistrata that Harrison wrote and produced with the Irish poet, James Simmons, when they were teaching at Ahmadu Bello University in Northern Nigeria in 1965. She argues that this encounter with indigenous African performance idioms has had a lasting influence on his later creative practice as well as the emergence of intercultural approaches in world theatre more widely.