The Father Of Ghanaian Theater

Uncle Ebo Whyte wonders why Africa is not pouring money into telling its own stories.

- Peace Hyde

Uncle Ebo Whyte is a six-foot-tall, unassuming looking man. You could mistake him for a steward of the theater rather than the father of it. He speaks in a soft but confident manner but has an attention to detail that is slightly intimidating as we sit down in his cosy office to discuss his journey as one of West Africa’s best known playwrights. Surprisingly, the love of his life arrived by accident.

“I didn’t have the confidence to join the drama society because it had all the popular boys and I suffered from inferiority complex in those days, so I couldn’t enter their circle. One day they needed someone to fill in during their rehearsals and I happened to be the only person standing in the window watching them. What the director didn’t realize was that I had memorized the lines. It took the director only five minutes to realize I would be able to give a better performance than the previous actor he had cast for the role,” says Whyte.

In 1974, Whyte wrote his first play. It was called ‘Man Must Live’ and depicted the struggles of two sisters whose father died and left them penniless. The story had echoes of his life. As the first of five boys, Whyte grew up in a competitive household. When he was 15 years old, his father passed away and his family lost everything.

“I was devastated when he died, I think for a year or two I was totally lost. Those were the days before the Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC) law came into place, for when a man died intestate, which protects the widow and the children. So, all the extended family took every- thing from us apart from the house we were living in,” says Whyte.

After studying statistics at the University of Ghana, Whyte almost got chartered but decided last minute against accounting. He wanted a life of spinning stories into gold.