Speech in Action : Expressive Dynamics and Stakes in the Theatre of Tchicaya U Tam’si"

Abstract

Our reflection addresses the key issue of speech in the theatrical text. It is decrypting the 
inventiveness and modernity of speech in action in the dramatic creation of Tchicaya U Tam’si and 
is revealing is stakes. Relying on both semiology and sociocritics, it reveals an active, protean and 
moderm speech that transcends the simple saying to invest the concrete reality and impacts the 
recipients of the associated message. Moreover, that incarnated and performative "tchicayan" speech 
has the particualrity of ingraining in the spiritual, and harmoniously combining beauty, images, 
sounds, rythm and poetic inventiveness to dramatic creation. It works thus to strenghten the theaterpoetic which disput with melted hybridization, the traditionnel hegemonic codes of the theatrical 
genre. Brought by elected officials that no prognosis intended for power, the active and 
impactful dramatic speech of the Congolese playwright betrays ambitious but complexed characters, 
stuck in an ill-expressed self affirmation. They transform their experience of power into an auto- focused and nightmarish parenthesis for their people. Thus the Congolese Tchicaya U Tam’si is 
presented as an outstanding creator of the standardized dramatic writings and as a committed writer 
who reaffirms his figtht for a democratic political game animated by mature personalities prepared 
for the management of power