Tsegaye Gebre-Medhin, the poet laureate many consider Ethiopia’s greatest playwright, was born on Aug. 17, 1936, in Boda near Ambo, Face2Face Africa noted on his birthday in 2019.
Tsegaye Gebre-Medhin, photographed around 1960. (Unknown photographer / Wikimedia Commons, public domain) [file photo]
He earned a degree from the Blackstone School of Law in Chicago in 1959, but his interests turned to drama, Face2Face Africa wrote. In 1960 he studied experimental theater at the Royal Court Theatre in London and the Comédie-Française in Paris, then returned to manage the Ethiopian National Theatre, according to his Wikipedia biography.
He wrote more than 30 plays, most of them in Amharic, and translated works by Shakespeare, Brecht and Molière into Amharic, according to Face2Face Africa. His Amharic plays focused on contemporary Ethiopia, as in Crown of Thorns (1959), while Oda Oak Oracle (1965) is his best-known verse play in English.
In 1966, at age 29, he received the Haile Selassie I Prize for Amharic Literature, which earned him the title of laureate. After the 1974 revolution he served briefly as vice-minister of culture and sports and helped set up the theater arts department at Addis Ababa University.
His best-known historical plays include Tewodros, on the 19th-century emperor, and Petros at the Hour, on Abune Petros, the bishop executed during the Italian occupation. He campaigned for the return of the Aksum obelisk taken to Rome in 1937 and of treasures looted from Emperor Tewodros’ citadel at Maqdala.
Face2Face Africa wrote that all three governments of his career — Emperor Haile Selassie’s, Mengistu Hailemariam’s and Meles Zenawi’s — banned his plays. He once said that about 36 of his 49 works had been censored at one time or another, the outlet said.
He received the Human Rights Watch free expression award in New York in 1982, according to Face2Face Africa. He moved to New York in 1998 for kidney treatment, died in Manhattan on Feb. 25, 2006, and was buried at Holy Trinity Cathedral in Addis Ababa.