House of Virtue: A Domestic Tragedy

By Ferkah Ahenkorah

A great paradox is man whose reason and conscience apprehend and pursue a set of moral laws that aim at harmony and decency whilst his soul harbors a volcano of disruptive passions which yearn for satisfactions that produce abominations and discord.

This excerpt from the preface to the play House of Virtue sums up the moral and emotional contradictions in the life of a high-standing government official, moralist, and disciplinarianan ombudsman. When, as the aggressive spearhead of the Crusade for Social Morality (the strict movement against all forms of social indecencies and immorality including the sexual abuse of children), the Ombudsman is accused by his son-in-law of the crime of abusing his own daughter sexually, suspense builds up as to the outcome of the accusation, not only in the family of the ombudsman but also among theater audiences.

House of Virtue, as a piece of social criticism, not only foregrounds moral education as one of the fundamental functions of theater. It treats with naturalistic candor one of the basic passions of human nature and some of the archetypal issues of individual and family life that make a theatrical piece transcend the boundaries of time, space, and national culture.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Sep 26, 2014
• ISBN: 9781496991119

Ferkah Ahenkorah

Ferkah Ahenkorah is an Elder in the Church of Pentecost International Norway and resides with his family in Oslo. He holds a Ph. D. in Comparative Literature and Theatre Studies from the University of Oslo. Ahenkorah is currently the Presiding Elder of the Akan-speaking Assembly of the Church in Oslo - the Ammerud Assembly. He is active in the teaching ministry of the church. Elder Ferkah is married to Deaconess Felicia Ahenkorah. They have fi ve children: Olympia, Samuel, Deborah, Theophilia and Malachi.

Book preview

24821.png

AuthorHouse™ UK Ltd.

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403 USA

www.authorhouse.co.uk

Phone: [phone]

© 2014 . All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this stage play are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Published by AuthorHouse 09/24/2014

ISBN: 978-1-4969-9112-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4969-9111-9 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

DEDICATION

PREFACE TO HOUSE OF VIRTUE

Chapter 1 A DEFENCE OF TRADITIONAL MORAL VALUES

Chapter 2 Characters In The Play

Chapter 3 Time And Place

Chapter 4 Characters And Artistes Premiere

Chapter 5 Production Team

Chapter 6 The Layout Of The Stage

ACT ONE

ACT TWO

ACT THREE

ACT FOUR

DEDICATION

To The Holy Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of truth, wisdom knowledge and revelation who guides us into all truth.

To Emmary Brown, theatre director, Accra, Ghana for directing my first play and for encouraging me to write for the stage.

To Cliff Moustache, artistic director of Nordic Black Theater, Oslo for his encouragement and advice in the theatre.

To the staff of the Nordic Black Theatre for their cheerful and willing collaboration in the production of the play.

To my steadfast wife, Felicia Adane Ahenkorah, a health worker, who follows me faithfully everywhere even unto the stage.

To the Executive Board of The New Millennium Theatre, Oslo, Norway.

To the Actors of the New Millennium Players troupe and the technical team who undertook the first production of the House of Virtue in Oslo.

To Dr. Ebenezer Paintsil, Ms. Felicia Asomani and Mr. Oppong Amankwaa for meticulous proofreading of the manuscript.

PREFACE TO HOUSE

OF VIRTUE

A DEFENCE

OF TRADITIONAL

MORAL VALUES

Preface to the Preface

Why on earth will someone lust after his own daughter? Does it happen in reality? Is it acceptable in modern and ancient cultures? etc. These are some of the rhetorical questions that scandalized individual and public opinion usually put when confronted with such aberrations as when a respectable public official, an ombudsman, is found to have had sexual relations with his own daughter. Though such questions have some legitimacy, I wonder how many people stop to consider why history should produce such a curse upon the human race as the Roman Emperor Nero, who murdered both his mother and his empress and burned the city of Rome in order to get inspiration to compose an epic about a burning city on his amateurish harp; why Cambyses (ca. 530-522 BC), son of the Persian King, Cyrus the Great, should fall desperately in love with Atossa, his own blood sister, and got the Persian judges and the court to legitimize sister marriage for the first time so that she could make his sister both wife and queen ; or why, Adolf Hitler could conceive the idea of the superiority of the German and the Aryan races and that the Jews deserved to be exterminated. Why should a writer of such wit and sagacity like the Irish poet Oscar Wilde (1954-1900) be successfully prosecuted for homosexuality in Victorian England and sentenced to a term of imprisonment with hard labor?

It cannot be gainsaid that Nature, in its evolution through space and time, has proved neither democratic nor egalitarian, neither entirely consistent nor entirely predictable. Though the vast majority of her products conform to the model acceptable to man, she has also from time to time spinned off freaks and deformities. Some people are born as struggling Siamese twins, others with oversize heads and undersize legs, others crippled or lame, others deaf and blind, others are born stutterers or mute, and yet others are born without a leg or an arm. At the level of temperament and talent, some are born highly intelligent, others less intellectually gifted; some are courageous to the point of foolhardiness, others extremely timid; some are domineering, others submissive; some are inordinately hot-blooded and lecherous, others cold-blooded and modest; some are gluttonous and voracious, others abstinent and temperate.

Though physical deformities cannot be easily remedied by human intervention despite the great advances in medicine and scientific technology, it is the historical role of moral education to remedy the excesses of human temperament, and the duty of politics to create institutions that ensure balance of power and prevent human nature in rulers from manifesting its worst excesses, since power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. If Rome’s expansionism and war-mongering had not created a generation of ambitious generals who converted the Republic into an empire, Nero could not have become an Emperor. If the Persian court had been courageous enough to resist the indecent proposal of Cambyses his incestuous passion would have subsided with time.

Adolf Hitler was similarly a product of the institutions and ideas of his time. Charles Dawn’s book On Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favour Races in the Struggle for Life (1859) had popularized the idea of the survival of the fittest which was transferred from biology into sociology and economics as Social Darwinism. This idea was borrowed by dictators like Hitler and Mussolini and used to justify war and racism and the subjugation of weaker nations by the more powerful ones. This notwithstanding, if Adolf Hitler had not had the support of the German general staff, if he had not inherited a historical legacy of morbid German nationalism and the prevailing national folk myth that Germany was the superior race and had a historical destiny to rule other nations, his plan for world domination would have remained a mad man’s unfulfilled dream, and his Mein Kampf (1925-1926), the book he wrote in prison, in which he outlined his evil schemes against the Jews and his plan for territorial expansion to give Germany, more Lebensraum, (living space), would have remained an ineffectual social philosophy or a badly written specimen of closet imaginative literature.

It may be inferred from the foregoing that the moral and temperamental excesses and other aberrations of human nature may be tamed, corrected or curbed through moral education, the wise management and distribution of power, and the establishment and preservation of preventive and corrective institutions. Above all this calls for the circulation of progressive humanitarian ideas as well as the inculcation of humane life-promoting moral values.

However, moral values that have traditionally promoted and maintained peace, progress and sanity in human society have come under attack and constant erosion in the present age. Some types of moral conduct that were considered an abomination some decades ago are now tolerated with indifference, others that defy all standards of decency are being legalized by national parliamentary enactments. The liberalization that is affecting all aspects of life in human society in the name of individual liberty, self-realization, and the right to choose contains inherent if not obvious dangers. The young no longer stand up in buses to give their seat to the aged and the sick, both young and old rest their dirty footwear on the seats in public transport buses and in the subway without rebuke. Minors smoke in public places, drug abuse among teenagers is rampant and widespread, some young lovers openly kiss in the presence of their parents without any sense of shame and modesty, others irreverently kiss each other in chapels during or after church service, cohabitation outside formal marriage is becoming a norm, homosexual and lesbian marriages are blessed in churches as a slap in the face of the God who says that people who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God, divorce is becoming as easy and rampant as saying goodbye to a friend after a weekend party, and this also among Christians who apparently consider divorce a compliment to the God who says He hates divorce. People contract marriages without parental consent or awareness, and later turn back to their parents for advice when faced with crises in the marriage. People go virtually naked in the streets, defending their right to dress as it suits them. The list continues ad infinitum. All kinds of organizations are formed to defend the morally indefensible.

There is the crying need for the general realization that unless this moral liberalization is reassessed in the general interest of current and future generations of the human race, a time may come when by the process of habituation what is now morally abhorrent will be so customized and familiar that the human spirit will become reconciled to the most horrid monstrosities in the name of progress and liberty. The unemployed may band together into gangs of thieves demanding a law to defend their right to rob unless society is able to provide jobs for them, movements may rise to defend the right of sons to marry mothers in the interest of perfecting the highest form of disinterested love possible among ordinary mortals—the consummate blend of maternal love and filial piety; and coalitions of men may emerge