Tesfaye Gessesse, who has died at the age of 84 following COVID-19 complications, revolutionized the theater in Ethiopia with his plays, acting, direction, and teaching. Jane Plastow, Professor of African Theatre at the University of Leeds, UK, described him as one of the three men who led a radical change in the form and content of the Ethiopian national drama in the early 1960s, along with Tsegaye Gebre-Medhin, and Mengistu Lemma. Dereje Tizazu, an Ethiopian journalist and author who is in the process of publishing the late Tesfay’s biography told Ethiopia Observer that Tesfaye was a pioneer who truly developed modern Ethiopian theatre and managed to produce memorable theatre brands with brilliance and charm, at a time when the theatre was flourishing as the most vital sector of the arts in Ethiopia.
The polished intellectual who was trained in the United States, North Western University after sent there by Emperor Haile Selassie when the king observed his talent as an amateur artist had written and successfully produced several plays. Among his plays were Father and Sons, the absurdist Iqaw (The thing), Tehaddiso (Renaissance), Yeshi, Cherchez Les femmes, and Ferdu Lenaninte (The judgment is for you).
Tesfaye had directed and starred in multiple plays, including in Tsegaye Gebremedhin’s adaptations of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. He translated a brief sketch of the lives of the Sufi mystic Omar Khayyam and his Rubaiyat.
His short story “Ayee my Luck ”, which was translated from the Amharic by Yonas Admassu, attained international recognition through its publication in African Arts in 1971. It gives a penetrating account of an Addis prostitute and her self-righteous client. Another story, “The Black Cat” (1988) was published in Yekatit magazine.
Born during the Italian occupation in Guro Gutu, Hararghe to his father Gessesse Qolech and his mother Belletech Yayyehyirad, Tesfaye was eight months old when his mother died. A year later, he lost his father, Gessese Qolech who was the son of Fitawrari Qolech who served as Ras Makonnen’s army commanders. Tesfaye was brought to Addis Ababa at the tender age of eight at the request of his aunt who wanted him to go to school. So early, 1945 he came to Addis by train, as he told Reidulf K Molvaer, author of Black Lions: The Creative Lives of Modern Ethiopia’s Literary Giants and Pioneers.
In Addis Ababa, the young Tesfaye started learning in Teferi Mekonnen school. Tesfays’ intriguing background and fair complexion provoked a malicious rumour that he was an illegitimate child and he was half-Italian. The fact that he was born during the Italian occupation served to reinforce the rumour. Tesfaye himself told Molvaer that at the time he used to be called Graccha, “Grey,” which is used of donkeys and mules of that colour – and as a nickname of half–casts. “This new “attention” disturbed Tesfaye so much that he became sick and was hospitalized. Tesfaye got no peace of mind because of this question till he had asked his aunt if his “real ” father was an Italian, as people had been hinting to him,” Molvaer wrote. “When Tesfaye asked his aunt about this, she told him that she had been present at his mother’s death-bed together with her (Tesfaye’s mother’s) husband. The dying mother, in a symbolic act, took Tesfaye’s and his aunt’s thumbs and asked he aunt (her elder sister) to look after Tesfaye and “account for him. His aunt asked her sister who Tesfaye’s father was, and she (Tesfaye’s mother) said, as Tesfaye recalls his aunt’ s words: “Neither in my dreams nor in reality have I ever slept with a white man, but only with his ( Tesfayé ‘s) father,” the author of Black Lions recounted.
At Teferi Mekonnen, Tesfaye was a scout, and as such he went camping often, and around the campfire, he would sing and act in skits, he told Molvaer. There he met and became friends with some students who became lifetime friends, including Sebhat Gebre Egziabher, who later became a renowned author in his own right.
After completing his secondary education, Tesfaye had enrolled at the University of Addis Ababa’s Law Faculty where he graduated in 1958. While there, upon watching him play at a drama staged by another prominent playwright, Kebede Michael, Emperor Haile Selassie advised the young Tesfaye to study theatre and arranged for his scholarship at Northwestern University’s theater school, in Evanston, Illinois. Returning in 1961, he worked as a director at the Haile Selassie I Theatre in Addis Ababa. He was the play director there from 1961 to 1963. He then moved to Haile Selassie I University and helped to establish the Creative Arts Centre under the initiative of the American national Philip Caplan who was working on a Fulbright scholarship at the Addis Ababa University. The two reportedly met in 1962 to co-direct a play and they hit on the idea of starting the drama section at the young Haile Selassie I University and establish a centre for experimental drama and actor training. Under the auspices of the Centre, Tesfaye and Caplan had directed the premiere of plays by the then young playwrights including Tsegaye Gebre Medhin and Mengistu Lemma. Solomon Deressa, Haile Gerima, Abate Mekuria, Wogayehu Negatu, Debebe Eshetu, Berhane Meskel Reda were among the active visitors to the Centre and received formal performance training. Tesfaye was the Centre’s director for four years.
In 1974-1983 he was the director of the Ethiopian National Theatre. His attempt to improve the economic and working conditions of artists ultimately led to his termination in 1983. In 1989 he was appointed chairperson of the Theatre Arts Department at Addis Ababa Universty but was dismissed and incarcerated for a short period when the military government was overthrown.
One of the early plays that Tesfaye directed was Yeshi, which brought the question of sex work to the fore. According to Molvaer, Yeshi was a woman of easy virtue who opened “a small prostitute’s kiosk” with herself as the only prostitute on offer. An “idealistic man” who condemned “the evil of this life but cannot keep himself away from it ” after some time fell in love with Yeshi. After various complications, Yeshi accused him of a crime he was innocent of, and he was arrested.
In 1975, he had another well-received play, staged under the title of Tahadisso (Renaissance). “Following on from Iqaw and Tehaddiso Tesfaye Gessesse continued, in two further plays, his examinations of how fear and mystification can be used as instruments of control,” Jane Plastow, wrote in her book, A History of East African Theatre, Volume 1 (2020). “Cherchez Les femmes was produced in 1980 at the Ager Fikir and subsequently at the Ras, and Ferdu Lenaninte (The judgment is for you),” she wrote.
Tesfaye was married to Meretush Akalu from 1961 to 1988 and they have two children together, Meselech Tesfaye and Gessesse Tesfaye. After the marriage with Meretush ended in divorce, Tesfaye remarried Menbere Girma, with whom he lived until his death.
Main Image: Tesfaye Gessesse with Golda Meir (1898–1978), the fourth Prime Minister of Israel on her visit to Ethiopia in 1962.
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