Storytelling and family therapy in Bole Butake’s Family Saga

This paper examines the therapeutic functions of narratives as used in traditional African context, and the use of storytelling as a tool for family therapy, from the perspective of narrative therapy, as displayed in Bole Butake’s Family Saga. It shows the process used by the playwright to showcase the African storytelling tradition in its cathartic (thus therapeutic) role, and its effectiveness in solving individual and group problems in a family context. It further demonstrates how the specific therapeutic setup is put in place in the play: stories are usually told for the healing benefit of the listener only, the storyteller being usually considered sane, and the listener the one in want. In Family Saga, both parties are in want. This accounts for the two-approach analysis used in this paper: the narrative therapy to examine the effect of stories on the story teller, and the therapeutic functions of traditional storytelling in traditional societies to understand the healing
process in the listener. It comes to the conclusion that Family Saga is a brilliant demonstration of reconciliation process in a crisis context.

Keywords: Storytelling – therapeutic functions – traditional griot – narrative therapy – Family Saga – Reconciliation.