Mohammed ben Abdallah (playwright)

Mohammed ben Abdallah (25 April 1944 – 18 September 2025) was a Ghanaian playwright, theatre director, educator, and politician. A member of the Legon 7, he founded Legon Road Theatre and later established Abibigromma, initially a resident troupe at the university that was subsequently relocated to the National Theatre in Accra, which was established in the 1980s in part through his initiative. In 1990, he oversaw the establishment of the National Commission on Culture. He also served as Secretary for Education and Culture under the PNDC and later headed the University of Ghana's School of Performing Arts.

Referred to as "the major Ghanaian playwright of his generation." Abdallah's work, often pan-African in scope and attentive to histories such as the transatlantic slave trade, was grounded in indigenous performance. His stage works include The Slaves (1972), The Trial of Malam Ilya, The Verdict of the Cobra, and The Alien King (all 1987); The Fall of Kumbi and The Witch of Mopti (all 1989); Land of a Million Magicians (1993); and Song of the Pharaoh (2022), as well as the children’s plays Ananse and the Rain God (1989) and Ananse and the Golden Drum (1994).