THEATRE IN THE VANGUARD OF COUNTERTERRORISM IN THE COMPUTER AGE

Abstract

This was the text of a Lead Paper presented at the 2018 Conference of the Society of Nigerian Theatre Artists (SONTA)
hosted by the Federal University of Oye-Ekiti (FUOYE). Addressing the broad theme of Theatre in the vanguard of counterterrorism, the paper situates the discourse within the context of the computer age which has revolutionised human communication on the global stage. Theatre, the paper argues, has always been deployed in the service of the human society, from inception, as against the contentious aesthetic theory of art for art’s sake. The paper traces the artistic intervention of theatre in human affairs from its close collaboration with the religious persuasion of the Classical Greek society, to later involvement in politics and other societal imperatives, propelled by the supersonic speed of the Information Age driven by computer technology. The paper urges all the participants at the conference to deliberate on the how and why theatre can collaborate with technology to defeat the growing scourge of terrorism in the global space.