EMERGING PARADIGMS IN NIGERIAN THEATRE ARCHITECTURE

Abstract

The issue of theatre architecture began to generate serious debate among scholars and theatre practitioners in the 1950s, T and subsided in the 1980s without any definite conclusions. In the same way, what constitutes Nigerian literature, dramatic literature in particular, has also been in serious contention among theatre artists, who have been calling for the definition of a true drama and theatre. This paper hopes to address these basic issues, using the Arts Theatre, University of Ibadan, as the main point of reference.

In his essay, entitled 'Reflections on theatre practice in contemporary Nigeria', Femi Osofisan (1998), a radical dramatist, re-opened the unresolved controversy in the following words, which deserve to be quoted at length:

Perhaps the time has come, indeed, to re-launch the search for new forms, in quest of a real, revolutionary transformation of the medium itself, beyond the renovations we have so far carried out, and which some see as yet reformist. The criticism is growing, that, so far, most of what we have accomplished is a record merely of refurbishment, of innovating changes 'within' the old shrine and its rituals of performance, but without actually exploding it, turning its traditions inside out, to lead the acolytes to fresh explorations. The problem, of course, is that such criticisms usually come unaccompanied by suggestions of what directions this transformation should pursue. Here and there, imitations exist of new possibilities, new strategies perhaps in violent collations of the serious and the farcical, such as are being attempted by the Laffomania group in the Lagos-Ibadan axis; perhaps, in revivals of the guerrilla street theatres of the Old Ife group under Soyinka; perhaps, in new conceptions of community theatres away from their currently UNESCO-defined agenda. But, largely, no one seems to possess any clear answers.