ABSTRACT
The joke culture in Nigeria manifests in forms comprising stand-up comedy, jokes in videoettes, "comicast", and others.The mode of performance of comicast caricatures either the granting of interviews meant for electronic broadcast, or the reading, reporting and relaying of news items or bulletins to a listening mass audience from feigned studio spaces or right on the streets, with lavish evidence of intermediality and theatricality. This chapter draws on the theory of interactive dramaturgy, focuses on a considerable number of comicast jokes thriving in Nigeria from 2014 to 2015 by identifying the remote influences; factors engendering their boom immediately before, during and after Nigeria's presidential elections; and their performance as a critique of the prevailing norms of conventional comedy or theatre by describing its unique dramaturgy. The comicast has its roots in the electronic media, approximating what today has earned the name "cyberpop" – the cultural products embracing textual, visual, and electronic intermedial forms.
