ABSTRACT
Zulu Sofola's immense contribution to the development of the notion of African tragedy and drama, in general, is enormous. The number of plays she published and her practice of theatre, which began in the 1970s, reveal a career that had the potential to attain even higher landmarks before this Amazon of African drama departed the scene in 1995. However, in spite of the scholarly attentions that have been given to her contributions, most critics have often subsumed her original efforts in African drama space within the general idea of post Nigerian Civil War drama. Little attention has been paid to Sofola's dramaturgical contributions to the African dramatic oeuvre. The implication of this is that her career is only tangentially recognised. In this essay, I survey, highlight and elucidate Sofola's achievements and contributions to African theatre. An important broad aim of this discourse is to extend the already established studies on Sofola's dramatic oeuvre by further contextualising her drama within the contemporary realities of the Nigerian cultural, socioeconomic and political environment, particularly as these were represented in tragic concerns. There is indeed a clear need to update the trend in African theatre criticism through an explication of Sofola's Wedlock of the Gods . This discussion, therefore, hopes to achieve this updating by linking the play to Sofola's concept of the tragic mode and her vision of African theatre practice as she espouses in The Artist and the Tragedy of a Nation.
