ABSTRACT
The various definitions of ‘performance’, ‘drama’, ‘theatre’, and of ‘tradition’ and ‘traditional’, come to exercise a tyranny over students. Very often they proceed to use the definitions and categories not so much as a means of conceptualization but as a yardstick to measure how ‘dramatic’ and how ‘theatrical’ each performance item is. A modification of the Aristotelian ‘rules’, which may even include opposition to Aristotle’s theories generally, is often the starting point for an attempt to relate the traditional arts of performance to contemporary African culture in terms of a redefinition of drama. The Kwagh hir lies in the interstices between the traditional and essentially rural arts inherited from the past, and the fully-fledged urban theatre performances of travelling theatre companies like the Ogunde Theatre company, which are grass-roots artistic products by urban folk for their own communities.
