UNDERSTANDING ETHNICITY AND IDENTITYTHROUGH ETHNOGRAPHIC DETAILS REPOSIT IN DRAMA AND THEATRE, A REVIEW OF FOUR AFRICAN PLAYS

Abstract

Right from the inception, drama and theatre have not only been used as instruments of preservation of culture and tradition, they have been most effectively utilized to interrogate, instruct, educate and conscientise. As human artistic devises, they have been used as tools of investigating the imperfections in the society with a view to encourage and reinforce change for the better. Through textual analysis, this paper examines how drama and theatre have been appropriated as sign posts for ethnographic understanding of people’s culture, ideology and social values. Among plays briefly examined are: J M Synge’sRiders to the Sea, Osita Ezenwanebe’s Shadows on Arrival, Efua Sutherland’s Edufaand Athol Fugard’s Sizwe Bansi is Dead. The paper reveals that drama and theatre can be deployed as part of the on-going project of addressing the politics of identity and representation in the contemporary situation of cultural and material inequalities that have been the subject of globalization.