The Dramatic Content of African Drama: An Analysis of Contending Issues-Chinenye Udeze and Godfrey Ngozi Ogbonna

Abstract: Various African dramatists hold different views with regard to the validity of African drama. This disagreement is captured in the contentions of the evolutionary and relativistic theories of African drama. Evolutionary scholars maintain that African drama falls short of the expected requirements of drama. For one thing, African drama does not follow the Greek drama pattern. Again, it does not have a plot and linguistic content. The relativistic group contends that drama must not evolve from myth. They say that what qualifies an activity as drama is function and entertainment. Once an activity achieves the expected function in society, in addition to entertainment, it automatically qualifies as drama. This article investigates the arguments of these two schools of African drama and concludes that even if suspense and conflict are absent in a display, they can still qualify as drama if they contain mimesis and performances.

Key Words: African drama; African dramatist; political leadership; corruption; alternative tradition; evolutionary theory; relativistic theory.