ENRICHING AFRICAN LITERARY DRAMA WITH THE CREATIVE TECHNICALITY OF INDIGENOUS STORY PERFORMANCE APPROACH: THE EXAMPLE OF FEMI OSOFISAN

Abstract

Much of the distinctiveness of Osofisan’s plays can be found in his creative manipulation of the indigenous storytelling approach. Universally, storytelling is an age-long enriching, and memorable platform for instruction and amusement for all humankind. Its spontaneous and improvisatory style has the special ability to enliven, to a large extent, contemporary African plays as it readily reawakens that familiar communal interaction between the audience and the performer(s) entrenched in African local cultures. Hence, the focus of this essay is an interrogation of the enlivenment features of the indigenous story performance approach in Osofisan’s Many Colours Make the Thunder-King, Once Upon Four Robbers, and Farewell to a Cannibal Rage. In these traditional plays, one observes that both the narrator and the audience drive the trend of the plays. Thus, the paper not only engages the role of the narrator and the audience, but also analyzes those indigenous events like games, dance, riddles, and songs that sustain this camaraderie between the audience and the actors. In all, the paper establishes that the storytelling mode is the fundamental enriching ingredient in these selected plays of Femi Osofisan.