THEATRE AND INTERMEDIALITY: NAVIGATING THE AFRICAN THEATRICAL SPACE AND PERFORMANCE

ABSTRACT

Today, the domain of theatre has been unsettled by the challenge of digital technologies.. Over the past 30 years, the study of the performing arts has embraced not only a broad spectrum of practices which were formerly categorized under other art disciplines but also a wide range of social activities under the banner of ‘performance’ that were previously considered aspects of everyday life. The development of new technologies and media in the contemporary era has had a tremendous influence on the field of the arts and culture and has also posed serious threat on the viewership of live theatre by the audience members. This study sought to gain an understanding of how theatre and other media interrelate in the African theatre contexts as well as to build building new practice-centered understanding of how to negotiate the combination of the stage and screen processes involved in African plays. The two cases analyzed using the participant observation, artistic and literary methodologies in this study revealed many dynamic ways in which theatre interrelates with other media and their related technologies, and presented convincing evidence that theatre practice in these contexts is far more experimental in exploring the relations between theatre and other media than is purported in the literature. The study found that the interrelations between theatre and other media play a major role in reconfiguring conventional conceptualizations of theatre and theatrical presence. The evidence from the four case studies indeed confirms that other media were employed in the performances (by collaborative creative teams) to augment how the audience experienced theatrical presence, theatrical time and theatrical space, among other concepts, and because of these efforts traditional conceptualizations and perceptions of theatre were reconfigured. The study therefore recommends that theatre studies in these contexts needs to be responsive to the experimentation in theatre practice, which continuously augments how theatre is conceptualized, created and experienced. The study calls for a shift in approached towards medial interrelations in African theatre, lest scholarship separates itself from theatre practice.