The Aesthetics of Intermediality in Nigerian Performance: Theatre, Film, and Digital Media in Creative Dialogue

This dissertation investigates the aesthetics of intermediality in contemporary Nigerian performance, examining the creative dialogue between theatre, film, and digital media in productions that deliberately cross and blur the boundaries of distinct media forms. Intermediality, the productive encounter between different media forms within a single performance event, has been theorised in European and North American performance contexts, but its specific manifestation within Nigerian creative practice reflects distinctive material conditions, audience cultures, and artistic histories that demand original theoretical attention. The research analyses twenty productions and performance events staged between 2018 and 2024 in which Nollywood aesthetics, live theatrical performance, and digital media technologies are integrated into composite intermedial works. The dissertation employs a performance media analysis methodology combining close textual and visual analysis with practitioner interviews and audience reception research. An original theoretical contribution is the concept of Afrodigital intermediality, which theorises the specific aesthetic logic governing the integration of African performance conventions with digital media in Nigerian performance, characterised by excess, simultaneity, and the strategic deployment of technological spectacle as a form of postcolonial cultural assertion. Keywords: intermediality, Nigerian performance, digital media, Nollywood aesthetics, Afrodigital theatre.