Theatre and Technology in Nigeria: Theorising the Posthuman Performance Event in an Afrofuturist Context

This dissertation theorises the emergence of posthuman performance in Nigerian theatre within an Afrofuturist framework, investigating how Nigerian artists are deploying digital technologies, artificial intelligence, augmented reality, and biotechnological aesthetics in performance works that reimagine African futures beyond colonial modernity. Afrofuturism, as a creative and critical movement that reclaims African agency in imagining technologically mediated futures, has generated significant attention in music, visual art, and literature, but its manifestation in Nigerian theatrical performance has received limited scholarly investigation. The research examines twelve Nigerian performance works produced between 2019 and 2024 that deploy advanced technologies in ways that articulate Afrofuturist imaginaries, applying posthumanist performance theory, Afrofuturist critical frameworks, and digital humanities methodologies. Practitioner interviews, production analysis, and audience reception research provide empirical grounding. The dissertation makes an original theoretical contribution through its development of the concept of techno-ancestral performance, which theorises the specific Afrofuturist logic of Nigerian posthuman theatre, characterised by the simultaneous invocation of ancestral presence and technologically mediated futurity as a mode of temporal and ontological sovereignty. Keywords: Afrofuturism, posthuman performance, Nigerian theatre, digital technology, techno-ancestral performance.