Developing an Original Theory of Laughter, Comedy, and Social Critique in Nigerian Popular Theatre

Nigerian popular theatre traditions including Yoruba travelling theatre, Hausa wasan kwaikwayo, and popular urban comedy performance use laughter and comic technique as vehicles for social critique in ways that established theories of comedy (from Bergson to Critchley) do not adequately account for, and developing an original theory of laughter and comedy in Nigerian popular theatre fills this gap. This study developed an original theory of laughter, comedy, and social critique in Nigerian popular theatre. A theoretical investigation combining systematic comedy theory review, corpus textual analysis, and ethnographic field research was employed. Systematic review of comedy theory (72 publications from 2018 to 2024) confirmed that existing frameworks prioritised incongruity, superiority, and relief theories without engaging communal laughter traditions or the use of comedy in non-Western political critique. Corpus analysis of 35 Nigerian popular theatre performances across five regional traditions examined comic technique, target selection, social critique function, and audience participation patterns. Field research at 20 popular performance venues across six geopolitical zones generated ethnographic data on laughter performance and reception. The original Nigerian Popular Comedy Theory proposes five comic functions specific to Nigerian performance: solidarity laughter (bonding through shared recognition of shared social conditions), prophylactic comedy (pre-emptive comedic framing of dangerous critique), trickster epistemics (using comic persona to access restricted knowledge), carnivalesque inversion (temporarily reversing social hierarchies through performance), and communal catharsis (collective emotional release as political response). Expert review by 22 comedy theory and performance scholars confirmed the study's original theoretical contribution.