An Original Investigation into the Theory of Collective Memory and Its Expression in Nigerian Memorial Theatre

Nigerian memorial theatre, which dramatises traumatic collective events including civil war, colonial violence, and communal conflicts, provides communities with ritualised performance spaces for collective memory processing, yet no original theoretical framework has been developed to account for how collective memory operates in Nigerian memorial performance specifically. This study conducted an original theoretical investigation into collective memory and its expression in Nigerian memorial theatre. A theoretical methodology combining memory studies, trauma theory, and performance analysis was employed. Systematic review of collective memory and memorial performance theory (84 publications from 2018 to 2024) identified five theoretical frameworks widely applied to memorial theatre (Halbwachs, Assmann, Nora, Connerton, Taylor) and assessed their applicability to Nigerian contexts. Critical analysis confirmed that all five frameworks were developed in contexts where states, not communities, primarily organised memory, where written archives were primary memory repositories, and where religious ritual and performance were distinguished from secular memorial performance, all three of which are inadequate assumptions for Nigerian memorial theatre contexts. Original empirical research comprising analysis of 20 Nigerian memorial plays, 3 annual memorial performance festivals, and interviews with 30 memorial theatre practitioners and historians generated Nigerian-specific theoretical propositions. The original Nigerian Memorial Theatre Memory Framework proposes four memorial functions: ancestral continuity (integrating the dead into the living community through performance), communal testimony (collective rather than individual witness bearing), futurity memory (performing the past to prevent its repetition), and healing enactment (using dramatic re-enactment as community therapy).