Classical Tragedy and the HIV/AIDS Crisis: Staging Greek Lament Conventions in Benue State Communities

The HIV/AIDS crisis in Benue State, one of Nigeria's most heavily affected states, has created communities of grief that lack adequate formal frameworks for public mourning, communal acknowledgement, and therapeutic commemoration. This study examines the potential of Greek tragic lament conventions, particularly the kommos (communal lamentation) and the formal threnody, for facilitating communal grief processing in HIV/AIDS-affected communities in Benue State. A practice-based research methodology was adopted, involving the design and facilitation of three community drama workshops in Makurdi and Gboko, drawing on adapted versions of lamentation passages from Euripides's Trojan Women and Aeschylus's Agamemnon. Facilitators were trained in both classical drama conventions and community health facilitation. Post-workshop interviews with 48 community participants assessed therapeutic and social outcomes. Findings indicate that participants engaged deeply with the emotional landscape of classical lamentation, identifying with the collective experience of undeserved loss depicted in the Trojan Women. The formal structure of the dramatic lament provided a scaffolding for grief expression that participants described as liberating compared to silenced domestic mourning. Stigma-related grief, particular to HIV/AIDS contexts, was more freely articulated in the dramatic frame. The study concludes that classical lament drama has therapeutic potential for HIV/AIDS communities and recommends further practice-based research involving trained drama facilitators and healthcare workers in Benue State.

Keywords: Greek tragedy, lament, HIV/AIDS, community health, Benue State