Performance, Ritual, and the Sacred in Yoruba Drama: A New Theoretical Framework for Understanding Contemporary Yoruba Theatre

This dissertation develops a new theoretical framework for understanding the relationship between performance, ritual, and the sacred in contemporary Yoruba theatre, arguing that existing frameworks, drawn primarily from Western theatre theory and from Wole Soyinka's foundational but selectively applicable theoretical work, are insufficient to account for the full range of performative strategies and cosmological engagements in the contemporary Yoruba theatrical landscape. Yoruba theatrical culture is among the richest and most diverse in Africa, encompassing concert party, travelling theatre, university drama, film, and newly emerging digital performance forms, all of which draw in varying ways on the deep wells of Yoruba ritual performance, including egungun masquerade, gelede festival drama, and orisa ceremony, while also navigating the conditions of contemporary Yoruba social and political life. The dissertation constructs a new theoretical framework integrating Yoruba performance philosophy, particularly the concept of ori (personal destiny) and ase (sacred power) as performance principles, with contemporary performance studies, ritual theory, and African cultural philosophy. The framework is applied to close critical analysis of performances and texts from Duro Ladipo's opera tradition, Hubert Ogunde's theatrical legacy, the contemporary work of the Wole Soyinka Foundation theatre programme, and selected Nollywood Yoruba films. Original contributions include the new Yoruba performance theory framework, a reconceptualisation of the sacred-secular relationship in Yoruba theatrical practice, and a model for analysing the ritual dimensions of seemingly secular contemporary Yoruba performance. Keywords: Yoruba theatre, performance theory, ritual, sacred, contemporary drama.