The Ethics of Representation in Documentary and Verbatim Theatre: Constructing an African Framework for Testimonial Performance

This dissertation constructs an original African ethical framework for testimonial performance practice, addressing the ethical challenges of representing real individuals, communities, and traumatic events in documentary and verbatim theatre. The rapid growth of documentary and verbatim theatre as a global performance mode has generated extensive scholarly debate in Western contexts about the ethics of testimony, the politics of voice, and the rights of represented subjects. This research argues that existing ethical frameworks are inadequate for African theatrical contexts, where oral testimony is embedded in communal governance structures, cultural protocols regulate the public narration of traumatic experience, and the relationship between performer and community is governed by norms of collective accountability not accounted for in individualist Western frameworks. The dissertation develops its African testimonial ethics framework through a combination of philosophical analysis of African ethics of care and communal responsibility, empirical case study analysis of seven documentary theatre projects in Nigeria, and interviews with practitioners and community participants. The research makes an original theoretical contribution through the concept of communal testimonial sovereignty, which proposes that the community, rather than the individual, must be recognised as the primary rights-holder in documentary theatre practice. Keywords: documentary theatre, testimonial ethics, African framework, verbatim performance, communal sovereignty.