Towards an African Performance Ontology: Theorising Being, Time, and Theatrical Presence in Nigerian Traditional Performance

This dissertation proposes a theoretical framework for an African performance ontology grounded in the philosophical and cosmological systems embedded in Nigerian traditional performance practices. Western performance theory has been dominated by ontological frameworks derived from Aristotelian and phenomenological traditions that privilege text, mimesis, and individual subjectivity as the foundations of theatrical being. This research argues that Nigerian traditional performance, encompassing Yoruba ritual masquerade, Igbo Mmonwu ceremony, and Hausa durbar performance, instantiates radically different ontological assumptions about being, time, and theatrical presence that demand new theoretical formulations. The study employs a transdisciplinary methodology combining philosophical analysis, performance ethnography, and African cosmological scholarship. Primary fieldwork was conducted across five geopolitical zones, including ethnographic observation of ritual performances and interviews with custodians and scholars of indigenous knowledge. The dissertation finds that Nigerian traditional performance operates according to an ontology of communal co-presence, cyclical time, and ancestral interpenetration that dissolves the Western actor-character duality. These findings have far-reaching implications for performance theory, suggesting the need for genuinely pluralistic ontological frameworks that do not subordinate African performance thought to Western theoretical primacy. The dissertation makes an original contribution to the theorisation of African performance philosophy. Keywords: African performance ontology, traditional performance, Nigerian theatre, philosophical theory, theatrical presence.