Issues of the Self and Othering in Community Theatre Practice

Abstract

Theatre has continued to serve as a vehicle via which culture expresses itself. This is even more abundant in Africa. Playing together and imitating one another have been a performative occurrence via which Africans in various contexts elucidate matters of serious concern  for edification, correction and education. The practice of community theatre has sprung from a desire both to demonstrably authenticate  African indigenous performance forms as communal practices and to deploy same as forum for negotiating development for African  communities. It has served as a response to Western postulations on the theatre of Africa and as a functional endeavour to push the  frontiers of the advancement of the people of Africa, especially rural, forward. Essentially a social research practice, community theatre  uses drama as a means for achieving dialogue, participation and communal action for change.The subject matter of the drama is usually  derived from findings of research conducted within the community. However, there appears a deliberate attempt by communities to  create fictional characters with antithetical traits as ‗others‘ rather than as members of the same community, as self. This habit tends to  push the blame on those in the minority, on the voiceless, and therefore inferior, among them.This paper adopts a postcolonial clout in  case studying two community theatre exercises in northern Nigeria in order to underscore likely behaviours which add to the  underdevelopment of Africa today. Community dialogue and participation for positive action is strained in environments where the dominant group (the self) is presented as perfect, therefore faultless, while the minority (the other) is represented as criminal, and  sometimes voiceless. The Zuru and Sumaila experiences reveal that classification of people as self and/or other does not promote the  basic goals of community theatre nor would it help instigate any sustainable development.