Approach to playwriting in a time of change in Nigeria: The application of post-indiginist realism

Abstract

In contemporary times, change, which ramifies in multifarious configurations and colourations, has been the lot of Nigerians. Ordinarily, there is nothing  strange about this as change is said to be the only constant factor in human existence. But the nature of the ‘change’ in question calls for more than a  cursory attention as it seems to be in dissonant relationship with the people’s expectations. Our position is that using their creative inventions, Nigerian  playwrights of today owe to themselves and their society a duty to unpack this change. The reality presented by the prevailing change should be of  interest to Nigerian creative writers because “when reality is ignored or significant trends of thought are not reflected, art falls into disrepute”. This paper  therefore espouses the channels by which the creative oeuvre of contemporary playwrights could interrogate the ‘new’ change. The paper proposes post-  indiginist aesthetics, a departure from indiginist essentialism and from indiginist hybridity and which thrives on character realism in a  contemporary mode, as the needed tool for playwrights to navigate the new change terrain because, as noted by Brecht, “new problems appear and  demand new methods. Reality changes; in order to represent it, modes of representation must change”. That is the focal point of this paper.