Bridging Ritual and Dramaturgy: Total Theatre as Performance Praxis in Uwemedimo Atakpo’s Isadok

Abstract

This study examines the convergence of ritual and dramaturgy within the framework of Total Theatre as performance praxis in Uwemedimo Atakpo’s Isadok. While African theatre scholarship has consistently acknowledged the integrative nature of indigenous performance traditions, there remains limited critical attention to how these elements are structurally deployed within contemporary dramaturgical practice. This article interrogates Isadok as a paradigmatic text that synthesises ritual performance, narrative structure, music, dance, and spectacle into a unified theatrical experience.
Drawing on Total Theatre theory, postcolonial performance aesthetics, and ethno-dramatics, the study adopts a qualitative textual and performance analysis approach. It explores how ritual elements such as invocation, symbolic embodiment, and communal participation are embedded within the dramaturgical architecture of the play. The analysis reveals that Isadok transcends conventional dramatic form by collapsing the boundaries between performer and audience, sacred and secular space, and narrative and enactment.
The findings demonstrate that Total Theatre in Isadok operates not merely as an aesthetic device but as an epistemological framework that encodes cultural memory, social values, and cosmological consciousness. The play exemplifies how contemporary Nigerian theatre reconfigures indigenous performance logics into modern dramaturgical expressions, thereby challenging Eurocentric theatrical conventions.
The study contributes to ongoing debates on African-centred performance theory by positioning Total Theatre as a viable methodological and conceptual model for analysing African dramaturgy. It further underscores the relevance of ritual aesthetics in shaping contemporary theatrical practices and advocates for the recognition of Total Theatre as a dynamic performance praxis within global theatre discourse.