Abstract: This presentation tracks the changing dispositions for theatricality in contemporary Nigerian political and popular culture. It ponders the persistence of theatricality as a dimension of Nigerian and African civic culture under varied political dispensations. It also considers the extent to which new media technologies have or have not fundamentally altered the functions of theatricality in the African world. An examination of the interface between media and theatricality in Nigerian popular culture serves in this paper as the point of departure for a reflection on the nature of theatricality in twenty-first century Nigeria, as well as the import and potential outcomes of current forms of theatricality for political and civic culture in the present age.

Bio: Moradewun Adejunmobi is a professor in the African American and African Studies Department at the University of California, Davis. She is an interdisciplinary scholar focused on the interactions between digital, print, and live performances of both popular and ‘high’ culture texts in selected countries of West Africa. Her current research examines the intersection between commerce, critical reception, and local autonomy in the Nigeran film/television industry, popularly known as Nollywood. She is the author of JJ Rabearivelo, Literature and Lingua Franca in Colonial Madagascar (1996), and Vernacular Palaver: Imaginations of the Local and Non-Native Languages in West Africa (2004). She is also a co-editor (with Carli Coetzee) of the Routledge Handbook of African Literature (2019), and author of several other publications.