3: POPULAR THEATRE IN NORTH CENTRAL NIGERIA

Popular theatre in North Central Nigeria comprises diverse community-based performance practices through which cultural knowledge, historical memory, social values and collective identities are communicated and sustained. However, scholarship has given uneven attention to these traditions, with limited integrated examination of their forms, aesthetic features and social functions across the region. This study examines selected documented popular theatre traditions in Benue, Kogi, Kwara, Nasarawa, Niger and Plateau States and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. It conceptualises popular theatre as publicly accessible, socially situated and participatory theatrical practice that communicates with identifiable communities through recognisable cultural and linguistic resources, while distinguishing it from the broader categories of indigenous and traditional theatre. Guided by Chinyowa’s theory of African popular theatre aesthetics, the study adopts qualitative documentary research, drawing on published scholarship and verifiable documentary and audiovisual materials. The analysis identifies recurring aesthetic features including music, dance, masking, puppetry, storytelling, indigenous language, improvisation and audience participation, while demonstrating variations in their social, cultural, political, religious and educational functions. The study argues that popular theatre traditions in the region constitute significant forms of community-based cultural expression through which knowledge, memory and collective identities are sustained. Its contribution lies in bringing selected under-documented performance traditions into a regional analytical framework, while recognising that the availability and uneven distribution of documentary sources constrain the comprehensiveness of the study.