Dramatisation of Historical Realities for Ethnocultural Development: A Reading of Ahmed Yerima’s Atthiru

Abstract

The thematic thrust of dramatic narratives among most African playwrights usually highlights ideological and ethnocultural experiences between the coloniser and the colonised. Therefore, the theatre space provides the avenue where such colonial experiences are re-enacted, and challenged. Ahmed Yerima's theatrical endeavor follows in this pursuit, with creative dimensions. His representative play - Atthiru, is examined in this paper to provide an ethnocultural perspective to the historical realities of leadership, governance, socio-economic and communal engagements, that depict the African enactment of history, 
and yet prevalent in contemporary Nigeria. New Historicism theory is utilised to situate the plays in context, with thematic discourse, characterisation and dramatic techniques deployed for elucidation. The study accentuates drama plays, as veritable tools for historical reconstruction and development that depict leadership assertion, conflicts of tradition, religion, identity, power and economic sustenance of the past and present, in contemporary Nigeria.