Drama, Ideology and Social Praxis: Re-Evaluating the Socio-Political Function of Playwrights in Selected Plays

Abstract

This study examines the connection of drama, ideology, and social praxis by evaluating the socio-political roles playwrights undertake in selected African plays. Sampling by Tewfik Al-Hakim’s Fate of a Cockroach, Femi Osofisan’s Aringindin and the Night Watchmen, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o and Micere Mugo’s The Trial of Dedan Kimathi, and Ola Rotimi’s Hopes of the Living Dead, the paper studies how plays function as ideological vehicles that reflect, assess, and restructure lived social realities. In the thematic concerns, characterization, and dramaturgical techniques, the paper explores how the playwrights capture the social realities of the African space. In the plays, oppression, corruption, class struggle, collective resistance, and the quest for liberation are given attention. Al-Hakim employs allegory to expose the incongruities of leadership in the society; Osofisan challenges authoritarianism and mobilize communal agency by employing satire; Ngũgĩ and Mugo in their dramaturgy awaken the people’s revolutionary consciousness and anti-colonial awareness; Rotimi in his artistry emphasizes resilience and empowerment as collective goals for the marginalized people. New Historicism theory propounded by Stephen Greenblatt will be applied to buttress the texts within the cultural, social, and political contexts in which they were written and read. New Historicism argues that literature cannot be isolated from its historical period and this forms the ideological leaning of this study. The methodology shall be qualitative literary analysis using the tools of New Historicism. One of the key findings of this study is that African dramatists operate not merely as artists but as cultural, historical and ideological teachers. Also, literary texts can only bring out their comprehensive meaning if they are studied within their historical, cultural and social frameworks. The study recommends that dramatists continue to engage drama as a platform for social transformation. Academics are encouraged to see literary works as tools for developments rather than mere works of art.