Abstract :
The profile of Irene Salami, a new Nigerian female academic and dramatist is rising on the horizon of drama in Nigeria. Her major plays now numbering about four, attest to a new concern in female dramatic creativity in the country. The centredness of women and the milieu, in which they find themselves in her plays, reveal a growing interest in more women having a stronger voice in plays, telling their own stories and affirming themselves. That she has dramatic foremothers to emulate or get inspiration from in the likes of Zulu Sofola, Tess Onwueme, Stella Oyedepo, Catherine Acholonu, Julie Okoh, Onyekachi Onyekuba, Folashayo Ogunrinde, and others, is reassuring and furthers the goal of woman-centredness in Nigerian drama. As a third generation Nigerian dramatist, her voice can no longer be muted in the attempt to make contemporary, the issues highlighting or hemlining women. Every female dramatist faces the choice of underscoring or minimising the roles women play in the text or on stage. Salami’s choice can be said to be for the former, judging from her three most recent plays. What is important here is that her treatment of the issues, which are referred to, as women’s concerns cannot be taken to stand for the way other women writers treat these same issues and concerns. That Salami chooses to write on women and men in politics buttresses Bryson’s opinion that “we cease to treat men as the unquestioned norm of humanity” and make “masculinity come up for scrutiny” (248).
