Recent Nigerian playwriting and collapse of ideology

Playwriting and indeed, most forms of writing, are seen as potent weapons for the espousal of views and ideologies. The history of playwriting in Nigeria is an interesting study as it seems that different generations of play wrights, embraced specific ideologies inline with the prevailing issues of each moment in history. Thus, from the plays of James Ene Henshaw that preach love and harmonious coexistence to those of Wole Soyinka and J. P. Clark-Bekederemo whose works tried to reassert the dignity and authenticity of African cultures and traditions; through to the period after Independence when attention shifted to the ideology of self rule and the dynamics of inter-tribal relations with writers like Ola Rotimi holding sway to the oil boom era which coincidentally also witnessed the apogee of the socialist movement, when playwrights began to make critical comments on the country s socio-political and economic direction as witnessed in the uneven distribution of wealth, playwriting in Nigeria remained largely functional and ideological. This was largely because; playwrights of these eras were seen as either rooting for the Capitalist or the Socialist cause. Recently however, a trend or generation of playwrights is emerging on the Nigerian literary scene. This breed, referred to as new voices by Ameh Akoh appear to defy classification along the hard core ideological lines of Socialism or Capitalism. The recent or new breed of Nigerian playwrights appear to be towing the lines of Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen who addressed purely socio-cultural issues of his generation. This paper attempts to study the works of these new breed playwrights in order to discover what makes them different from the earlier generations.