Of gaps and scars: a voyage in Tejumola Olaniyan’s performance theories and the throes of postcoloniality

Abstract

“The gap,” Tejumola Olaniyan asserts in a 2009 article, “is the specter that haunts performance…the force that determines the genres and languages of performance.…all our performances are ways of bridging the gap.” Olaniyan speaks here of the dialectics and throes of performance, arguing that the gap articulates an intervening space between what is and imaginaries of what should be. Drawing on this intervention, this paper proposes that the gap functions not only as a cultural performative but also as a way of understanding Olaniyan’s perennial engagement with the scars of coloniality and the throes of postcoloniality. I link the theory of the gap with Olaniyan’s first important book, Scars of Conquest/Masks of Resistance, and demonstrate how the gaps/scars mantra is apposite in his readings in postcolonial dramaturgy. I read Olaniyan against playwrights like Femi Osofisan and others to demonstrate how performances serve to bridge and breach aesthetic and political gaps.