Social Movement Strategy and the Composition of Modern African Plays

Abstract

Modern African plays with radical bent appropriate social movement strategy in their attempts to interrogate the socio-political problems in Africa. Extant research on these plays focus mainly on their functionality, beauty and relevance without particular attention paid to their employment of social movement strategy which is central to their composition. This study interrogates the appropriation of social movement strategy in modern African drama, and the interface between the appropriation and the composition of it. Tess Onwueme’s Then She Said It (2016) is adopted for explication of these. It is discovered that modern African drama with radical bent appropriates social movement strategy; that the appropriation dictates the use of collective heroism; that this enables the playwrights to examine the various socio-political problems in more radical perspectives; and that because of the appropriation characters are divided into two groups of social movement participants and social movement targets. The study concludes that the composition of plays using social movement strategy possesses the inherent potentials to shock the African people into new awareness that can lead to the creation of a just and virile society in Africa.