Researching the Theatre in the Third World: Issues and Insights

Research, a committed scholar’s delight and a fruitful fact-finding process is the hub of scholarship. Importantly, research is a catalyst and a strategy for sustainable development. However, the pedagogy of research in Africa has unfortunately created overlapping results or at best, a split identity – a mere rehash of critical issues in the developmental process. Thus, this has led to the contention between adequate and inadequate research in African scholarship. This paper, therefore, examines the issue of research in the African theatre. Particular reference is made to Nigeria, a third world country. The survey method of research was adopted for this study. Subsequently, the final population for this study consisted of 90 well-administered questionnaires in 11 Universities in Nigeria, randomly distributed to lecturers. The simple descriptive statistics was employed in our analysis. Among several others, we found out that most Nigerian theatre arts’ scholars have been (unknowingly) recycling and are not reading themselves. They avoid field or survey research, run away from traditional theatre research and are hemmed down by inadequate finance and facilities. For the theatre to play sustainable role in the developmental process, we concluded that theatre research in Africa must be re-invented and re-directed towards a positive paradigm shift.