Semiotics of the Mask in the Drama of Esiaba Irobi

Abstract

The mask in African cultural tradition is a significant element of ritual and festival performances, which ethnographic, political and religious functions transcend to the modern stage. Using the drama of the Nigerian, Esiaba Irobi, my study explores the Igbo mask and masking tradition as a heuristic model for African performance. In this study, I demonstrate that the African masking tradition constitutes an embodiment of deictic and iconographic realities that are syncretised to modern post-colonial drama. My study examines the semiotic processes through which Irobi‘s postcolonial dramas absorb the cultural codes and symbols inherent in the Igbo mask tradition. While providing an alternative paradigm to the usual recourse to western aesthetic and theoretical models, this study also foregrounds Irobi‘s drama, significantly a representative of the third- generation of Nigerian writing, as distinctive in its own right. Consequently, the study interrogates previous studies which investigate Irobi‘s drama solely from the prism of Soyinka‘s influence. My study concludes that through the appropriation of Igbo mask idiom, Irobi‘s drama interrogates rather than acquiesce with Soyinka‘s tragic vision. Analysing the three selected plays; Nwokedi, The Other side of the Mask and Cemetery Road, I argue that Irobi‘s drama represents demonstrable recuperation of an endangered masquerade tradition in a postcolonial milieu.