Semiotics, Oral Elements and Gender Activism in Tess Onwueme’s Drama

In Tess Onwueme’s dramaturgy, female characters that people her stage exhibit some degree of ideological consciousness that project the traditional cultural material as resource for creativity and for the pursuit of gender activism. In her theater, Onwueme utilizes rural traditional female characters in most of her work to explore a wide range of themes such as female empowerment and the anomalies of gender imbalance, corruption in the public space, hypocrisy of gender-based discrimination and moral decline that manifest in multifarious conflicts that prevail in society. The concern with unfulfilled potential of women in a patriarchal culture is,of course, one of the major strands that run through most of Onwueme’s plays. To effectively activate her gender sensibility in her drama, Onwueme often draws on Igbo folklore and mythology, operatic structures and Brechtian techniques to argue that the positive aspects of women’s role in society are seriously eroded by the influences of cross-cultural patriarchal legacies characteristic of modern society. The thrust of this paper is thus to highlight the ways Onwueme uses semiotic strategy and oral elements to represent these realities and to press for a collectivist world and a universal feminist awareness that acknowledges and accommodates African gender sensibilities, values, and expectations.

Keywords: Onwueme Semiotics Oral Culture African Drama Female Characters

Author

• Mabawonku, Oluwafunminiyi
  Federal College of Animal Health & Production Technology, Moor Plantation, Ibadan