Poverty, unemployment and insecurity as source materials for playwriting in a pandemic era

Abstract

It is obvious that era of pandemic is normally characterized by avalanches of challenges. Apart from health issues that are particular during the period of any pandemic, the affected society is usually faced with socio-economic and political problems as the people strive to overcome the plague through  different means.  For instance, since the advent of Covid-19 in Nigeria, the existing wave of socioeconomic issues such as poverty, unemployment and  insecurity in the country have increased. However, playwright as an artist depends on a number of sources like human experiences amongst other things  for the construction of his work. Therefore, this paper investigates the rising cases of poverty, unemployment and insecurity during the time of Covid-19  in Nigeria; on the other hand, the paper interrogates the need for Nigerian playwrights to see the aforementioned problems as source materials for  playwriting. In other words, the paper adopts evaluative and descriptive research methodology to examine how the issues of poverty, unemployment  and insecurity in Nigeria during Covid-19 can serve as source materials for playwriting. The results show that the socio-economic experiences generated  by Covid-19 can bring about emergent themes in playwriting. Amongst other things, the paper concludes and recommends that like other parts of the  world, Covid-19 has caused a lot of economic and social issues; thus, the Nigerian playwrights should use these socio-economic realities to expand the  size of the Nigerian literary drama and theatre.