Cosmological aesthetics as change indicators in selected plays of Esiaba Irobi

Abstract

Change, as a constant factor, appears to be the only regular event taking place in Nigeria in recent times. When on May 29, 1999, the military regime  formally handed over power to civilians, Nigerians welcomed democracy with enthusiasm and loads of expectations. How far have their expectations  been met or dashed? Hence, dramatists respond to dominant socio-political, economic and cultural issues in their environments with varying verves of  revolutionary stunts. They burlesque with the people’s cosmological leanings and socio-political system to point ways forward touching the sensibilities of  their audience. Esiaba Irobi is one of such dramatists whose The Fronded Circle and The Colour of Rusting Gold point towards directions of change  through indigenous and cosmological forms. Since the society is in a mobile state of continuous flux, and critical theories have argued from the  standpoint of the Formalist and Anti-formalist; of content and form, this paper adopts the concept of glocalization for conceptual backings to analyse  Irobi’s metaphors of change using content analysis. The research findings reveal that Irobi’s implication of indigenous forms in the selected plays serve as  resourceful paradigms from which to meditate on Nigeria’s socio-political issues. This paper concludes that the juxtaposing of traditional techniques  in a modern context and vice versa, will serve as potent idioms of change as it is not very possible to use foreign means alone to resolve indigenous  problems.