Theatre, Media and National Integration in a Globalising World

Every social change engenders new models and paradigms to manage evolving conflicts. The colonial configuration and post-colonial contradictions, globalising tensions, and local efforts at democratisation and development have escalated the threat of national disintegration in Nigeria. This book shows how the cultural instruments of theatre and media can be used to provide viable options for negotiating the contradictions of the nation-state within the fluxes of global re-configuration. Beyond expanding the literature of how theatre and media have been deployed for differing interventions, the methods and articulation here provide statesmen, politicians and policy makers who want to look for alternative methods for national engineering for viable nationhood. Like the Freirean “legislative theatre” method, this book builds on the creative potentialities of people’s cultural resources to galvanise the nation state. Beyond this, the globalising era creates a common global community: despite discordant local effects and reactions, the experiences documented from Nigeria in the global South will provide possible models for similar global settings. The candour and frankness of the contributors to this book make it irresistibly inviting reading.