ABSTRACT
If uneducated and illiterate peasants could, in former times, produce an art of performance in their dances, songs, story-telling traditions, masquerades and festivals, which intellectuals today regard as worthy of study, why is it that now, at this present moment of social development, it is only these intellectuals who can produce a drama and theatre which is similarly worthy of study? This chapter addresses this question in the process of trying to analyse examples of theatre being used in the development processes. It considers examples of drama and theatre which aspire to raising the consciousness of the masses, even if they don’t always succeed. The use of ‘popular’ to describe the urbanized folk operas and plays of the burgeoning African cities refers to a theatre made by creative artists who are economically and socially at one with the masses – at least when they start their professional theatre work and, like Ogunde in Nigeria, first form their theatre companies.
