The Deployment of Music in the Performance of Femi Osofisan’s Women of Owu

Abstract

This study affirms that music is a core aspect in the collaborative art of dramatic process and not mere aesthetic embellishment as a secondary need to theatrical fulfilment. Consequently, making music and other theatre elements a total theatre. Differently, this is not the case with western theatre however in Africa, music which is an oral process is an essential cultural index in modulating conflict, heightening of suspense and the deepening of mood unlike their western counterpart where folklore or oral tradition is not an essence in the theatre. It is from this stand point we shall x-ray how music is being deployed in the performance of Femi Osofisan’s Women of Owu— underlying impulses and reasons for how Femi Osofisan uses Yoruba music in the play. By extension, how music in the play enhances Osofisan’s dramaturgy and underscores the concept of total theatre. Eventually reaching the finding that music in theatre productions convey pedagogical messages with didactic facts having complementary art which can be investigated from the prism of performance theory and the methodology of Yoruba oral-music signal system instrumental to the production.