Abstract

The history of Nigerian popular theatre and drama is marked by changes and continuities, or by the decline and resurgence of older dramatic forms. And oftentimes, most of the historical dramatic forms that birthed newer art forms in Nigeria either fall under the radar, or are ‗poorly investigated‘ when historicising the emergence of Nigerian popular drama. In this essay, I investigate the emergence of Nigerian stand-up comedy from the vantage point of my Urhobo descent and argue that what has emerged as Nigerian stand-up comedy metamorphosed from Urhobo solo dramatic performances known as Igbesia and Otota Oratory performance, and conceptualised as griot performance in this study. To establish my claims, I go back and forth in the history of griot culture and Urhobo solo dramatic performance, relying on an assumption that most successful stand-up comedians in Nigeria are of Urhobo descent. I collected data from informants through interviews and analysed some stand-up performances in comparison to Otota Oratory performance by Chief ‗(Dr)‘ Samson Akpomedaye Ofua. The discoveries show that Nigerian stand-up comedy metamorphosed from historical cultural forms of dramatict entertainment in Urhobo into popular street entertainment, yielded to commercialisation of contempoparay dramatic forms, and got transformed into a form that can compete for relevance in today‘s urban setting.

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