Exploring the Theatre for Community Development: The Ajolagun Experience

Abstract

Theatre has always been manipulated through the ages. Essentially, the use of theatre through the generations has been to answer the salient questions; Theatre for what purpose and for whom? Thus, the essence of this paper is to assess how the potentiality of the theatre could be explored for rural and urban development. More importantly, the paper is a report of how community theatre has been used to develop Ajolagun, a major community in Ikere-Ekiti Local Government Area of Ekiti State, Nigeria. The method used in the research is participatory theatrical performance, whereby the members of the community in conjunction with the students of College of Education, Ikere Ekiti collaborated in building a drainage to forestall the flooding of the area by rainfall. It is believed that if such collaborative efforts could be encouraged by all and sundry, much development would accrue to our communities, instead of waiting endlessly for government intervention.