"There's a kind of dynamic quality about theater and that dynamic quality expresses itself in relation to, first of all, the environment in which it's being staged; then the audience, the nature of the audience, the quality of the audience"
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Theater, Soyinka suggests, is less a fixed artwork than a live negotiation - a form that can never fully detach itself from the room it happens in or the people it happens with. The phrase "dynamic quality" sounds almost modest, but it’s a quiet rebuke to any idea of theater as a sealed, museum-ready object. For a dramatist shaped by colonial aftermath, censorship, and the volatility of public life in Nigeria, "dynamic" isn’t an aesthetic preference; it’s a survival strategy.
Notice the order of his attention: environment first, audience second. That’s not just staging logistics. It signals how power and circumstance press on performance before a single line is spoken. A play in a state theater, a village square, a university hall, or under an authoritarian gaze doesn’t merely look different; it means differently. The environment becomes an argument.
Then Soyinka sharpens the point with a loaded repetition: "the nature of the audience, the quality of the audience". "Quality" is the risk word. He isn’t flattering crowds; he’s naming the hard truth that audiences bring varying levels of literacy, openness, fear, ideology, and willingness to be implicated. The subtext is accountability: theater demands a responsive public, not passive consumers. In Soyinka’s worldview, the audience isn’t a market segment - it’s a civic force capable of completing the work or strangling it.
The intent, ultimately, is to frame theater as relational politics. Meaning is co-produced, and that co-production can be electrifying, compromised, or dangerous depending on who’s watching and where.
Notice the order of his attention: environment first, audience second. That’s not just staging logistics. It signals how power and circumstance press on performance before a single line is spoken. A play in a state theater, a village square, a university hall, or under an authoritarian gaze doesn’t merely look different; it means differently. The environment becomes an argument.
Then Soyinka sharpens the point with a loaded repetition: "the nature of the audience, the quality of the audience". "Quality" is the risk word. He isn’t flattering crowds; he’s naming the hard truth that audiences bring varying levels of literacy, openness, fear, ideology, and willingness to be implicated. The subtext is accountability: theater demands a responsive public, not passive consumers. In Soyinka’s worldview, the audience isn’t a market segment - it’s a civic force capable of completing the work or strangling it.
The intent, ultimately, is to frame theater as relational politics. Meaning is co-produced, and that co-production can be electrifying, compromised, or dangerous depending on who’s watching and where.
Quote Details
| Topic | Art |
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