Existentialist Ideology as an Apparatus for Afro-Semio-Aesthetic Study of Sunnie Ododo’s Hard Choice and Sam Ukala’s Akpakaland

Abstract

Playwrights as members of a society derive their raw materials and inspirations from the society where they are members. As they draw these sources of their inspirations from their communities, consciously or unconsciously they may be aware of some cultural elements as they embed these components in their creative outputs. The problem of the study is therefore, the inability of the readers (Africans and non-Africans) of African plays to leverage on these cultural components for meaning making, and thus creates misinterpretation. Therefore, the objectives of the study is to investigate how these cultural rudiments have gone a long way in the deduction of meanings through the existentialist thought in modern Nigerian drama. The study adopts contents analysis of the qualitative research methodology by exploring the plays of Sunnie Ododo and Sam Ukala through the roles of some characters in the playtexts. The findings thus, reveals that for African or non-African to understand the aboriginal playtexts, they should endeavour to understand the cultural components of the people. Hence, the research among others recommends that modernist movements can help in the deductions of meanings from Nigerian playtexts in a multicultural society.