Without the Performers and the Performance, What would the Professor of Performance Arts Profess
S: Sir, I am disappointed
P: Were you appointed
S: Honestly, I am surprised
P: You should also be uprised
S: Sir, I am serious
P: True, drama is for serious souls
S: No, I never thought you could do that
P: Do what?
S: The performances
Without the performers and the performances, what would the professors of performance arts profess? Without Aeschylus’s Oresteia (500 BC), Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex (429 BC), Aristophanes’ Lysistrata (411 BC), and Euripides’s Bacchae (405 BC), what would Plato and Aristotle profess in The Republic (360 BC) and The Poetics (335 BC) respectively? Without Plautus’s Menaechmi (1495) and Terence’s Eunuchus (166-160 BC), what would Horace and Longinus profess in the Ars Poetica (19 BC), and On the Sublime (1-100 AD)?
Without the Commedia dell’arte, Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus (1592), Jonson’s Every Man in His Humour (1598) and Shakespeare’s Macbeth (1623), what would Lodovico Castelvetro, Professor Francesco Patrizi, John Dryden, and Sir Philip Sidney profess in La Poetica d’Aristotele (1570), Discussioni Peripateticae (1581), Of Dramatick Poesie (1668) and A Defence of Poesie (1821) respectively?
Fast forward to nearer times, without Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House (1879), Luigi Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author (1921), Bertolt Brecht’s The Good Woman of Setzuan (1943), and Arthur Miller’s Death of A Salesman (1949), what would Antonin Artaud, Martin Esslin, Professors Peter Brook, Harold Bloom, Marvin A. Carlson, and Patrice Pavis profess in The Theater and Its Double (1938), The Theatre of the Absurd (1960), The Empty Space (1968), Dramatists and Drama (2005), Routledge’s Dictionary of Performance and Contemporary Theatre (2020)?
In Africa, especially in Nigeria, without the performances of the Alarinjo Traveling Theatre, Hubert Ogunde, Moses Olaiya, Duro Ladipo, Dan Maraya Jos and the dramatic works of Wole Soyinka, J. P. Clark, Zulu Sofola, Ola Rotimi, Catherine Obianuju Acholonu, Tess Onwueme, Femi Osofisan, Bode Osanyin, Hope Eghagha, Ahmed Yerima, Ezeigbo Akachi Adimora, Osita Catherine Ezenwanebe, and Bose Afolayan, what would Professors Yemi Ogunbiyi in Drama and Theater in Nigeria: A Critical Source Book (1981), Onsucheka Chinweizu et al in Toward the Decolonization of the African Literature (1983), Biodun Jeyifo in The Popular Travelling Theatre of Nigeria (1984), Dapo Adelugba in Language Use in the African Theatre:... (1985), Duro Oni in Stage Lighting Design: The Nigerian Perspective (2004), and Muyiwa Awodiya in Perspectives on Theatre Management, Arts Administration and Entrepreneurship in Nigeria (2017) profess?
It should be noted that unlike in the sciences and some technological and medical professions where theory precedes practice, the reverse is the case in the performing arts. In the performing arts, practice often precedes theory. The performances come before the theories. It can be claimed that the performers are the original thinkers. They deserve more respect and honour as creators. This is perhaps why their payment is called an honorarium. The performers are the pathfinders. They get their materials from society, from human conducts and conditions, from the flora and fauna, and from the seen, unseen, reality, the ideal, and the imagined. They provide the materials for the theorists and the professors. The stage is their laboratory.
The theorists and the professors provide critical interpretations of the performances and the performers. Through scholarly bird-eye scrutiny, the theorists and professors sift out the structures, forms, theories, and methods of the performances and the performers. They provide paradigms and extend the frontiers of discourse to preserve and advance the techniques of the performances and the performers. They fill the lacunas and bridge the gaps between the past and present, known and unknown, and between crudity and refinement. They provide new vistas for engaging the past, the present, and the future. Still, they need the performances and the performers.
S: But sir, why don’t you stay in your lane?
P: Do you mean, I should be confined to dishing out theories?
S: I just think it is demeaning.
P: To be a performer or a theorist?
This is the bane of underdevelopment in some climes. The outcomes include dependency, redundancy, high unemployment rates, and disillusionment. What is demeaning for a professor of performing arts to become a masquerade, seen in the robe of the performer, and be involved in performance? What is demeaning about a professor of performance arts exploring the scientific and technological advancements in their profession? What is demeaning is to be left behind as a professor.
A professor of performance arts who is ignorant of the developments in their profession is like a blind man walking without a white cane. A professor of performance arts who knows next to nothing about the scientific and technological advancements that are shaping the 21st century’s performances, performance techniques, and performers is like an ancient human being living in the Stone Age. Professors who are worth their salt should be able to traverse all the poles; they should be able to link practice with theories, and they should be at the forefront of discoveries and developments in their profession.
S: But Sir, there is nothing wrong with staying in a lane
P: Just as nothing is wrong with switching lanes
S: That’s a jack of all trades and master of none
P: That a professor of performing art is involved in performance?
S: No. That a professor is doing TikTok
P: So, a professor of performance should be seen climbing electric poles
S: No, a professor should be seen producing academic papers
P: You mean, be a professor who cannot practice what he professes?
S: Their shining buttocks confined to their four walls
P: Never to break the fourth wall Professing theories in the classrooms
S: Like Miller, Brecht, Soyinka or Duro Oni?
P: Those are notorious F.W.B.
S: F.W.B? What’s that?
P: Fourth Wall Breakers!
The sooner the toga of ‘shoulder pad’ is dropped, the better for their continuous existential relevance in this fast-evolving world of performance. The performance arts are going through technological revolutions with new crops of thespians who may or may not be trained in traditional theatre schools and conventional performance spaces. The frontiers of their performance spaces keep expanding due to the emergence of new video-sharing apps from Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, WhatsApp, Snapchat, and several other video-sharing sites.
The tide is smiling at the performances and the performers. The pendulum of lucrative engagement is swinging toward performances and the performers. The professors of performance art need the performances and the performers. The significance of the performers and their performances in the 21st century and in the future cannot be overemphasised. The professors of performance arts owe them a debt of gratitude. Without the committed, ingenious, and creative performances and vibrant performers, what will the theorists profess?
Rasheed Otun,
University of Louisville,
Louisville, Kentucky, USA.
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Without the Performers and the Performance, What would the Professor of Performance Arts Profess
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