DRAMA, LEADERSHIP AND HISTORICAL INTERFACE: A DISCOURSE OF OLA ROTIMI’S KURUNMI.

The relationship between drama and politics has been a recurrent theme in many
plays over time. Ancient Greco-Roman plays presented the subject in many forms.
This paper sets out to discuss the leadership question as raised in Ola Rotimi’s
Kurunmi. In examining the dramatist’s view of leadership in Nigeria, the paper
presents Rotimi’s preoccupation in the reconstruction of Nigeria’s political history.
The paper discusses how the playwright created a theatrical interface between
drama, leadership and history. It argues that drama like all the composite art is a
product of history and presents the relationship between drama and history as
contiguous in the distillation of the playwright’s task towards the development of
human societies. The paper uses plays, critical works and journals that treat the
subject of drama and politics to present the opinion. Arguments are also drawn
from other related plays by Ola Rotimi to portray the contention that the
playwrights tended to track the dialogue between history and politics in the
picturization of the Nigerian script. Ola Rotimi is presented in this paper as a writer
in defense of the ruling class. In the view of the paper, Rotimi, being a product of an
actual historical process, has consciously or unconsciously articulated drama as an
iconic conception that tends to resolve the link between historical forces and social
relations. The paper concludes that through the creative process the dramatist can
be involved in the process of remaking and reconstruction of history.