ARTICULATION OF WOMEN AND GENDER ISSUES IN DRAMA AND THEATRE FROM CLASSICAL GREECE TO POST INDEPENDENCE NIGERIA

Dramatists utilize a variety of subject matters for their artistic creations; These range from politics, religion, societal norms and values, current affairs and gender issues. Women ad gender issues have been used as a subject matter for dramatic creations from time immemorial. In the Greek theatre of the 5thC BC, women and gender issues were clearly articulated in the drama of this era. Even though the theatre of this period seriously discriminated against women, the Greek dramatists never failed to articulate women and gender issues in their works as evident in Aristophanes Lysistrata and Euripides s Medea. These plays presented the problems confronting women of their generation in clear perspectives as will be seen in the later part of this discourse. This paper is divided into many segments. Other than the introduction, we have another segment on conceptual clarifications after which there is yet another on variations of feminism, another on gender issues from the beginning of drama in Greece to the 19th century. The last is the identification of gender issues that are prevalent in Africa and Nigeria and how various dramatists have utilized them as source materials for artistic creation.