What question did this study set out to answer?

To establish a theoretical framework that reconceptualizes silence and absence in performance as key sites of meaning-making.

April 1, 2026Open Access

Interpreting Absence: Silence as a Spatial Element in Performance

Key Points

To establish a theoretical framework that reconceptualizes silence and absence in performance as key sites of meaning-making.
Introduced the Theatre of the Silent Space framework during a lecture at Niger Delta University.
Analyzed African performance traditions and ritual practices.
Interrogated power dynamics shaping visibility and audibility in performance and society.
Positioned silence and absence as productive elements in cultural expression.
Highlighted the decolonizing impact of centering African epistemologies.
Challenged Eurocentric perspectives in traditional performance analysis.

Abstract

The Theatre of the Silent Space is an emergent theoretical framework that reconfigures performance studies by foregrounding the unseen, the unspoken, and the historically marginalised as central sites of meaning-making. First articulated in the author’s 55th inaugural lecture at Niger Delta University on 19 June 2023, originally titled The Theory and Drama of the Silent Space, the framework arises as a critical intervention into the persistent marginalisation of African epistemologies within global performance scholarship. Rather than treating silence and absence as deficits, the Theatre of the Silent Space conceptualises them as productive, dynamic spaces through which cultural memory, resistance, and identity are articulated. The framework challenges the dominance of Eurocentric analytical models that have long mediated interpretations of African performance, often obscuring Indigenous cosmologies, philosophies, and socio-political realities. By repositioning African worldviews at the core of theatrical analysis and practice, the Theatre of the Silent Space advances a decolonising methodology that is attentive to local histories, embodied knowledge, and communal modes of expression. It interrogates how power operates through what is rendered invisible or inaudible on stage and in society, and how these silences function as forms of survival, critique, and aesthetic strategy. Drawing on African performance traditions, ritual practices, and contemporary theatrical expressions, the framework provides an integrative lens for understanding the intersections of oppression, identity, and creativity. It offers scholars and practitioners a conceptual tool for engaging performance not merely as spectacle or text, but as a lived, spatial, and ethical encounter shaped by historical exclusions and ongoing struggles for representation. Ultimately, the Theatre of the Silent Space contributes to broader debates in performance studies, cultural theory, and decolonial thought by reclaiming marginalised narratives and affirming the intellectual and artistic agency of African and other historically silenced communities

Interpreting Absence: Silence as a Spatial Element in Performance

Key Points

Abstract

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