From Stage to Screen: Reimagining African Drama Through 21st-Century Media

This article examines the digitalization of African drama and critically examines the re-envisaging of canonical stage plays through modern media. Using the films Death and the King's Horseman (Elesin Oba, Netflix, 2022), The Chattering and the Song, and Our Husband Has Gone Mad Again as among the main case studies, the research places its analysis in Linda Hutcheon's theory of adaptation, Homi Bhabha's hybridity, Ngugi wa Thiong'o's decolonial aesthetics and Henry Jenkins' theory of media convergence. Using qualitative comparative analysis and semiotic analysis, the study shows that digital adaptation is a process of transformation rather than reproduction, in which ritual, resistance, and identity were translated into new cultural grammars of performance. The results indicate that Soyinka's tragic vision maintains metaphysical depth through the use of the cinematic image, Osofisan's revolutionary drama becomes participatory through the use of digital folk media, and Rotimi's satire transforms itself into feminist popular critique. The study concludes that the exportation of African drama into the screen is a sign of a continuous cultural renaissance in which the performance traditions are evolving dynamically to the technological modernity while they still retain the communal ethos and postcolonial critique.