The Tiboaar Divination Ritual as Indigenous Total Theatre: A Performative Analysis

Résumé

Existing scholarship on African divination has focused overwhelmingly on its religious, therapeutic and social functions, leaving open the question of whether such rituals possess codified dramaturgical structure. This article addresses that gap through an ethnographic case study of the Tiboaar divination ritual performed by the Bikpakpaam (Konkomba people) of Ghana. Working from Schechner's Performance Theory and Turner's Ritual Theatre Theory, the analysis identifies six performative elements embedded in the ritual, namely theme, plot, character, dialogue, technical elements and audience, and shows that its plot follows a five-part structure moving from the arrival of the diviners through rising action, climax, falling action and an artistic denouement. Read alongside the ritual origins of Athenian and English Renaissance theatre, and against anthropological objections to analysing ritual through dramatic categories, the Tiboaar is best understood not as equivalent to Greek dramatic form but as evidence of a parallel and independent theatrical evolution within Konkomba funerary practice. The article concludes by considering the implications of this codification for African theatre historiography and for the documentation of indigenous performance as living cultural heritage. Keywords: Konkomba divination ritual; total theatre; Performance Theory; Ritual Theatre Theory; African theatre historiography; indigenous performance

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