Theatre and ritual of Okpanam Wonder

Cataracts of drum beat and magical chants are all it takes a circled cane and sack of clothes to spring to life and balloon into a dancing masquerade! Okpanam Wonder is Anioma's answer to Artaudian metaphysical theatre. But more so on the unheard-of syntheses of art and magic, not in isolation or influence, but in juxtaposition.

This article is provoked on seeing Okpanam Wonder in performance at Asaba, Delta State capital in Nigeria, (see pix); a mytho-theatrical milieu that interrogates known convention of the ritual origin of drama. Indeed it has become what Eli Rozak sarcastically termed ‘conventional truth’. But with Opkanam wonder is the possibility of co-existence of ritual and drama in performance juxtaposition; both the spirit in possession cued by incantations and frenzied drumming, and art synthesized into one whole performance unit. Ossie Enekwe’s conclusion that a "ritual becomes entertainment once it is outside its original context or when the belief that sustains it has lost its potency" does not hold true anymore than the elemental performance of Okpanam Wonder demonstrates. The masquerade of okpanam wonder is not an impersonating act, but spirit possession; not in a human actor or animal, but sack of cloth stringed with circled cane!This is where the wonder derives its name.


Scholars have long concluded that drama evolved from ritual. It becomes drama, in the views of MJC Echeruo ‘if ritual yields it story’. Similarly, a thinking once swept the landscape of modern drama championed by directors like Peter Brook and Jerzy Grotowski on the cause to ‘restore lost elements of ritual’ in order to revive the theatre. This may account for why, as Alain Richard observed, “Peter Brook’s work is fundamentally relevant to the playwright or actor in Africa’. But these are isolationist theories, making no provision for actual co-existence of ritual and drama; at most a pretentious directorial infiltration of ritual elements in what Rozik described as ‘based on superficial knowledge of real ritual’.


Okpanam wonder defies the argument of the inability of ritual to yield its theatrical elements and duplicate;it is authoritatively cloned from yet another, though more efficacious ritual masquerade, Ebu Wonder. Opkanam Wonder has been adapted to suit a modern world in Anioma in dire hunger for magic and occultism. Hence many have argued that it has nothing to do with the much touted 'patriotic desperation at revivalism of a dying culture'....

Whatever the argument, adherents believe the transition of the neo-Wonder will keep the flag flying; and theatre scholars are invited to see yet a manifestation of ritual beyond the shrine!

Indeed Okpanam wonder demonstrates metaphysical element of ritual performance in a currency very much like " metaphysics-in-action", and the masquarade possesion underlines the Artudian objective of "reconciling us philosophically with Becoming" (Artaud, Antonin, The Theater and Its Double).On seeing Okpanam wonder, there is no doubt that ritual can co-exist in a complex theatrical whole with drama- from the shrine and restrictions of sacredness, on to the streets for commercial accomplishments, yet devoid of what Achibald called "architecture of empitness and word" (Archibald, The Blacks) that has become the hallmark of modern theatre skewd in influence of Western prototype. Another interesting component of Okpanam wonder is the performance composition. The 'troupe' comprises of members recruited from Okpanam community, and recently expanding to other Anioma communities, who are made to go through a process of initiation of cultic engagement and expropriations against attacks. These members, originally worshippers of 'alusi cult', presently constitute a chorus of singers, wielding machetes and whips and horse-fly whisks. All songs mostly revised from okanga and imanokwa tribal songs, are directed at the masquarade which dances its way, first like a deflated ballon, then exorcised into a giant mass of sky-wriggling masquarade. A chanteaur, also originally chief priest of 'alusi', offers incantatory directives which, like remote-control, directs and control the movements of the masquerade ; calming it down at the instance of wild charges of seeming anger, or inciting it to wildness and choreographic crescendo. The cue of the Chief priest comes from the tempo of the drum, which transits from wild banters to sublime throbs .It is a magical non-verbal communication of sight and sound in lineal form.

At the heart of every performance is the non-verbal conversation between the iron-gong (agogo) and the drum. And the exposition of which is the chief priest, dancing round a wooden-box placed conspicuously in the middle of the improvised stage (previously shrine), chanting some magical incantatory offerings mostly of proverbs, praise songs and poetry which only serve to energize and exorcised the spirit possession. Then, with a sudden burst of energy, the box lid is dramatically flung open as the mass of cloth wiggles through and balloons upward.


Ola ne nu, aheee (goes up)
Ola na ni, aheee (comes down)


It is a song that defines the movement of the masquerade, hence serving as the stage tableaux for the masquerade, and as warning sign to bystanders (audience) who can now watch a performance previously reserved only for the worshippers in the secrecy of the shrine.

In the words of Adebayor Williams, there is no doubt that “ritual was part of a complex and insidious apparatus of cultural and political
reproduction”, with the commercialization of opkanam wonder, worry is, how much efficacy is lost in the process? Is theatre’s gain a nemesis for traditional ritual phenomena of the expropriation of the community and ontological re-affirmation of Okpanam and Anioma societies?
Is Opkanam wonder a rare example of the mythic and theatrical merged together into a win-win synthesis of mytho-theatrical possibility?
Is there further possibility of evolution of ‘proper’ drama from the inklings of these fragmented performances? This of course gives merit to the rebuke of scholars who contended with MJC Echero’s privileging of evolution as the ‘viable paradigm’ for development of drama (using the Greek Dionysiac model), though these scholars may not have envisaged the rarity of juxtaposition as evidenced by Okpanam wonder.Is a theory of juxtaposition of ritual and drama a more likely oeuvre of this polemic phenomenon?

In answering the first question, on seeing the telepathic response of the masquerade indirectly to the drums, Okpanam wonder presents that rare indication of a ritual’s undying efficacy even when confronted with , again in the words of Adebayor Williams, ”forcible evacuation of its space”. Therefore Opkanam wonder demonstrates the possibility of ritual and drama existing side by side, the masquerade performing a ‘macro-act’ in a shamanic approximate. In the masquerade performance however, there is nothing akin to gimmicks and tricks, what Ernest T. Kirby called “para-theatrical” acts, as the masquerade is exposed at the beginning in its rag and lifeless form in the wooden-box to a giant balloon at the climax of the drum. Hence Okpanam wonder belies postulation of scholars like Eli Rozik that ritual need lose “its essential characteristics in order to assume new ones”

Though exposed to ‘secular’ audience, Okpanam Wonder is yet to evolve into a ‘proper’ drama; there is need to instruct that the direction may not be lineal evolution, but integration into the ritual structure of elements of sophisticated dramatic art forms. Indeed this could put spanner to the works of the various theorists jostling for the precise mode of dramatic evolution!

To be continued…

Works cited

Rozak Eli:The ritual Origin of Theatre-A scientific Theory or Theatrical Ideology.The Journal of Religion and Theatre,Vol.2,No.1,Fall 2003


Agu, Ogonna Anagudo. "Echeruo's 'The Dramatic Limits ...' and the Search for Igbo Dramaturgy." Abalabala 2 (2003

Artaud, Antonin, The Theater and Its Double, trans. Mary Caroline Richards. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1958


Williams, Adebayo. "Ritual and the Political Unconscious: The Case of Death
and the King's Horseman." Research in African Literatures 24.1 (1993)

Echeruo, M. J. C,"The Dramatic limits of Igbo Ritual." Research in African Literatures
4:1(1973): 21-31. Rpt. Drama and Theatre in Nigeria. Ed. Yemi Ogunbiyi. Lagos:
Nigeria Magazine, 1981.


(c) Ajumeze Henry Obi