African Women Performing Men: Subverting Masculinity through Cross-Acting in Selected ABU Studio Theatre Performances

This paper examines the bodily politics of African women performing African men in the Nigerian acting scene. It appraises the complexities in conceptualizing masculinity and cross-acting vis-à-vis gender stereotyping. It argues against the backdrop that the female body is elastic and better positioned for cross-acting than the male body. It draws on the transitory conceptualizations of subversion to claim that the Nigerian female stage actor possesses a fluid ability to play eccentric male roles in ways that express the persona of the African male character. The paper argues that the fluidity of the Nigerian female stage actor is marked by three trimesters or trimetric factors; her innate ability to perform many roles as a woman, her ability to carry other bodies and to endure the pain of it; more so, attended by diverse bodily changes and lastly, her Freudian complex of desiring to become a man in challenging or turbulent situations. It avers that within the precinct of these triadic factors are elements which inhibit and/or propel the Nigerian female acting. The study used two experimental acting workshops from the Ahmadu Bello University Studio Theatre to affirm that the necessity of imaginative disruption in typecasting may be the mother of invention in acting. It concludes that while the African male actor needs an extreme form of physical, social and individual dislocation to effectively play the African woman, the African female actor only needs a supple routine in rehearsals to perform the male character and roles.