Dr. Ihuoma Okorie

Short Bio

Dr. Ihuoma Okorie is a Nigerian scholar, researcher, playwright, and Lecturer in the Department of Theatre and Performing Arts, Bayero University, Kano. She holds a Ph.D. (2023), M.A. (2015), and B.A. (2010) in Theatre and Performing Arts from Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, as well as a Professional Diploma in Education and a Diploma in Mass Communication. She has continued to strengthen her academic profile through professional certifications in academic writing, scriptwriting, feminist research, faculty development, and higher education leadership.

Since joining Bayero University in 2019, Dr. Okorie has served in several academic and administrative capacities, including Chairman of the Research and Seminar Committee, Member of the Postgraduate Board Committee, Member of the Ethics and Discipline Committee, Level Coordinator, former Assistant Examination Officer, Studio Manager, and Secretary of the Quality Assurance Sub-Committee. Her responsibilities include teaching undergraduate and postgraduate courses, supervising research projects, coordinating academic programmes, mentoring students, organizing departmental seminars, promoting research excellence, and contributing to quality assurance and institutional governance.

Dr. Okorie’s research interests span African theatre and performance studies, Nollywood and indigenous language films, film criticism, playwriting, communication and media studies, gender and feminist studies, indigenous knowledge systems, folklore, theatre for development, and digital storytelling. She has authored numerous book chapters and peer-reviewed journal articles published by leading international and local publishers, including Palgrave Macmillan, Peter Lang, Lexington Books, Routledge, and Cambridge Scholars Publishing. An active participant in national and international conferences, she is committed to advancing African-centered scholarship through innovative interdisciplinary research, mentorship, creative practice, and community-engaged knowledge production.

Selected Publications

• Okorie, I. (2026). Re-thinking the Experiential Testimonial Creativity Theory (ETC) and Methodological Conversation (MC) through the Native Narrative Voice (NNV). In Indigenous Nigerian Communication and Media Theories. New York: Peter Lang Publishers, 263-274.
• Okorie, I. (2026). Subverting Patriarchy: Exploring the Radical Feminist Dimensions in Ojoniyi’s Our Wife has Gone Mad. TAMTAM, UNIMAID Journal of Theatre Arts (TUJTA), 1(1), 164-179.
• Okorie, I. (2026). Dominating the Subaltern: A Hegemonic Reading of the Film Shanty Town. In Political Economy, New Media and Nigerian Popular Cultures. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 34-52.
• Okorie, I. (2025). Regurgitation: A Theory for Interpreting and Understanding Igbo Proverbs. In Theorizing Nigerian Indigenous Knowledge Systems, Communication, Media and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, 273-288. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-97581-3_13
• Okorie, I. (2025). Transferable Ideas or Innovation for Tackling Human Trafficking. In G. G. Mauluka & T. Kaime (Eds.), Intractable Problems of Human Rights: A Collection of Essays on Human Trafficking in Africa. University of Bayreuth, Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence, 40-48.

Project Description

Performing In/Securities: A Multimedia Theatre Project on Relational World-Making

The project proposes the writing and staging of an original short play that explores the lived realities of insecurity in contemporary Nigeria through the conceptual pillars of the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence – multiplicity, relationality, and reflexivity. Rather than presenting insecurity as a single or isolated condition, the play will examine its interconnected dimensions, including terrorism, police brutality, gender-based violence, unemployment, displacement, corruption, and economic uncertainty. Through diverse characters and intersecting narratives, the performance will reveal how insecurity is experienced differently across communities, social groups, and generations.

A distinctive feature of the project is the integration of film as an embedded performance element within the theatrical production. Projected news reports, documentary-style interviews, mobile phone recordings, social media content, and pre-recorded dramatic sequences will interact with live actors on stage. Film will function not merely as a visual supplement but as an active participant in the performance, expanding, questioning, and sometimes challenging the realities presented by the live actors. This multimedia approach reflects the fragmented ways insecurity is experienced, remembered, circulated, and interpreted in contemporary Nigeria.

The project adopts a practice-as-research methodology, where creative production becomes a process of generating knowledge. The staged performance will be accompanied by audience engagement and dialogue to explore how theatre and film shape understandings of insecurity, responsibility, resilience, and collective possibilities. By combining theatre and film, the project positions performance as a site of relational world-making, demonstrating how artistic practice produces new ways of imagining coexistence, solidarity, and alternative futures. In doing so, it contributes to the reconfiguration of African Studies by foregrounding Nigerian creative practices as forms of knowledge production rather than merely objects of study.

Keywords: Africa, film, insecurity, Nigeria, practice-as-research, theatre