Narteh Moses Nii-Dortey

This project studies 'Kplejoo' festival, which is celebrated by the Ga communities of Nungua and Tema, as a composite performance of music, dance, ritual, and possession drama. Though 'Kplejoo' by its designation is performance oriented, most of the earlier scholarly attention it attracted leaned heavily on anthropology and ethnography. This study argues that the two communities commemorate Kplejoo festival not only as a religious obligation but also as reencatment of their histories, myths, and sociopolitical structures for social cohesion and renewal, and also for the celebration of their artistic/aesthetic values. It further argues that a study of the functional and aesthetic interrelationships that exist among the synergized sub-genres of 'Kplejoo' can help to discover the 'Kplejoo' aesthetic/performance concepts and model, and explores the implications of such discovery for contemporary Ghanaian theatre.