Performing feminist agency in the age of X: Digital feminism, oral tradition, and theatrical adaptation of Chimamanda Adichie’s Dear Ijeawele

This paper examines the stage adaptation of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions, in the Ahmadu Bello University Studio Theatre. It appraises how the transposition of the manifesto to “Be a Full Person” performs a new kind of feminist agency through the fusion of digital culture a la X (formerly Twitter) and oral theatre traditions. It blends the immediacy of social media interaction with the communal resonance of oral performance to reclaim feminist speech as both performance and protest. We explore how the stage performance reconfigures the manifesto’s instructive tone into a participatory dialogue where voice, silence, and interruption become instruments of power. We contend that the characters—Zainab, Amaka, Amina, and Chat embody distinct ideological positions within contemporary Nigerian womanhood in a way that exposes the tensions between faith, education, motherhood, and choice. We use the concept of digital dramaturgy to argue that the exchanges of t he X chorus is an extension of the traditional audience, echoing collective responses that resemble market gossip, folktale chorus, and political debate. We conclude that the stage rendition of Adichie’s Dear Ijeawele… treats feminist speech not as doctrine but as an evolving performance of selfhood.