Costume as Transitional Phenomenon: A Psychoanalytic Reading of Kenneth Eni’s Pebbles

This article explored costume in Kenneth Eni’s “Pebbles” through a psychoanalytic framework grounded in Donald Winnicott’s concepts of transitional phenomena, potential space, and the holding environment. While African theatre scholarship has often emphasized costume as a cultural or semiotic signifier, this study argued that costume also functions as a psycho-affective mediator that enables play and identity negotiation. Using close textual and performance analysis, the article examined four key costume moments: the half-dress liminality of rehearsal, Ese’s contested triangular garment, the militant youths’ masquerade, and the women’s dance attire in the reconciliatory finale. Situated within the allegorical Garbage Kingdom, costumes are shown to operate as transitional objects simultaneously “me and not-me” mediating between vulnerability and authority, aggression and reconciliation. By tracing a theoretical genealogy from Freud’s unconscious and repression, through Jung’s collective archetypes, to Winnicott’s transitional play, and grounding it in Campbell’s insights on performance, the study bridged psychoanalysis and African theatre studies. It concluded that costume in “Pebbles” is not static decoration but a dynamic medium through which societies project anxieties, sustain paradox, and rehearse renewal.