It is traditionally performed as a periodic festival honoring the folk heroOzidi. The performance dramatizes key episodes in the myth danced in a nonlinear narrative, allowing a ritual officiant dressed in white and holding objects traditionally identified with the hero to solicit participation by acolytes and members of the audience. A performance in 1966 was filmed and later transcribed and translated by playwright and poetJohn Pepper Clark.
References
Okpewho, Isidore. 2014. Blood on the Tides: The Ozidi Saga and Oral Epic Narratology. Rochester: University of Rochester Press. 279 pages. ISBN978-1580464871