Creative Director of Row Productionz the Producer of the musical drama One Good Man, Patrick Otoro, has said music was adopted as the means of telling the story to express the diversity of Nigeria more effectively.
Speaking during a press briefing and dress rehearsal of the stage play at the Exhibition Pavillion in Abuja, Otoro, an actor and a playwright, said it tells the true Nigerian story especially as the country heads for elections next year.
He said, “We are telling the true Nigerian story, that every Nigerian person, electorate should know that at this critical time in the life of this nation, it is important we choose right. We have come a long way. It has been 62 years of independence as a people. And it does not look like we have progressed that much. And it comes down to what we call dearth of quality leadership.
“We are asking the question, who is that one good man that would lead Nigeria to the promised land. As we choose in the next election from the President to the local government councils, who is that one good man that we are all casting our ballot for? It is in our hands. We can change the history of this country. We can change our story. We need to start doing that now. That is the story we have to tell.”
Elaborating why music was adopted as a style to tell the story, he said, “Nigeria is a diverse country. Diverse in culture, even in human beings. We are different people, different ethnic backgrounds, and I reckoned that a musical drama as we are telling it would let us express the diversity of Nigeria on stage in terms of music, costume, dance, even to the food we eat. So we felt a musical drama would help us express all of that more effectively.
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“Most of the songs we use in this drama are Nigerian songs. We deliberately chose them to celebrate Nigerian artistes who have done so well globally. So we chose this genre of musical drama to be able to express our diversity in our creativity in our beautiful colours, in our beautiful voices of music, in our beautiful steps of dance and beautiful expressions of words in terms of proverbs and respect for elders.
“So the musical drama helps us capture all of that. So we decided to make it that way so we can achieve what we want, send the message as well as give our audience quality entertainment. We know that music, drama and dance put together gives you value for your time and money.
“We are deliberately giving our cast and crew the opportunity to express and we are hoping that other producers would see these actors, dancers and choreographers and song directors and light people, and whatever they do, costumes and all that.”
He said the stage musical drama, which would show on the 12th and 13th of November, 2022 at the NAF Conference Centre in Abuja, would be magical.
“It would be magic. Abuja has not seen a show like this. Hold me to my words,” he said.
Otoro said they had challenges of real estate for stage performances in Abuja.
He said this was costing them money and urged the government to intervene in this regard.
“One of the challenges we have in Abuja is real estate. We don’t have performance halls and I am hoping you will make that case for us. This is not a private property. It is government’s property and it is costing us money to rehearse here everyday. We don’t even have a good place to perform because there is no theatre in Abuja. The conference halls we have here are for conferences not for theatre. With the amount of creativity and talents in this country, a place like Abuja should not lack a perfect theatre for performance” he said.