A select audience of reporters, literary critics and arts buffs recently converged on Ibadan, the Oyo State capital, for a reading performance of Prof Femi Osofisan’s latest play, Medaye: A Re-Reading for the African stage of Euripides’ Medea. Venue was Helendale Suites in highbrow Agodi neighbourhood of Ibadan, OYEYINKA OLUDAYISI FABOWALE reports.
The performance, a collaboration between the foremost dramatist, Prof Osofisan, on one hand and Prof. Kunbi Olasope, a professor in the Department of Classics, University of Ibadan, was directed by Dr. Tunde Awosanmi of the university’s Theatre Arts Department.
It explores and attempts to interpret the Greek classic from the African historical, social and cultural perspectives in line with an international experiment at encouraging writers and artists to share, explore and integrate themes and elements of literary/artistic works from various cultures in theirs to explain and deepen better understanding of issues and concerns across the world.
Medaye is a product of this drive by Osofisan, who is a member of the advisory board of the Berlin-based Comparative Literature and Interweaving Performance Cultures Research Centre at the Freie University, Berlin, Germany, behind the movement. It is also a campaign by Prof Olasope for the playwright to help adapt some classical Greek dramatic literature for the African audience as a means of promoting the study of Classics among students, especially prospective undergraduates for whom the discipline barely appeals due to misperception that it is irrelevant to contemporary society. The erroneous view was responsible for an attempt at a time to scrap the department, which produced the likes of erudite lawyer and politician, the late Chief Bola Ige (SAN) and reputed technocrat and boardroom guru, late Deacon Gamaliel Onosode.
It is reckoned that highlighting cultural similarities shared by the Greeks and indigenous Africans, particularly the Yoruba can help awaken the flagging interest in the subject. Olasope’s persistence was, in fact, instrumental to the writing of Women of Owu, and Tegonni, Osofisan’s adaptations of Sophocles’ Antigone and Euripides’ Trojan Women.
Of course, a Femi Osofisan performance is not one anybody watches having a feeling of Déjà vu! No matter how many times he has seen the same play or is familiar with the story, there is always the unpredictable, the novel and the dizzyingly spectacular awaiting the spectator in every fresh expression of his work, especially in the weaving and thickening of the plot that drives the audience up the climax of suspense and ultimately to a delightful catharsis.
The experience with a new offering is then best imagined.
Based on Euripides’ Medea, an old tale of love and passion, Medaye is a tragic drama in which the protagonist sacrificed and lost all including her entire family to unbridled jealousy. Insane fear of losing her husband to another woman and blinding lust for vengeance incited her to kill her two children and aid the death of her beloved husband on the battle field. She realises her folly rather late as she became victim of political/military intrigues that consume everything she herself ever lived for!
Although it draws substantially from the original Grecian text, Medaye is a creative attempt that reveals Osofisan’s distinct voice, force and skills as a dramatist of great talent, especially with respect to exploration, expansion and elasticity of the theme, plotting and other elements of the dramaturgy!
This spurred lively debate at a postmortem session which the playwright had specifically invited and said would guide the final outcome of the play, he remarked, in his unassuming character, as “still a work in progress” when introducing the play to the select audience, gathered under a big canopy on the lawn of the breezy ambience of the luxury hotel that cool evening.
The discussions centred essentially around Osofisan’s tendency to generate controversy with the multi-sided and multi-layered perspectives, themes and mechanics of his art. Some participants at the post performance workshop queried some lines in the play including Medaye’s obdurate objection to her husband taking a new wife as an incredible grafting of European monogamist culture, which was alien to the largely polygamist African society.
But others rose in their defence remarking that the overly overtone and bias for feminism were hallmarks of many Osofisan’s plays and should, therefore, not surprise at all, as the playwright had a pedigree for speaking up for women in his works.
Some participants, apparently forgetful that it was merely a reading performance, quarreled with the dramatics, characterisation as well as historical and cultural validity of some of the songs used to frame some of the acts, the relevance of which the contents suggested lie well after the 19th century Yoruba tribal wars in which the play was set.
Although Director Awosanmi offered justification for his judgment, he was unconvincing in explaining the entry and exit of a noble like Kurunmi (Ropo Ewenla), a ruler and field marshal of the Yoruba nation, shorn of protocol and accompanying flourish and regale. Ditto for allowing his being disrespected by defiant Medaye and the Akunyungba, a writhe of professional women singers who hung around her house singing abusive songs to humiliate her rival and indeed anyone in support of her husband’s bid to bring her home. It is hardly possible that a rump of his subjects would extend such custom to a foremost personage such as the leader of an imperial army who also doubled as viceroy of a formidable kingdom as Ijaye, over a trivial domestic matter, some critics argue.
However, for those who perceived cultural dissonance between the dramatic text and its classical sibling the playwright reminded that the play was not an adaptation as such, but “a re-reading” as indicated in the title, which implied rupturing, re-interpretation and refashioning of the old story and message to suit and address present as well as emergent issues and situations.
Although not a costumed production, the actors, (who all wore a uniform of black vest on jeans) gave a most entrancing performance, going beyond the scripts to entertain the audience with thrilling music, dance, choreography and evoking the magic and powers of the African pantheon! The spectacle was so superlative that a guest, apparently a stranger to live performances declared it was more than TV and church drama shows he was used to and there and then confessed his conversion as a theatre fan!
Members of Ibadan arts circuit notably UI Department of English’s Prof. Nelson Fasina; veteran broadcaster, Yomi-Layinka; renowned African visual artist, Tunde Odunlade; Ebika Anthony, a poet; Educare Trust’s Moshood Folorunso and other guests in the audience were unanimous that the play was yet another masterpiece from Osofisan’s creative studio bound to shatter box office records when it eventually goes on stage, an event they said they could not wait to see.
- Fabowale is Ibadan-based writer
