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Tag: Professor Femi Osofisan

  • Gloria Anozie-Young, Diabuah, others light up MUSON Festival

    Patrick Diabuah and Gloria Anozie-Young will join other actors to light up the stage at the prestigious Agip Recital Hall of MUSON Centre, Onikan, Lagos, to commemorate the ongoing 22nd edition of MUSON Festival 2018 on Saturday, October 27.

    The feature drama for this year Such Is Life, written by Professor Femi Osofisan and directed by Kenneth Uphopho, is a hilarious comedy with all the characteristics of a thriller that will keep you on the edge of your seat from start to finish.

    Read Also:Queen Esther – Musical Drama Live @ MUSON

    The protagonist Prof Juokwu (Patrick Diabuah) has made a scientific discovery, which enables his quick getaways to his numerous escapades. This ‘Midnight Blackout,’ as he calls it, will eventually get him into trouble with his wife Obioma (Gloria Young) as well as Mr. Akubundu (Kanayo Okani). Other actors include Omololu Shodiya, Friday Francis and Bunmi Sogade.

    Uphopho explained Such Is Life was chosen for MUSON Festival 2018, saying, “Such is life is the choice for Muson Festival 2018 because of the theme and sub-themes projected in the play which resonates with the direction of the festival. It’s dynamic choice of language and style displayed by well-rounded characters is also a testament of the writer’s proficiency. It was originally titled Midnight Blackout after the obvious plot of the play.”

    Although a hilarious comedy, Uphopho Such Is Life also contains doses of grave political implication for the country, adding, “Such is life checks everything on the list in terms of performance, message, plot, drama, intrigue and being funny. It is a serious play but there’s humour intertwined in the seriousness of the situation in the play.

    “However, what many people don’t know and what is not covered in the marketing publications for Such is Life is that it is a satire on the government devised through the family institution. It covers political, social, ethnic and economic factors prevalent in the society today. There is a thorough dissecting of the different economic programmes the government has introduced which in turn has been potentially ‘unfavourable’ to the masses. The play also takes a cursory look at infidelity and adultery as they affect the society at large in the grand scheme of things.”

    For Uphopho also, the impact of the yearly MUSON Festival drama “goes beyond just creating a sustainable platform for drama to be ‘seen,’ especially by music enthusiasts and arts lovers. It also celebrates writers and their contributions to the arts in general.”  Such is Life is produced by Brenda Uphopho for PAWSTUDIOS.

     

  • Endless agonies of Women of Owu

    Endless agonies of Women of Owu

    Not only emotion, but also sympathy, outcry, agony and supplication for help that indeed surrounded the circumstances of the Women of Owu.  The play which is on now at the National Theatre, Lagos, is the re-enactment of part of the 19th Century Yoruba wars in which the city of Owu was besieged for several years by the combined forces of Ife, Ibadan, Ijebu and Oyo.  Owu people had been recalcitrant to the rest of Yoruba and this was not a welcome development.

    With the students of the Drama department of the Lagos State University, Ojo, Lagos, involved in the play this year, it was easy to notice the level of resilience and stage craft and mobility which the youthful artistes brought to bear on the play.  Watching them on stage showed that there is indeed hope for the stage theatre in Nigeria today.

    Their ability to raise the tempo of the play, their ability also to highlight and interpret the nuances in very emotional and sympathetic ways embedded in the play helped the scenes to register in the minds of the audience.  The play itself is a dirge.  It is a dirge anchored on the sorrows of women who had to face the humiliation of defeat.  After the city was razed and pillaged, the palace was despoiled, while some of the shrines were profaned and burnt to ashes.

    In this devastating scenario only women were left.  All the men of the city had been beheaded.  The idea, more or less, was never to let Owu people breed men any more.  It was to teach them an everlasting lesson not to dare the rest of the Yoruba nation in future.  And this worked because on and on the women wept, cursed and mourned and moaned.  Yet no help or intervention came from anywhere.

    The more the women wept, recounting how their woes and problems began and hoping upon hope to have some respite, the more the invading soldiers taunted and hounded them to submission.  It was such a harrowing and colossal situation that Professor Femi Osofisan, the playwright, was able to capture and embellish the play with surplus dances and songs.

    The dances and the songs were well handled by the student actors and actresses.  The total epitome and beauty of the play was found in the flexibility of the dancers whose sorrowful dirges indeed helped in defining the historical importance and sequence of the invasion.  The whole episode is the total manifestation of what historical issues can do to encourage people look back into time.  Osofisan was detailed in his presentation, he looked succinctly at the nuances of the people, even the stubbornness of an average Owu person in those days was replicated over time to make it a vivid historical play.

    In the end, the dramatic effects of what he did become a point of reference.  History is replete with such events that touched the society in various core areas of their social, political and economic lives.  The idea of staging the play is to help students who would offer English Literature in the next West African School Certification Examination, (WASCE).  It is part of the syllabus and so it is imperative that the play is staged now to help literature students master the techniques of the book better.  It is to show them practical theatre.

    Basically, this was why young undergraduate students were used to propel it on.  The age range is not too far from what the secondary students can easily identify with.  In fact, their deep involvement in the play on stage, showed that they too got infused into the story itself.  They were carried away by the emotional aspects of the story, swinging away on stage, attired in simple costumes with other dirty and local linens, just to totally depict the sorry situation of the women of Owu.

    As soon as you enter the cinema hall of the National Theatre where the play was staged, the first attraction is the splendour of the stage.  Built by Biodun Abe, the newly appointed Director of Abuja Carnival, the simple village setting embossed on the painting on stage made the whole exercise look real and convincing.  Known for his practical and daring attitude to stage décor and mesmerisation, Abe confessed that he did the stage to register a real village pattern of the time and to also situate the historical relevance of the story.  “The people have to see what the rural life of the people was like in those days.  This was a bush path, very narrow indeed, through which movements from place to place were made possible in those days.  This becomes your first point of contact as soon as you enter the cinema hall,” he said.

    The representation of mud houses and the thick bushes on both sides of the village settlement, the desolate nature of the village further defined that the people were at war.  The whole village was deserted and that in itself evoked profound pity.  Abe drew on people’s emotions with that stage design that you needn’t be told that a core professional was at work to give opulence to a play that still remains poignant in the annals of Yoruba history.  The play dissects love, it treats romance, intrigues, backbiting and it especially dwells on why most powerful men of history marry or fall in love with bitches.

    With total and bewitching beauties, most of the women were able to hoodwink powerful generals of the invading armies to evade punishment and possible death.  They all added to the import of the power of female anatomy, but also gave the play its proper place as an epic, a didactic expose of the norms of the people and their likes and dislikes.

  • For Women of Owu

    For Women of Owu

    With Women of Owu, a play by Professor Femi Osofisan forming part of the texts for secondary schools students for 2011 – 2015 sessions, the management of the National Theatre, Lagos, has decided to bring back the programme, Schools Dramatised Literature texts. This is to help them improve the standard of literature in their exams and also expose students to the core values of drama. Edozie Udeze writes

    Over the years, students offering Literature in English in School Certificate Examinations and University Entrance Examinations have found it somewhat difficult to come to terms with some of the texts recommended for use.  This has made it impossible for some Literature students to really understand the depth of the books and what literature itself portends.

    Owing to this fact and more, the management of the National Theatre, Iganmu, Lagos, in collaboration with a group of artistes have decided to put on stage one of the recommended books for this season.  The book is Women of Owu written by Professor Femi Osofisan, foremost Nigerian playwright and academic.

    Women of Owu is an African retelling of Euripides, in which the playwright uses a rhythmic mix of choruses, songs and dances punctuated by individual stories of woes, agonies, wars and so on to delve into the historic account of the people. It is a thought-provoking account of how the combined forces of Ife, Oyo and Ijebu invaded and pillaged the ancient city of Owu, killing all the men and children. In leaving only the women alive, they found a voice in the Erelu, a woman who rose to stand solidly behind her people. Her strength was driven by the solidarity she got from the other women who indeed chose to defy the allied forces, calling them ‘cursed men who had no dignity for human essence’

    In an interview with The Nation, Biodun Abe who is the handler of the drama project, said, “our concern is borne out of the fact that literature is a core subject for students seeking to offer courses in Arts and Humanities in Nigerian universities. In response to the need to aid the students’ understanding of the texts and consequently improve their results, we have chosen to revive the Schools Dramatised Literature Text and Book Fair. Women of Owu is a text in the syllabus for 2011-2015 academic years.

    “We discovered that over the years, most of these students did not quite grasp the profundity of the texts. We looked at the results that have already been posted, especially by the Lagos State, and we discovered that the results were less than excellent performance. To us, that is not good enough. So what we are doing is beyond entertainment. We intend also to impact on the society in the area of raising the standard of the would-be leaders of tomorrow”, he said.

    When the approach was adopted before, the results during those years were quite better. When the students watched the characters on stage, they were able to identify with them and even got to know the story deeper and better. And since drama is all about life on stage, the reality of the stories and the people involved in it, came closer to the students. “That enhanced their understanding of the text better”, Abe said.

    He continued, “then we want to be more creative with the script this season by organizing, at the end of every performance, an interactive session between we, the organisers and the students who watched the drama. They will field questions and we will attend to them. We will solve also some literature questions and there will be more interaction because we would have taken them beyond what happens within their classrooms.”

    In doing this, the Theatre management wants to involve a group of tested artistes who can give their best on stage by bringing out all the essentials of Women of Owu. Sina Ayodele, a teacher of Literature at the Lagos State University, Ojo and who is a member of National Association of Nigerian Theatre Arts Practitioners (NANTAP), will spearhead the stage. While the venue will be the National Theatre, the technical crew and other stage matters will be provided by Abe and his team.

    The play is an emotional drama where women, after being subjected to series of sufferings, preferred to take their fate in their hands. Their power of protest and resolve resembled the stubbornness exhibited by the Aba women in 1929, when they told the British colonial masters that they could not pay tax. In the play, the women spoke with one voice: they gathered together to give strength and succor to one another. It has been described as a powerful evening of theatre, mesmerising, rhythmic and ever-bourgeoning. The event happened in 1821 or thereabout when these forces laid a siege on Owu for seven years. Initially, Lawumi, their goddess had given her approval to the siege, saying that the rulers of Owu were becoming too arrogant and unapproachable.

    However, with the desecration of her shrines and those of Obatala and other forms of destruction unknown in history, she became angry against the invading forces that she also invited Anlugbua, another Owu deity to join her in the destruction of the allied forces. Henceforth, the intrigues that unfold give the drama a special blend, thus making it one of the most successful stage dramas on women historic issues in Nigeria.

    “I will destroy them,” Lawumi boasted, “because they too (allied forces) have no regard for me. Just imagine, when they set the town on fire, desperate men and women ran to my shrine for protection. But do you know these allied forces, the very soldiers I gave total support did not spare them! Can you believe the insult! Yes, of course the fugitives were Owu people and so were enemies, but so what! They had run to me for refuge! Me, their ancestral mother! But no, the allied soldiers did not care for that! They seized them all!! Even Princess Orisaye, Obatala’s vestal votary, was literally dragged out of my hands without any of the soldiers protesting. Then, to cap the insult, look! They have set fire to my shrine!” She was addressing Anlugbua who, on his own part, agreed that time had come to inflict the proud Ijebu, Ife and Oyo soldiers with an everlasting confusion, suffering and agony on their way back.

    In the process, therefore, Lawumi beckoned on Esu, the chief mischief-maker, Obatala and other gods and goddesses to begin to perfect strategies to make this journey perilous, tortuous and horrendous. “I want their return journey to be filled with grief”, she said. “Human beings”, she reiterated, “it is clear, only learn from suffering and pain. Already Esu has promised me, there’ll be such confusion at every crossroads…till human beings learn that gods are not their plaything.”

    On their part, Erelu and her princesses were determined to foil the plans of the enemy to make them slaves. She resolved to the end never to be subjected to such a trauma. She said, “A father can only chew for a child, he cannot swallow for her. If only you had read your history right, the lessons left behind by the ancestors! Each of us, how else did we go except by the wrath of war? Each of us, demolished through violence and contention. Not so? But you chose to glorify the story with his! Lies!, our apotheosis as you sing it is a fraud…”

    Then she slumped on stage and died. This was even before the allied forces could perfect their final plans to whisk her and others away.

    With a deluge of dirges to synchronise with the pitiable condition of the women, the play indeed harps on the power of words as epitomised and espoused by the womenfolk. With their utterances, supported with innuendoes, pregnant with meaning, they were able to harass the generals almost out of existence. Erelu’s final words to others summed it up – “Go, go into the forests, I cannot help you. No one can. You are going now into years of wandering and slavery. As the penalty for your wasted lives. Perhaps afterwards you would have learnt the wisdom of sticking together and loving one another…”

    Osofisan has written over 50 plays and to date, he still remains Nigeria’s most dramatised playwright. Some of his works have even been commissioned by renowned theatres in Europe and America and across the world. That is one of the reasons why this project is essential so as to make the impact more engrossing and outstanding. After it is shown at the National Theatre, it can be taken to other states depending on the interest shown by the government. The idea is to ensure that majority of the students have the opportunity to watch the play.

  • A legend for season of love

    A legend for season of love

    Edozie Udeze writes on One Legend, Many Seasons, a play written by Professor Femi Osofisan and staged by the National Troupe of Nigeria to bring closer home the real essence of this season of love and reconciliation

    Even though One Legend, Many Seasons written by Professor Femi Osofisan is an adaptation of Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol, the message it has for the people and the society was made clear on stage last weekend. The play was chosen by the National Troupe of Nigeria (NTN) to bring to people’s minds the true essence of Christmas. “It is a season of gifts, love and total reconciliation,” so said Martin Adaji, the Artistic Director of the Troupe.

    The play centred on a miserly rich man named Alomolodu. He had worked tirelessly to make money. But it was the kind of money he did not want to share with anybody. His love for his relations was cold. In the process of working himself to the marrow making money, his wife left him. He didn’t even have time to look for a replacement.

    Alone in the world, he took his office work as his only companion. His workers were like slaves to him. He had no pity for them. He always told them to be punctual or be damned. When his neighbours and relations came along to mention Merry Christmas to him, he shunned them, saying, “nonsense and ingredients. Christmas is not for people like me.”

    On and on, he went to display his disdain towards the people. But at a stage the ghost of Makon, a dead colleague of his appeared to him to warn him to desist from his obnoxious life style. “it will lead you to hell,” he tells him while appearing in chains. It was one message Alomolodu did not let go. It struck him truly that if his dead colleague could appear to warn him, then there was more to it than he could understand.

    Within the same period, three more spirits appeared to show him three stages of Christmas: The Christmas in the past, Christmas in the present, and Christmas in the future, all emphasising the need for him to show love to humanity. “Your wealth is meant to be shared with the poor,” he was told.

    Slowly, the spirits took him back to his boyhood days when he lived in a thatched home. There they made him understand that life has stages and each stage is meant to depict a different scenario, both for the person concerned and the people around him.

    The climax came when he was shown his grave in a cemetery. On the tomb was written “gone too soon – life and times of Alowolodu whose remains lie here.” This touched him so much that he began to shiver and ponder over his life and how he had treated people with disrespect. This therefore became a turning point in his life. His attention was henceforth turned to the people he once discarded and derided. He not only began to shower them with love, he saw in them his own source of existence. “There’s total beauty in life when the rich shares what he has with the poor around him.” Alowolodu kept reminding himself, while reminiscing over his past and present.

    Directed by Josephine Igberaese of the National Troupe, the mainstream of the play was the application of flashbacks to depict most of the scenes. The use of a narrator in the person of Albert Akaeze who incidentally bestrode the stage like a colossus, showed that the play truly has one legend, but too many seasons. Akaeze’s professional handling of the storyline helped to put the audience at ease to be able to follow the sequences with more rapt attention. It was Igberaese’s way of being inventive and colourful so as to ensure that no details were left out.

    Perhaps, the director should have also eliminated the animal kingdom aspects of the story. The introduction of that session really removed the shine from the play. At a stage when the audience had got used to the antics of Alowolodu and the lessons to be learnt from the play, there was a sharp diversion to the storytelling involving the animals. That diversion immediately put people off. For, indeed in the strictest sense of theatrical directing, it had no bearing to the main body of the play. For this reason and more, it made the play unduly long and boring.

    It was so boring that some people began to shuffle and hiss, a way to stamp their displeasure. “Why should a play of one-and-half-hours be made to last longer than necessary?” Someone hissed in disgust.

    Nonetheless, the presence of the playwright, Osofisan, the Minister of Culture, Edem Duke, Chairman of National Troupe board, Markus Ishaya and other important dignitaries made the show more colourful. Duke noted that people who have something to offer should help the poor. “That is what Christmas means to all of us.”

    Duke, who slipped unto the stage to join the artistes to make his remark did not stay to the end of the play. However, he made it clear that the play is not only timely and instructive so that the people ought to learn from the Alowolodu episode, it is also a play meant to allow people go soul-searching.

    The play, which has been performed in many countries including Ghana, Canada and the US, only proved that the season of Christmas is universal. It is one season when people ought to come together to share what they have and also make new friends.

  • Why we’re reviving ethnic-based theatre

    Why we’re reviving ethnic-based theatre

    At a time when plays, dances and songs in local languages are going extinct, Professor Femi Osofisan, a prolific writer and renowned playwright, has chosen to discuss and organise a national conference to revive people’s interest in ethnic-based stage theatre. In this interview with Edozie Udeze, Osofisan speaks on the need to look closely at D.O. Fagunwa’s works to see their relevance to national issues, the need to ensure that issues raised in plays conform with the problems of the society and lots more

    You translated one of D.O. Fagunwa’s work Igbo Eledumare into English. What does it mean to have his work on stage?

    Oh, it is not really a direct translation. What I have is a stage adaptation of one of his works into English.

    When you did that, what were the essential issues you encountered?

    Well, it is more or less what many scholars have been talking about. Anyway, in my own case, we had a project, a contract with one of these computer companies. We wanted to do all the Fagunwa’s stories on stage. It is one of the issues of reviving and showing interest in his works and then helping to promote indigenous literature.

    It is also part of the reviving of Yoruba culture. In fact, ours was essentially to revive Nigerian cultures but we were to start with Yoruba and later move to other cultures. So, we chose D.O. Fagunwa’s works first. I was appointed the consultant for that project. So, that was it and we were to do seven works of different artistes every year. I also have my own agenda too, which is to help actors to stage plays throughout the country. If we are able to employ about 50 actors and 50 crews every year that would be fine. But we were able to do only two when they stopped the project. So that was it. My own concept of it was to do two adaptations of Fagunwa’s works and one in English, the other in Yoruba. It was then I hired Professor Akinwunmi Ishola for the Yoruba adaptation and then I’d do the one in English. So, every year we did one and we started Ogboju Igbo Olodumare which we had produced. Then we were to go on with the third one when that problem cropped up. So, we’ve not continued with the adaptations so far.

    The play was too frightening to watch on stage. How were you able to situate all the mysteries and strange forests and human beings to give the play its proper bent?

    You know, I had a good director in the person of Dr. Tunde Awosanmi of the University of Ibadan. Yes, he did justice to the play on stage. He did a good directing and was able to bring out the true colour of what I had in the translation. I hired him to handle the English one and he did it so well that people who watched it came out not only fascinated, but better informed about the works of Fagunwa. Our first problem was to get the script. It was not really a big problem for me to translate it into stage. The narrative was a bit clearer – a bit more understandable.

    However, in the other plays and other books, the narratives were not as clear and as understandable. Sometimes, it was not that clear to situate it. So, the first thing we did was to sit down and decide which one to take. As we heard from the panel thereafter, there was a lot of ambiguity concerning Fagnwa’s works because of his Christian background combined with his traditional beliefs. All we did was to give all that their tonal phases. And as a writer, he had his own artistic pedigree. So, all these things clashed again and again as we worked on the project to get the best translation for the stage. And so sometimes the stories are not really resolved. You know the hunters and so on, travelled to places and in the end what happened? It talks about the morality of a people, the morality of a society and so on.

    So, there are lots of moralising, a lot of sermonising and also a lot of contradictions in the works. So, how do you bring them all to bear on stage for people to watch and be conscious of what the story is all about? Ogboju Olodumare even seems to be the clearest of all his works. Yet at the end of it all, it was like the people were being tricked. When they came back it seemed people did not even remember them. I mean the hunters. Although there are issues there to make them look like national heroes and so on, but the actual story shows that they wasted their time undertaking that adventure. Look at the story again and you’ll see it clearly there.

    So, there are lots and lots of ambiguities in the story, that is in Fagunwa’s works. But as a playwright you have to situate them properly to suit the stage, to appeal to the audience. You need to decide the real emphasis for the stories, for there are many stories therein. So, for us to find a coherent theme, we had to arrange and rearrange and then said okay, what were the main stories in all these?

    And then we decided which would form the main part on stage. We also worked Ireke Onibudo out to see how it relates to his primary aim. While investigating around, we discovered that that name was given to one of the Ibadan army generals. It is the lion of the people, yet it is a metaphor for love.

    So, we decided to concentrate on those love motives. It was a time really to find out what to do about that. Then the other thing again was to go back to the more narrative aspect of it. Finally, the second part goes to the hunters. The thing is that they were tricked by the Oba of the town. The question now is why did Oba do that. So, you have to read the story, read between the lines and reading between the lines, you’ll see what happened in the town.

    That meant also, there was contest of power. The Oba discovered that if you are too powerful, you ought to be made an ambassador to throw you away from his domain. He was thinking the hunters will never come back. You have to look at it properly to get how that story happened. I have just completed Igbo Olodumare. When Wale Ogunyemi did Langbodo, he just ignored the first part of it and just went from there to the time of the hunters who went on that journey. But the question is what of the first part of that story?

    Therefore, it has been challenging. When I gave Akinwumi Ishola his own part of the Yoruba language to work on, without discussing it, he thought somehow that my own story is different. So, what is the principal line? While he worked on his own, I did mine on my own. What I did was to ensure that both the English and Yoruba films should not be exactly the same thing. Now they look a bit different and that makes it more interesting.

    Yes, in terms of love and social issues raised, is there any relationship between this and the Women of Owu, your own play?

    Well, in Women of Owu, to me, our theatre has always emphasised on entertainment, dance, songs and so on. That is what appeals to people. People here love to watch total theatre where you have plenty of entertainment mixed with the story itself. If you have to have a good play, all those features have to be there. That is what Women of Owu stands for. But I don’t restrict my attention to only dance.

    I have done other plays without total emphasis on love and dance. But in Women of Owu, I feel when you are dealing with that sort of issue you need to do that. So, even in Fagunwa’s works, you’ll always see musicians there. That is the whole essence of that. If you go through them you’ll see singing, dancing and so on. These played vital roles to get people out of danger, that’s with the songs, the dances. So you cannot avoid that. And also since it is the aim of our producer to revive our dying cultures and all that, they ensured that we did it to bring in certain essential theatre elements to make people love what we do.

    What do you think is the role of mother tongue in Nigerian theatre?

    It is very interesting. In fact, I think I will call for a conference may be in January next year on the issue of mother tongue and literature. We need to talk about it. We need to discuss it. What we are doing is to raise interest in local theatre or ethnic theatre. Be it in Igbo culture or Urhobo. The thing is if you do not do it, how do you now say theatre in local languages does not happen at all? How do demonstrate that it does not write. So, we need to situate that in our cultural parameters. But while we are doing that, what do we say now is happening to the national agenda, with the National Theatre, the Nigerian theatre itself? How do you propagate these ethnic-based theatre? This is why I said I have to convoke a national conference on this next year.