I to start thinking about what! 
Do I start with personal effects 
which went with the fire or 
departmental properties which 
were in my care as Head of 
Department far the two years 
immediately preceding the fire? 
I have been associated off and 
on with the Department since 
1961 - the days of the School of 
Drama. I was a member of Wole 
Soyinka's 1960 Masks out of 
which grew the Orisun 
Repertory. 
I remember my copies of pictures of 
some performances by Orisun; The Lion 
and the Jewel, 1964, The Trials of Brother 
Jero 1963 both directed by Wole Soyinka 
himself. There were also pictures of our 
performance of B. Holos' The Creation 
Myth. This was a dance drama 
choreographed by Peggy Harper. There 
were pictures of several revue sketches by 
Wole Soyinka. More than the pictures 
were manuscripts with Wole Soyinka's 
handwriting as he amended the scripts to 
suit different performances during the heady 
days of political turmoil i n the then Western 
Region of Nigeria. Orisun's production of 
J.P. Clark's The Raft (1963?) which was 
performed before Leopold Sedar Senghor 
has particular memories. The younger 
members of Orisun, Tunji Oyelana, Jimi 
Solanke, Wale Ogunyemi, Femi (then 
Eddy) Fatoba, Betty Okotie (now Betty 
Edewoh) Yewande Akibo (now Yewande 
Johnson) and Dele Oti were all involved in 
the building of the set. The show was lit by 
Wale Ogunyemi.The picture of the set by 
itself on stage looked like it was sitting on 
• Personal memories of a 
departmental fire and a 
recount of irreplaceable 
Femi 
Fatoba
records and texts 
real water. I lost the playbill, pictures of 
The Raft particularly those of Wole 
Soytnito, Ralph Opara, Yemi Ujadu and 
%Q{JU Olusolo, the four members of the 
cost. The productionwas directedby Wole 
Soyinka. 
offhecomerttonBt 
of my foundation as a theatre practitioner 
before I left the country in 1964 to study 
Speech and Drama at the Central School 
of Speech and Drama, London, England. 
Since my final(?) return to the country in 
1 977 I have been in the Department as a 
teacher. I have seen many students through 
the Department. Almost all of them 
graduated It is not the fact of their 
graduation which was affected by this fire 
but the process of their graduation in the 
actuality of the files of some of their very 
memorable productions. Garcia Lorca's 
Blood Wedding directed by Lola Fanikayode, 
Wole Soyinka's Death and the 
Editor's Note: As the University of Ibadon 
forges on with repair work on blocks of 
buildings which housed the Theatre Arts, 
Philosophy and Arabic studies departments 
destroyed entirely by a fire incident on the 
night preceding 25thjanuary 1995, fatoba 
who with other colleagues lost their whole 
personal libraries, recounts that the fire 
wiped out so many priceless documents, 
photographs, audio tapes, landmark 
production programmes and posters that 
money can by no means replace. 
Opposite picture, of a / 969 Arts Theatre 
production handbill, is representative of the 
lost antiques. 
King's Horsemon directed by Segun 
OjftWuyi, Jean Genet's directed by Saidat 
Odofin Nothing i* left of tha production 
file* of these productions, thanks k> that 
fif«. Nothing wo* ipared, not the staff 
files either of such productions as 
Osofisan'* One* Upon Four Robbers 
1978, Zulu Sofola's Song of a Maiden 
1979, each directed by its playwright; 
lonetco's Exit the King directed by Femi 
Fatabo 1979, Jean-Paul Sort's Lucifer 
and the Lord directed by Carroll Dawes, 
choreographed by Femi Fatoba in 1981, 
Femi Osofiscn's Aringindin and the 
Nightwatchmeri directed by Sunbo 
Marinho in 1989 and Wole Soyinka's 
The Road directed by Femi Osofisan in 
1 990, The Scoundrel Suberu an 
adaptation of Moliere's Scapin by 
Adelegba and Egbe was performed in 
1986, directed by Dapo Adelugba Yinka 
Adede|i directed A flash in the Sun (an 
ensemble creation) which was the 
participation of the University of Ibadan 
in the programme marking the exhibition 
of Treasuries of Ancient Nigeria in 
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U S A. in 
1982 Later the production toured 
Netherlands, Japan and W Germany in 
1983 and in 1984 it was taken to the 
Olympic Games in Los Angeles. Apart 
from production files there were pictures 
from Fidelina Okwesa's Nonyelum, a 
dance-drama co-choreographed by 
Okwesa and Fatoba in 1978 and 
repeated in 1 979 Most painful is that the 
pictures and production files came from 
the premiere of most of the African plays 
mentioned above 
For the production of Alem 
Mezgebe's PULSE directed by Bayo 
Oduneye in 1 9801 painted a big blazing 
red pudenda on which one big human 
eye was superimposed. This was at the 
request of the director. The painting was 
one of the prominent stage props and it 
was conspiciously displayed on the table 
of the lead character played by Ayo 
African Quarterly 
on the Arts 
VtLVNOi
Akinwale. The painting attracted a lot of 
attention and controversy and Mr. 
Oduneye always transferred the burden 
of explaining or interpreting the painting 
to me. It wasn't that he didn't know the 
symbolism of the painting in the context of 
the play, afterall he commissioned it. The 
fact is that he just wanted to put the joke 
on me. The difficult part is that the said 
painting attracted attention from female 
members of the play's audience than it 
did from males. This persisted even more 
after the production when Mr. Oduneye 
put the painting in his office purely as a 
work of art, out of its original symbolic 
context. 
Osofisan's Midnight Hotel was 
directed by the playwright in 1982. The 
cast include Tunde Laniyan and Ayo 
Akinwale. In 1988 Adelugba directed 
Soyinka's Opera Wonyosi; in 1990 
Waiting for Anini by Kunle Famoriyo was 
directed by the playwright; in 1991 
Osofisan directed his Farewell to a 
Cannibal Rage. It was later presented to 
Ibrahim Babangida on the occasion of his 
official visit to Oyo State. The occasion of 
that performance at the cultural centre, 
Mokola, Ibadan afforded me the 
opportunity of seeing men and women of 
the State Security at work. They ranged 
from the very intelligent to the utterly 
stupid. Most of them tried to disguise 
while some openly flaunted their identity 
whenJideMalomoand I were rehearsing 
the students at the Cultural Centre. Some 
were so officious that they went as far as 
violating the performance area during the 
performance. I remember praying for a 
James Booth even though Babangida could 
and would never compare with George 
Washington. A lot of the costumes and 
props for that production went with the 
fire. 
In the case of the staff productions 
mentioned here, except each member 
kept his own production file in offices 
outside of the Departmental office block, 
we lost them all to the fire as they were 
records of artistic achievements. 
Records of academic achievements 
such as copies of all Ph.D. thesis and M.A. 
dissertations ever written (except the 
departmen written in a few which were 
borrowed and yet to be returned by post- 
African Quarterly 
on the Arts 
Veil/NO 3 
graduate students) were lost in the fire. As 
Head of Department for two years, the 
sitting arrangement in my office was such 
that each time I looked up I saw the glazed 
pictures of those who ran the Department 
before me except that of Femi Osofisan 
who was yet to provide us with his 
picture. Geoffrey Axworthy, the first Head 
of the School of Drama; the Nobel Laureate 
Wole Soyinka, the first Nigerian Head of 
Department followed byj. A. Adedeji, the 
longest serving Head of Department (so 
far) and Dapo Adelugba. Each time I 
looked up at those pictures I felt inspired 
particularly by the faces of Axworthy and 
Soyinka and I told myself that I will make 
myself worthy of stepping into the shoes 
they left behind. I first experienced real 
theatre through Soyinka and knew 
Axworthy at Ibadan but he later became 
the principal of my college during my last 
two years in college in London. 
All those pictures were destroyed 
by the fire. I can only carry them in my 
memory. I remember always telling 
students not to damage departmental 
property, telling them of the importance of 
legacies for coming generations. Legacies 
of all B.A. long essays and other artistic 
projects which were ever undertaken in 
the Department constituted reference 
materials housed in the departmental 
library. We lostthem all. So were playtexts 
from all over the world, covering 
generations from the times of the Pharaohs. 
Of course I lost the whole world. 
Theatre was the centre of my life. My 
library was the core of that centre. There 
I lived with all the great poets of the world, 
from ancient Greece to modern-day 
Nigeria. There I lived with all the great 
artists of ancient Ife and Benin to moderns 
like Cezanne, Picasso, Onobrakpeya and 
Jimoh Akolo. There I lived with the 
mythologies and folklores of the ancient 
and modern world. There I lived with all 
the playwrights of the world from 
Euripedes, Sophocles to Shakespeare and 
Marlowe, Maxim Gorky and other Russian 
writers to the moderns of Europe and 
America and back home to Africa and 
Ngugi Wa Thiongo, Wole Soyinka and 
Femi Osofisan and the lesser-known ones. 
There I lived with the great critics on both 
the right and left of critical appreciation of 
Literature. The great storytellers of the 
world were also there from Dovstoyevski 
to D. O. Fagunwa. There were recorded 
performances of Duro Ladipo, discs of 
Ebenezer Obey, Ayinla Omowura and 
Haruna Ishola. There I also lived with 
some of my own creations, the many 
canvasses with which I conversed while 
creating images on them. I lost my world 
of manuscripts and journals. I was not 
sure at what point I started crying after I 
saw the wreck of what oniy the previous 
day, housed the pride <-i.id wealth of my 
academic, literary and artistic being. 
A few weeks before the fire, (another 
departmental teacher) Dr. Lanre Bamidele 
had come to my office to ask me some 
questions about a student or so, then he 
looked at a section of my library. He was 
delightedly surprised to see some books 
he knew would help in some paper he 
was writing or planning to write. He there 
and then asked if he could use my library. 
Of course I said he could. He too lost part 
of that world. So did the mature students 
and other lecturers. I remember sitting at 
the bottom of the tree in front of the Arts 
Theatre watching colleagues in the 
Philosophy department pick up remnants 
of their lives from the wreck, and listening 
to people lamenting, cursing, some asking 
questions directed at nobody in particular. 
Some went into the story of how the 
fire was first noticed and how the 
University's fire department had been 
summoned but could not do anything 
because they had no water. They told of 
how some of the fire fighters refused to risk 
their lives and eventually it was the students 
from Tafawa Balewa and Kuti halls of 
residence who mobilised and stopped the 
fire spreading to take on the Arts Theatre 
also. There were many more recounts bi 
those trailed off and became mere echoes 
to the ears. Each time I thought about the 
magnitude of the losses Akin Isola's words 
kept coming back. There was a chance 
meeting with the playwright on that same 
day in the home of Professor O. O. 
Olatunji, of the Department of Linguistics 
and African languages. Professor Isola's 
words were based in Yoruba philosophy: 
'Eniti o ni nkan osin a ku gbi. Nkan osin 
re lo ku, ka dupe pe iwo ko loku.' (A 
person without a pet dies easily. It is your 
pet that died, lets thank God it wasn't you 
who died). GR