Contemporary English Language 
Akm T h e atre in Niqeria 
Adesokan 
Indeed, if we are thinking of the whole 
population in a society, it does not seem 
possible to talk about the development of 
theatre and drama in that society without 
analysing the nature of its economic and 
political development. 
- Michael Etherton 
N actor playing something of a 
dance director stands back, leaving the stage 
free for his performers of the dance -within-theplay, 
but only after he has voiced a poignant 
lament: 'The fooleries of beings whom I have 
fashioned closer to me weary and distress me. 
Yet I must persist, knowing that nothing is ever 
altered. My secret is my eternal burden - to 
pierce the encrustations of soul-deadening habit, 
and bare the mirror of original nakedness - 
knowing full well, it is all futility. Yet I must do 
this alone, and no more, since to intervene is to 
be guilty of contradiction, and yet to remain 
altogether unfelt is to make my long-rumoured 
ineffectuality complete.' 
That role of the Forest Head in A Dance of the Forests was 
acted by Wole Soyinka who wrote and directed the premiere 
performance of the play ostensibly for Nigeria's independence 
celebrations in October 1 960. The play is often mentioned with 
regards to this independence-motivated production. But in reality, 
it was far from being the favoured text for such occasions. 
According to an account given by the playwright himself in the 
memoir Ibadan: The Penkelemes Years (1946-1965), A Dance 
of the Forests was thought to strike 'a discordant note in 
Independence suite - subversive, cynical, iconoclastic, that it 
mocked the glories of the past and was pessimistic about the 
future.' Its author, it was believed, 'lacked the patriotic spirit of 
hope and confidence that was needed for a nation that was 
taking the first step into a rose-tinted future.' 
There was no official venue for the play in lagos, where 
most of the celebrations were taking place. Although the script 
had won a competition, also sponsored for the independence, it 
was not featured on the official programme of events. Yet, it went 
on stage at the Arts Theatre, University of Ibadan, performed by 
the cast o f ' I 9 6 0 Masks.' 
The feast in A Dance is called 'A Gathering of the Tribes', 
a phrase which may have unwittingly captured the true character 
of the country the British left behind in 1 960, and which remains 
till today. Apart from a departmental production at the University 
of Calabar in early 1980s, the full play has not been seen.on 
stage anywhere. In a country where fictions, properly funded, 
easily become news, then history, one is tempted to doubt the 
story of any performance of A Dance but for Soyinka's own 
narration and the evidence of some photographs this writer once 
encountered either on the pages of Nigeria Magazineor among 
the files in the attic of the Arts Theatre, Ibadan. 
And did those files escape the conflagration at the department 
of Theatre Arts, University of Ibadan on January 25, 1 995? 
Long before the fire incident, a set of crises had befallen the 
department. There were eleven students in the diploma class in 
1 963, out of 27 admitted the previous year, when the School of 
Drama formally took off. According to one of the students, the 
then director Geoffrey Axworthy had remarked that facilities in 
the theatre were not adequate for the students. Currently, there 
are about 50 students in the diploma class alone, and there are 
also the three degree courses and the postgraduate diploma 
programme. The student population must be up to a hundred at 
the least. The department has eleven lecturers on its staff list, out 
of which one is on leave at the National Film Institute, Jos, Plateau 
State. The situation represents a staff-student ratio of one to 40. 
For efficient tutoring and a well-realised practical scheme similar 
to what is available to medical students, the department requires 
a ratio of one to six, but the university can approve only one to 
25. Not even the fire incident has convinced the authorities that 
the department needs special consideration. 
Two months after the fire outbreak in which according to 
one of the lecturers Femi Fatoba, the department 'lost a world', 
a former graduate student there, the theatre director Chuck Mike 
took the cast and crew of the Performance Studio Workshop to 
Epeme a small community sited 1 2 kilometres off the Badagry 
expressway near Badagry. The group's aim, under its Theatre 
Outreach programme in 1991, was to 'collaborate with the 
people of Epeme towards the initiation of action that would lead 
to development within their village.' After a formal meeting with 
the Oba of Iworo, superior to the Baale of Epeme, an entry in the 
group's report notes: 'The truth of our mission was far from being 
understood. If it were, its authenticity was in doubt.' The PSW 
group lived in Epeme from March 20 to 26, 1995. With the 
people, they worked on six skits in the tradition of agitation and 
propaganda theatre At the end of the stay, Bunmi Lana, PSW's 
assistant coordinator reflects: 'I think we should let them develop 
but don't change them. I have learnt to tolerate people. I went to 
develop people but came back more developed. It is a new 
experience.' 
It was a totally different experience for Israel Eboh, artistic 
African Quarterly 
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Collective Artistes staff. From left: Adetokunbo George-Coker, Ademola Asiru, John Iweh, Muyiwa Odukale, Anthony 
Abbey, Muyiwa Hanson. Front row: Ibiye Romeo, Chuck Mike (centre) and Ajua Dickson. 
director of Fezi Productions, a Lagos-based amateur theatre 
group on March 1, 1996. His team had planned a staging of 
Soyinka's The Trials of Brother Jero at the National Theatre, 
Iganmu, Lagos. The text was on the syllabus of the West African 
School Certificate Examinations, and the company had thought 
to attract the student population. But Eboh, national scribe of the 
National Association of Nigerian Theatre Art Practitioners, 
NANTAP, got wind that men of the State Security Services would 
stop the play. Their reason, which they did not have to state, was 
that the writer of the play, then (as now) on self-exile, was an 
opponent of the military regime of General Sani Abacha. He 
quickly printed new posters and shifted the performance to the 
hall of Jubril Martins Memorial Grammar School, Surulere, 
Lagos. But the security agents trailed him there, ordered all 
arrangements at a performance stopped and invited him for 'a 
chat' at their state office in Shangisha, on the outskirts of Lagos. 
Now, how do these episodes tie together? Why bring 
politics in an article concerned primarily about the continued 
search for relevance - and so popularity - in the Nigerian theatre 
of English expression that has apparently been vibrant for close 
to four decades? Isn't theatre all about professionalism, that is, 
making a theatre and making it sell? And why write about it, why 
all this ink on the page about a tradition whose vitality lies in 
inducing sweat on the stage, at a time like this when records have 
either been wiped out, stolen or burnt and archives become 
centres of ash and dust? 
Maybe for those precise reasons. 
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Soyinka's A Dance of the Forests has suffered as a 
repertory play in comparison with The Trials of Brother Jero, 
perhaps the most performed of his plays. The Trials was written 
inside three days in 1961, and for its comedy and accessibility 
has either stayed in various repertories, or on the reading lists. 
Soyinka was soon to become the first Nigerian to head the school 
of drama in 1 967, a position he had barely assumed when the 
regime of General Yakubu Gowon clamped him into detention 
for his anti-war stance at the start of the Nigerian civil war. 
Although this ordeal arose from the political and economic 
contradictions characteristic of most African countries, rather 
than from a purely cultural engagement reminiscent of Ngugi wa 
Thiongo's experience in Kenya a decade later, it must be 
remembered that the person involved was Soyinka, wnose 
protagonist in A Dance, Demoke an embodiment of the Ogunnian 
contradiction fulfils himself by transcending the limitations of 
socio-political consciousness. In 1996, Soyinka's continuation or 
this self-exploration has afforded General Abacha's censorious 
regime, bastion of the legacy of an indivisible yet divided 
Nigeria the luxury of stopping a production of The Trials ot 
Brother Jero, just as it has ensured that the playwright's definition 
of the 1 990s, Beatification of an Area Boy is not performed on 
Nigerian soil for as long as that regime remains in power. 
Censorship has now taken over the job begun by the diffidence 
which consigned A Dance (and several other major works of the 
playwright) to the irretrievable repertory of Mata Kharibu's court. 
There is no knowing for certain what impact Soyinka's headship 
of the School of Drama would have had on the theatre in Nigeria 
since, according to Dapo Adelugba the current head of depart-
ment at Ibadan who was a lecturer at the school at the fime, 'he 
(Soyinka) was really not fully in a position to carry out his duty as 
director with the kind of energy that he could have devoted to it 
if the country had not been plunged into the kind of political and 
social difficulties that it was plunged into in 1967.' But his agitprop 
approach of the mid-1960s pointed in a direction, the 
direction that Mike's PSW has now broadened. 
Even as late as 1 977, Adelugba said the department of 
theatre arts at Ibadan had not yet decided whether it wanted to 
run separate programmes for professional theatre artists and the 
liberal arts students. He was interviewing fellow lecturer Jide 
Malomo for a number in the LACE (Language, Arts, Culture and 
Education) occasional publications. Then he said: 'You know, in 
1 967, a conference was organised at which we discussed the 
role of the arts and then we discussed the School of Drama. It was 
my view, based on careful analysis of the theatre arts, that in 
those five years we had not produced a director of note, we had 
not produced a playwright of note, we had not produced an actor 
of note, apart from Betty Okotie whom, I argued, got her training 
mostly from Wole Soyinka's Orisun Theatre right from her school 
days. Also, in my view, we had not produced a technician of any 
quality or a designer. That was ten years ago. Can we, ten years 
after, now boast that we have produced people of note in the 
various areas? Granted that we claim to be a liberal arts 
department, have we produced any theoretician who will be able 
to relate theatre arts, to the society? Given our leadership role 
as pioneers, have we produced graduates who have formulated 
policies in the arts, who have been able, in their various 
environments, to espouse the development of vital attitudes, 
among the community, to the arts?' Malomo's response was 
much longer but all it amounted to was that there was no basis 
for the department to evolve its own objective in the absence of 
a cultural policy on the arts. The generation of Nigerian professional 
theatre artists depended on the school, which in turn 
looked up to the government to formulate policies. And 1977 
was the year of official cultural regeneration: the Festival for Arts 
and Culture, FESTAC, which launched the Nigerian National 
Theatre, itself a monument of neo-colonial delusion. 
But we speak specifically of now; theatre as it is done in 
thrusts and prosceniums in Lagos and everywhere across Nigeria, 
in the Eighties and Nineties, oblivious to the shadowy 
influence of the cultural policy - or taken it for granted - able to 
generate its own philosophy despite the inadequacies of the 
schools which Adelugba captured with so much painstaking 
questioning. That such a subject was possible at all might seem 
to lay the queries to rest. It would seem to support an argument 
that runs in this fashion: Whether or not resulting from its 
interrogation of the forces - political, cultural, economic - shaping 
or misshaping contemporary Nigeria, a generation of playwrights, 
directors, actors, designers, technicians, notable in each 
case, is at work from sunrise to dawn putting plays and other 
kinds of production on stage with a good deal of success. The 
trend is that unlike the early years of the Sixties and Seventies 
when the university was the benign seat of power, English 
language theatre now exists also 'in the streets' among the 
population whose very realities and preferences itgrapples with. 
It might even ransack in the chests of recent memories for statistics 
of sold out tickets, plays worn from frequent mountings and 
tourings, directors booked for years and theatre hails for months. 
New answers to old questions. 
Yet some new questions are waiting in the wings, eager to 
take cue: What is the current state of practice in the theatre of 
English expression in Nigeria? Who and who are involved? How 
much of it is imaginative within the context of a community that 
has not evolved from the doldrums of an imposed political 
economy? What is the economic basis of this theatre? 
What is at the moment the dominant trend in contemporary 
theatre practice was on view in Lagos during April and May 
1 996. The 1 996 edition of the Nigeria International Bank's (NIB) 
sponsorship of a Nigerian classic featured Ola Rotimi's Kurunmi, 
directed by Olu Akomolafe and shown for four nights in mid-April 
at the main Auditorium of the University of Lagos. It was the 
seventh in a series of major productions commenced in February 
1 990 and which has also showcased the plays of Soyinka, John 
Bekederemo-Clark and Wale Ogunyemi. 
In May, Goethe-lnstitut, the German cultural agency, in 
Lagos, noted for its interest in live theatre mostly through Felix 
Okolo's adaptations of German scripts, co-sponsored an exchange 
project between German and Nigerian theatre artists. 
Other sponsors were German concerns like Lufthansa, the airline, 
Strabag and Julius Berger, both construction companies. Tagged 
African Theatre Project '96, the exchange featured playwright 
Ben Tomoloju of Kakaaki Production with Jide Ogungbade 
(whose last effort was directing Wole Soyinka's Death and the 
King's Horseman for the playwright's birthday festival in 1 994) 
and Matthias Gerht, a freelancing director with Shawbuinez 
Theatre in Germany. Tomoloju's new play 'Amona' was produced 
alongside Sophocles' Oedipus and were shown in Abuja 
and Lagos in late May and early June. 
Chuck Mike who had received in January 1995 a grant 
from the MacArthur Foundation Fund for Leadership Development 
equally had month-long performances of his two workshopdeveloped 
plays 'Ikpiko' and 'The Nigerian Factory' staged at 
the J.K. Randle Hall, Onikan, Lagos. The first play was actualised 
through the Sister Help (acronym for Synergising Information 
Systems Towards Enhancing Reproductive Health and Eradicating 
Ligate Practices) project. In the past, Mike had consulted for 
private, governmental and international organisations which 
included Shell Petroleum, UNICEF, USAID, the British Council 
and the Federal Road Safety Commission. From time to time, 
productions are mounted by private and government troupes in 
theatre halls in Lagos and in the states. For example, in July, the 
National Troupe of Nigeria staged Ahmed Yerima's 'The Trials 
of Oba Ovonramwen', a play that explores a different perspective 
from Rotimi's Ovonramwen Nogbaisi. The main feature of 
the practice is the dissolution of activities; even in the campuses, 
student and departmental productions proceed apace. Yet in 
none of these was there a fully professional, independent troupe 
originating a repertoire of self-financed plays. 
African Quarterly 
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Scene from Felix Okolo's play, Aruku Shanka 
The contemporary English language theatre is a product of 
both the reaction to the perceived elitism of university-based 
theatres influenced at once by the linguistic and structural 
deficiencies in Western-style theatres, and the need to adopt a 
more professional attitude to the theatre. These two broad levels 
of disenchantment with a tradition that has profoundly 
characterised a socially responsive enterprise like theatre are so 
much of that-disenchantment. But there is a lot more else to them. 
As facts will show, the reasoning that informed the conclusion are 
far from being free of the confusions and complexes becoming 
of disenchantment. 
The development of this theatre, like a good number of 
other cultural products of modern Nigeria, has been closely 
linked to the colonial educational system. The alleged political 
independence from Britain in 1 960 rather intensified this education. 
Michael Etherton, a drama teacher who has written an 
insightful book titled 'The Development of African Drama' believes 
that the curricular basis of drama in the university is flawed. 
Governments at independence felt universities, like the School of 
Drama ought to be able to teach a creative course like theatre. 
The School of Drama took off in 1963, following the visitation 
Report of 1961 which observed that 'drama should not be left to 
the fortuitous presence of enthusiastic volunteers, but should be 
properly organised by the University.' What resulted was 'a 
combination of theory and practice, often taught separately, a 
mixture of literary criticism, history of the theatre and some 
practical skills.' This close association to the educational system 
situated drama in contexts, that the uneducated masses were 
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unable to have access to. 
Some of the plays of Soyinka and Clark operate within this 
ideational framework. This also is the intellectual profile of most 
teachers and students of theatre in all the universities. Although 
the radical aesthetics of playwrights like Femi Osofisan, Yemi 
Ajibade, Bode Sowande and many of those emerging in the 
early Eighties compelled a departure from the 'old order' the facts 
of a limited, apparently homegenous university audience and 
occasional poorly publicised tours to handpicked theatre halls by 
semi-professional theatres meant that the plays had limited 
impact. It was this gap that informed the clamour in the early 
Eighties for theatre to 'move out of the university.' The suggestion 
was that a university-based dramatist's livelihood did not depend 
entirely on earnings from a theatrical production. 
Soyinka could go on teaching trips to France and Britain. 
Clark could teach English at the University of Lagos. Osofisan 
could attend a writing programme at Iowa for three months, 
writing a new play, while Kakaun Sela lay inactive. And so on. 
It was this desire for professionalism that has led to the presence 
in Lagos of professional theatre companies from the early 1980s. 
The focal point was Ajofest '86, a theatre extravaganza 
that 'involved a total cast and crew of 100, staging a different 
English-speaking play on every weekend for four weeks and 
performing to a capacity crowd right in the mainbowl of the 
National Theatre, in every case,' as Toyin Akinosho, cultural 
journalist, recorded in The Guardian of September 2 1 , 1 996.
The impetus also came from elsewhere. Clark had in 1982 
resigned from the University of Lagos and established the first 
repertory theatre in Lagos, PEC (Pepper Clark) Repertory theatre 
in the old J.K. Randle Memorial Hall. Here, the plan was to 
feature a season of plays, concerts, recitals, for a period of nine 
months. The National Theatre was itself poised to sponsor plays 
and in June 1 983, it introduced the Open-Air Theatre. So when 
Fred Agbeyegbe's Ajo productions happened in 1 983, the stage 
seemed set for a revolution that would definitively chart the path 
for the contemporary English language theatre in Nigeria. 
Agbeyegbe, lawyer and playwright struck up a friendship 
with Jide Ogungbade, then a broadcaster and producer with the 
Federal Radio Corporation qf Nigeria, Lagos. As a student of 
English atthe University of Ibadan, Ogungbade had been deeply 
interested and involved in theatre. His soulmate, Ben Tomoloju a 
playwright with bias for traditional forms of theatre had before 
then begun working on a professional company idea. 'Kakaaki 
started as a workshop in 1 980', he says in an interview with this 
writer. 'We were self-financed even up to the point when we 
thought of establishing an arts village at Ota ( a town between 
Abeokuta and Lagos). Soon an opportunity offered itself on 
television... To convey goods and personnel we used eight 
vehicles. A few minutes into recording, one member of the 
television production crew, the soundman said he had a party to 
attend and abandoned the recording. And that was the end of 
the project.' The end? Why didn't you do something about it? 
'We protested but there was no redress. Atthe end, we quit', he 
says. 
But Ajo Productions came to redress it. Tomoloju, who had 
written the play 'Jankariwo' (unpublished) became the associate 
director. Ogungbade, the director, is good at transforming texts 
with a great deal of improvisational facility. His plays, whatever 
the pace of the scripts, attain a certain mobility and vitality that 
is rare among Nigerian directors. Agbeyegbe bankrolled the 
production of the first script, The King Must Dance Naked staged 
at the National Theatre on June 17, 1983. 
Prospects that the fun would last led to the invasion of Lagos 
by actors and actresses from the Universities, especially Ibadan 
and Ife. As a matter of fact, under such directors as Adelugba, 
Oduneye, Rotimi, Euba and Osofisan a generation of actors and 
directors determined to make a living as professional theatre 
practitioners was already in place. Certainly Joel Adedeji's fiveyear 
plan which in 1 975 envisaged a five-unit structure including 
Music, Arts, Design Arts, Dance Arts, Communication Arts and 
Visual Arts at the University of Ibadan was yielding some result 
at last. Likewise, the Ori Olokun experiment masterminded by 
Rotimi and his colleagues in the old Institute of African Studies in 
Ife had convinced enough students that a career in theatre was 
not a waste. And truly, Ajo Productions returned in 1984 with 
Woe Unto Death; The Last Omen (1 985) and Budiso (1 986) all 
written by Agbeyegbe and staged during Ajofest '86. Woe Unto 
Death in 1984 ran three times on the same day, by popular 
demand. 
Suddenly, riot only had the crowd of promising actors, 
directors, technicians and designers found its feet in Lagos by 
1 985, a number of professional Companies like Bassey Effiong's 
Anansa Playhouse, Kapo Productions under Kunle Adeyemo and 
Akpo Otebele (both of whom were instrumental to the formation 
of the Nigerian Universities Theatre Arts Students Association 
NUTASA, in 1981], Ayo Oluwasanmi's Gangan Productions, 
had also been established. In that year, Abdul-Yekeen Olusegun 
Taiwo (deceased) resigned his appointment with the Lagos-State 
Council for Arts and Culture, and began what he called AYOTA 
(an acronym from his name) Centre at Ajegunle, Lagos. He 
started, like the rest, on a shoestring budget, but managed to put 
up a play every month until his death in March 1 994. He had his 
own company of actors, dancers, musicians and a large hall on 
33 Oyedeji Street, Ajegunle, and devoted another hall to the 
exhibition of films. He was a beneficiary like the actor Richard 
Mofe-Damijo and the director Segun Ojewuyi, of the United 
States Information Service-sponsored international visitor's 
programme for theatre workers and in 1 992, his 'Upside Down' 
was produced for the Goethe-lnstitut. The National Association 
of Nigeria Theatre Arts Practitioners, NANTAP, was born in the 
euphoria of the time. 
In 1 986, Funso Alabi, a University of Ife theatre graduate 
established Komitat a corruption of 'committed art', signifying a 
theatre committed to showcasing social problems. This rash of 
new companies had very visible results. There were 20 plays 
shown atthe National Theatre between January and April 1 986. 
Effiong, then an employee of the National Council for Arts and 
Culture NCAC, produced eight plays through both the voluntary 
effort of members of Anansa and support of the National Theatre. 
The group hoped to be consistent enough to build a clientele 
among the youth. According to a member of Anansa, Archibal 
Etikerentse, the playhouse realised early that the secondary and 
primary schools were where the foundation for theatre must be 
laid. Malomo once expressed a similar view. Kapo Production 
also produced Soyinka's Kongi's Harvest in February 1 987, by 
which time Gangan took Osofisan's Oriki of a Grasshopper to 
Ibadan and Ife. It was directed by Ojewuyi, an Ibadan graduate 
whose final year directing project of Death and the King s 
Horseman received favourable reviews. 
The Lagos theatre scene, boisterous as it was, could only 
absorb some of these products. At the end of Woe Unto Death 
in 1 985, Tomoloju said: 'Some of us could have loved to leave 
the universities and go straight into full professional theatre 
practice but the avenue is not there. What we are doing is to 
create that avenue so that we can have a vibrant theatre culture. 
This is the making of history in the development of Nigerian 
theatre. It would be unfortunate if we as young technocrats 
allowed history to pass us by.' 
He repeats the same statement in his interview for this 
article, but adds: 'There has to be something to advance the 
perspective. That is to say, at this stage, I stop complaining and 
make the best of the situations. Ogungbade also says that Ajofesl 
provided the first opportunity for products of different schools to 
work together on one production. Before then, "it had been each 
man to his own theatre tradition and the National theatre for 
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nobody.'And he does not forget to add the clincher: 'It was a very 
vibrant and promising era for the theatre in Nigeria in the sense 
that we were taking literary theatre out of the precincts of the 
university to the streets.' 
At the party to close Ajofest '86 in August that year, 
Agbeyegbe promised that the company would record all the 
plays on celluloid, produce a film, 'Don't stop the Bullets,' stage 
more plays and build a theatre camp in Lagos. Of all these 
projects, only the first, a film of the four plays, has been achieved. 
He has also written a new play, 'Nana Ebroime.' Akinosho's 
argument for the inability of the companies to keep up the spirit 
is that the system of funding was quite flawed. Agbeyegbe put 
down almost every kobo and while Ajo Productions paid actors 
fairly handsomely, others, like Anansa used mainly volunteers. 
Those volunteers began to drift to Ajo which ironically could 
neither sustain the initial volume of payment nor attract sponsors 
to generate permanent funding. 
Without doubt the point has been made that theatre could 
thrive beyond the university. The point that remains is, for how 
long will it thrive and on whose account? How this question is 
resolved will determine the survival or otherwise of the English 
language theatre. As for the theatre in Yoruba or Igbo, this 
question has been answered in the current forays into the home 
videos, purveyor of the new oral culture and in reality another leg 
in a process that began on the stage. They had found avenue 
on the radio, then the Yoruba photoplay serial publications - 
Atoka, A/awac/aand Kayeefi- then dabbled in the television, film 
and now the home video. Where is the next stop? 
Before the euphoria of the Eighties subsided, Mike left lle- 
Ife for Lagos to begin a season of plays every year. He raised 
funds by writing proposals to multinational companies, foreign 
cultural agencies and foundations. Between 1988 and 1992 
when he held the Collective Artistes Festival of Theatre Arts in 
Nigeria, CAFTAN, he produced scores of plays for Lagos 
stages, a practice he was finding difficult to sustain following the 
political and economic problems that attended the annulment of 
June 1 2, 1 993 presidential elections won by MKO Abiola. The 
Nigerian and International Theatre Extravaganza, NITE in 1 991 
was held in such a way that it involved the French and the 
Germans as much as it involved the companies. That Scoundrel 
Suberu', an adaptation of Moliere's ploy by Adelugba and 
members of the old University College Dramatic Society was one 
of the repertory plays. On a banner with the logo of Seven-Up 
Bottling Company were listed names of individual sponsors like 
Christopher Kolade and Rasheed Gbadamosi. During 1991/ 
92, the Performance Studio Workshop received a Ford foundation 
grant. Certainly, he got others before the $24,000 grant 
from the McArthur Foundation. This might explain why the focus 
of his production had shifted from main stage productions with 
all its accountrement to agit-prop sketches that address social 
problems. In this regard he is confessedly beholden to Soyinka 
who in the Sixties started the satirical revues aimed at the political 
excesses of the First Republic These were the topical sketches of 
The New Republic and Before the Blackout era, all produced by 
the Onsun Theatre The practice of this phase when political and 
African Qu/ir/rriy 
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Clark-Bekederemo (left) and Soyinka 
economic reality hindered the putting up of a major play is very 
crucial to this essay's argument, and has been described by 
Adelugba as 'the greatest moment in the English language 
theatre in this country.' 
This, in Jerzy Grotowski's later coinage, is 'the poor 
theatre.' It requires a small cast of actors to play several roles; the 
use of costumes, props, and stage furniture is reduced or 
transformed by the preponderance of mime and other bodily 
gestures. Production costs are likewise reduced and a traditional 
stage is encouraged in so far as it provides a place for people to 
gather. These plays and sketches are geared toward agitation 
and propaganda (hence the name agit-prop) which for the 
imaginative professional throws up limitless possibilities. If Soyinka 
used the sketches to attack the excesses of the Ladoke Akintolaled 
government in the old Western-region and the Obasanjo/ 
Shagari phase was the target under the Unife Guerrilla Theatre 
Unit in the late 70s and early 80s, the Performance Studio 
Workshop and Felix Okolo's Tempo Productions have taken it 
a bit farther 
Mike's political posture, at least deducible from the sketches, 
is not m the antagonistic "I-Go-Revo-Dem-Headi-O' mould of 
Soyinka. Except in the sketch 'Footprints,' there may be types, not
caricatures. He is no less socially committed for all that and in 
fact socio-cultural issues like drug abuse, road accidents, AIDS, 
female genital mutilation, family planning have featured as 
drama sketches. These, it is becoming clearer, are'the ideologies 
of the 21 st century, and the sketches have been presented 
as art theatre productions, only with little of the inconvenience 
of large-scale costing that goes into such extravaganzas. This 
theatre has a very sound theoretical basis. Richard Schechner's 
Experimental Theatre; Grotowski's Towards the Poor Theatre; 
Augusts Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed and Peter Brook's The 
Empty Space are among the possible references. 
But Mike defends the emphasis on developmental theatre: 
• 'When we went to the communities it required much less, we 
were using physical bodies, you don't need the theatre space, 
you don't have to print tickets, no publicity, no promotions. They 
are enormous costs which are necessary for the main stage 
productions. And unfortunately the June 1 2 problem set business 
down the drain in the country at that time. So those who had 
been generous to the arts had to withdraw... and when there's 
a problem we in the arts are the first item to go. So we had to 
make that decision, given the financial recession and for me, it's 
quite an appropriate decision. I believe the theatre has to be 
responsible to the community in which it originates and that 
perhaps was what moved us.' 
Not long after he relocated in Lagos, a workshop Coordinated 
by the German theatre director, Lucas Hemleb and 
organised by the Goethe:lnstitut featured Felix Okolo with whom 
Mike had worked in the past. An adaptation of Tutuola's The 
Palmwine Drinkard, 'Iku Dee Ti' resulted from the workshop. 
Okolo, a gifted actor and director whose strength is in improvisation 
followed up with another adaptation, this time of Gunter 
Grass's Tin Drum which he called 'Irara Alagbe'. It was also 
sponsored by the Goethe-lnstitut. Several plays were similarly 
adapted by Okolo, usually a German script suggested by the 
institute. Okolo siezes on an idea, builds it into the script and 
gives it a title. The poster reads 'written and directed by Felix 
Okolo.' There have been such experiments as 'Mekunnu Melody', 
'Walking Stick', 'Edikang Ikong' (based on Ben Okri's Booker 
winning novel The Famished Road] an adaptation of Euripides' 
Medea with the title retained (the two sponsored by the French 
Cultural Centre), 'Sahara' and 'Aruku Shanka' based on Cyprian 
Ekwensi's novelette, The Drummer Boy. 
Okolo's adaptations generally bear very little resemblance 
to the original scripts and have been criticised, justifiably, 
for being airy, loosely scripted improvisations stuffed with 
spectacles and any other idea that happens to thrive through 
Lagos lingo. But he says he even has to force his own ideas into 
the scripts because the Germans, his sponsors, do not grant him 
the luxury of writing his own independent plays. He blames the 
corporate sponsors for ignoring the theatre and says 'as long as 
they refuse to step out to offer sponsorship, adaptations is what 
they will continue to get from me.' The German cultural centre 
hosted those plays at the Institut's courtyard and collected no 
gate fees. But the audience had to pay to see 'Medea' at the 
Maison de France. 
The most consistent of the sponsorships by far has been 
that of the Nigeria International Bank, NIB. In 1990, the bank, 
in a bid to patronise the performing arts bankrolled d production 
of Soyinka's Death and the King's Horseman. It was followed in 
1991 by a stage adaptation of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall 
Apart directed by Oduneye; Rotimi's Ovonramwen - Nogbaisi 
and Hopes of the Living Dead (1993) both directed by the 
playwright himself; Wale Ogunyemi's Langbodo (directed by 
him in 1994); Clark's Ozidi (directed by Adelugba in 1 995) and 
Rotimi's Kurunmi in 1 996. The full cost in production, publicity, 
hall rental, artistes' fees-is borne by the bank, which collects and 
donates gate-takings to charity. The bank has been accused of 
running such an important project as a passing fancy. 'NIB rarely 
produces catalogue or thoroughly thought out documentation to 
serve as intellectual anchor for what they have achieved,' 
Akinosho writes. 
This does not invalidate the idea, for talks are certainly on 
now about the next classic worthy of sponsorship. And the wellmeant 
criticsm is about the major omission on the project, apart 
from its concentration on Nigerian classical plays. If nothing else, 
it has shown what interest financial institutions could have in the 
performing arts as well as exploded virtually all myths about the 
unpopularity, the much-vaunted elitism of literary dramas and 
their location within an academic environment. Of all the seven 
productions to date, only the first two have been produced by citybased 
troupes. Each play lasted half a week, (in some cases even 
more) and on every night the main auditorium of the University 
of Lagos was filled to the rafters. It was only during the production 
of Death and the King's Horseman, Things Fall Apart and Hopes 
of the Living Dead that the plays were hosted at the National 
Theatre, and only the NIB can explain the preference for the 
university auditorium. 
With no harm done to anyone, theatre has 'moved out of 
the university.' 
Yet this by no means excludes the input of the universitybased 
theatres of Osofisan, Rotimi and Sowande whose group 
not only produce plays within and without the campus but whose 
plays, with the possible exception of Tomoloju, Okolo and Mike 
still dominate most stages. Almost every year, Osofisan writes 
and produces a new play either sponsored by his group or by the 
department of Theatre Arts, University of Ibadan; Odu Themes 
Meridian does much the same. In 1991, the troupe presented 
Mammy Water's Wedding in Lagos and Ibadan in a manner 
that appropriated the economics of play production now preferred 
by the NIB. A ticket sold for N100, and it worked. The 
same troupe took Sowande's adaptation of Tutuola's My Life in 
the Bush of Ghosts to England in 1995. Members of the 
Awovasity Theatre like Kola Oyewo, Laide Adewale, Joke 
Muyiwa, Peter Fatomilola constituted the core of the cast of 
Kurunmi as directed by Olu Akomolafe in April 1996. This 
perhaps is why the question must be asked: If Ori Olokun (the old 
theatre group at the former University of Ife) took Kurunmi to the 
National Theatre, was it exactly to be understood as moving out 
of the University? Does an English language play really lose 
audience by being shown at the university? It is possible that a 
African Qnttttrr/y 
fin the Arts 
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Ola Rotimi (left) starring in his play. Holding Talks 
resident of Abadina, the junior staff quarters at the University of 
Ibadan will fail to be moved by the fact of a performance by 
Isiaka Eegunbunmi (a producer-director based in Osogbo in the 
Eighties) at the Arts Theatre whereas a journalist living at Ifako- 
Agege, Lagos, will go down to the University of Lagos to see a 
performance of The Lion and the Jewel by Chuck Mike? 'Moving 
out of the university' is no doubt a confused expression, taking 
just a part of a problem for the whole. The same goes for the 
expression 'filing a theatre', that magical feat which only 
Ogunde and Moses Olaiya Adejumo (the comedian Baba Sala) 
were once thought as only capable of pulling off. Hasn't effective 
publicity done it, time and again, for the NIB, as for the National 
Troupe's recent production of Ahmed Yerima's The Trials ofOba 
Ovonramwen? The contention that a literary drama cannot fill a 
theatre the way the Yoruba theatres do is patently false, for it can 
and it has. And a 'popular' drama in Yoruba, if it is not well 
advertised may not even fill a cubicle. What that expression does 
is to equate a full hall with appealing to vast audiences; and the 
two are not necessarily the same thing: a hall can be filled, as is 
often the case, by people of the same class, as at a classical 
concert at the Agip Recital Hall inside the Musical Society of 
Nigeria (MUSON) Centre at Onikan, Lagos. In this city, people 
go to see plays at the University of Lagos just as they go to see 
them anywhere else. Anybody who wants to test this contention 
should fix a well publicised performance of Adebayo Faleti's 
Basorun Gaa for MUSON Centre and see whether the place will 
not collapse with crowd. Only that for that fear, MUSON's 
management may not tolerate any crowds from Mushin and 
Bariga. Maybe the expression was true of earlier times. It is quite 
valid to argue that in this kind of environment where the level of 
cultural consciousness is very low, refined taste in art is exclusionary. 
Even this essay, by virtue of its being written in this kind of 
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journal is orientated toward the crowd more likely to be sympathetic 
to the trend it is criticising. Jimoh Aliu, a dramatist and filmproducer 
and president of the Association of Nigerian Theatre 
Practitioners would more readily buy and read a copy of 
Starfilms magazine carrying his photograph and opinion, than 
he would care to read a journal that would stylise, rather than 
sensationalise the crisis within the ANTP. Perhaps it is about time 
those who want the theatre out of the 'university' began creating 
their own critical standards. For if it is argued that literary dramas 
have an instinctive predilection for relating to the fears and 
preferences of less than mass audiences, it is to be expected that 
the standards for evaluating the dramas will often tend to adopt 
the same canonical attitude. Yet the town, with its newspapers, 
radio and television stations, its advertising and public relations 
companies is better placed to evolve ways of directly engaging 
the teeming audiences. 
THE GARBAGE OF ARISTOTLE 
The simple fact, easily overlooked in the frenzy of doing a 
theatre that will appeal to everyone, remains: there is no 
Nigerian theatre as yet. Or there is, in so far as there is a Nigerian 
nation. But there are a number of other things. There are personal 
oeuvres, the valid visions of individual writers in the manner of 
'great texts.' (Soyinka and Clark represent a tendency that 
Osofisan begs to differ from. And so far no dramatist has 
presented a distinctly different aesthetic. There is of course the 
case of a writer like Olu Obafemi (author of Naira Has No 
Gender, among other plays) who is Osofisan's ideological 
brother and therefore enters into a problematic relationship with 
him. Rather than challenge the inadequacies of the 'second 
generation' writers and seek to transcend them as Osofisan has
done in his re-readings of the older writers, writing his own 
versions of The Raft and The Strong Breed those brothers' merely 
come to legalise and gloss over the grey areas in the radical 
dramaturgy. For if culture is dynamic, it is proper to expect texts 
to contest texts, for young writers to rewrite the classics of their 
formative years in the light of new experience. And a genuine 
work of art is not necessarily diminished by such contest. There 
is also the case of Yerima who believes - and writes to prove the 
belief - that 'the ideas of a writer 'must be compatible or be 
attuned with the dominant interest in society.' These individual 
visions, from Soyinka to Tomoloju are valid and, if nothing else 
have constituted a body of works. But theatre is a lot more than 
texts). 
There is a National Theatre building and there is a 
National Troupe of Nigeria first conceived as a dance troupe 
under Hubert Ogunde. Even as a drama troupe, it has survived 
on government patronage and its presentations confirm this. As 
argued earlier, this thread runs through the entire fabric of much 
of contemporary Nigerian theatre of English expression, the only 
theatre practice that there is. And it explains why the questions 
of language1 and lack of professionalism determine how the 
theatre relates to its audience. 
Adelugba has argued that 'the language barrier is more on 
the level of ideas than reality.' Elsewhere, in respect of the 
National Troupe, he says: 'Theatre language is not Yoruba, it is 
not Hausa, it is not Igbo. It is theatre and that is why the countries 
that have chosen the dance model have got round their problem. 
Once we choose the language of movement, sound, expression, 
then you get round the problem.' All this is true if the medium is 
not verbal. The moment one begins to deal with the cold texts that 
constitute a large part of the Nigerian theatre, the question of 
language becomes all too urgent. 
Ogunba, almost 20 years ago, expressed the 'hope that 
as it (modern African drama) matures in years, it will become 
even more distinguished and finally achieving a form uniquely 
African... To do (this) however, the language question will have 
to be resolved in many parts of the continent.' He was aware then 
of the problem, underlined by the involvement of those who had 
chosen an idea which frustrates rather than facilitates communication. 
Etherton who usually takes the pain to examine every 
problem critically finally confesses that 'the language used in 
African drama is a problem for which there is no ready solution.' 
Yet Nigerian dramatists have made conscious efforts to 
relate their works to their perceived audiences. Clark, who had 
earlier written 'The Legacy of Caliban' believes the writer has to 
search within his culture. 'The task for an Ijaw', he remarks in 
'Aspects of Nigerian Drama', a later essay, 'and I dare say, any 
Nigerian or African artist writing in a European language like 
English is one of finding the verbal equivalent for his characters 
created in their original context.' Rotimi has also stated his own 
approach to the issue thus: 'English, as you know, is the official 
medium of communication in Nigeria. Inevitably, I write for 
audiences who are knowledgeable in this language. However, 
in handling the English language in my plays, I strive to temper 
its phraseology to the ears of both the dominant semi-literate as 
well as the literate groups with ease in assimilation and clarity 
and identification.' 
Any of the plays of Soyinka termed as 'difficult', shedding 
the language could have evolved from the imagination of a 
traditional artist. The use of traditional and accessible motifs like 
myth, ritual, dance and dirge situates them within a context to 
which Akinwumi Isola reaches in translating Death as Iku Olokun 
Esin which Ojewuyi directed in 1994. But Soyinka claims he 
writes 'in the firm belief that there must be at least a hall full of 
people who are sort of on the same wave length as mine from 
every stratum of society and there must be at least a thousand 
people who are able to feel the same way as I do about 
something. So... I write in the absolute confidence that it must 
have an audience.' Osofisan, who arguably has written more 
popular plays than any other Nigerian literary dramatist, once 
translated Who's Afraid of Solarin into Yoruba as Yeepa! 
Solaarin Nbo with the collaboration of Dotun Ogundeji, a 
teacher of Yoruba. There is a coinage, 'Yorubanglish' by 
Adelugba. 'This is not just Yoruba or English or Yoruba mixed 
with English but the many-sided attempts to catch the flavour, 
tones, rhythms, emotional and intellectual content of Yoruba 
language and thought.' Even Jeyifo, taking this experiment and 
others (with Pidgin for instance) as ways through the problem, 
remarks that 'the question of English language as a possible 
medium for an authentic Nigerian literary drama, a drama which 
can reach vast audiences is now no longer a serious problem.' 
Plays have had very wide appeal in spite of the language. 
But there can be no question that a great number of the people 
that such plays intend to address have been excluded. Even at the 
very bare level where Mike now operates in the developmental 
theatre, vestiges of the language problem remain, and will 
remain for as long as English is used by only a few influential 
people in these parts. 
The origin of this problem, which constitutes for the 
contemporary theatre a crisis of relevance is, as hinted earlier on, 
to be found in the nature of education that the pioneers of the 
Nigerian theatre received. 
The production of Soyinka's and Clark's plays in the late 
Fifties and early Sixties permanently established the English 
language drama tradition in Nigeria. Even with the dynamism 
and exceeding vitality and popularity of the Yoruba travelling 
theatres and their possible replications in other part of the 
country, it has proved be a dominant tradition. This writer's 
statistics record at least 300 plays (about three-quarters of which 
are published) belonging to Clark's definition of 'drama that is 
usually first seen in print before it is seen on stage'. Playwriting 
becomes an art on its own, leading such writers as Aminu Fari, 
TarAhura, Sam Ukala, RasheedGbadamosi, AkomayeOkoand 
several others to write and publish first, bothering less about the 
kind of staging that will be suitable. The writers are so many it is 
futile to recall them 
All but a few of the plays (like Segun Oyekunle's Katakata 
African Quarterly 
oil the Arts 
Vol. II NO 4
Banjo Solaru (second right) as Oba Sarumi in the 
detention camp scene of the film, Kongi's Harvest. Fourth 
from right is Wale Ogunyemi as Deinde. 
for Sufferhead and Tunde Fatunde's plays) are written in the 
English language. 
In the hands of masters like Soyinka and Clark, •there is a 
level of literariness that is daunting for anyone unfamiliar with the 
language. Since they are in most cases finally seen on stage, the 
plays however communicate as theatre, but mostly with those who 
have been 'accessed . These turn out to be members of the society 
who share the writer's educational and cultural values. 
Thus explained, language appears to be one major problem. 
In fact, it is a living problem deeply rooted in politics, and 
indeed in the very idea of Nigeria. The evaluation of drama in the 
African context has been based largely on the Aristotelian 
conception of tragedy, or reaction to it. Aristotle's descriptive 
analysis of the major texts of the Greek tragedian of the Periclean 
age was specific to the age, and formed only an aspect of quite 
extensive commentaries on a highly developed civilisation. Because 
dramatic criticism starting from the neoclessical era has 
come down to Africa as part of a whole garbage that permeates 
all levels of the education, Nigerians who have found Greek 
models handy easily overlook these aspects. They appropriate the 
Afiiciin Quarterly 
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Vol. II NO I 
spirit of Aristotle's Poetics, a literary theory as a basis for dramatic 
criticism and use Greek plays as models. 
And because most of the plays that emerge do so not from 
a thorough study of a dynamic society on its own terms, they have 
tended to remain grossly misunderstood as theatre. An example 
is the immensely popular play by Rotimi, The Cods Are Not to 
Blame, which is neither an adaptation of Sophocles nor for that 
matter a commentary on the Biafran war. If, as the playwright 
tries to suggest through king Odewale's final speech, the trouble 
with Nigeria is tribalism, who is Odewale to carry the blame. 
Thanks to Rotimi's stage iconography, very few audiences have 
seen the play from his point of view. (Yet, there is a direct 
translation of Oedipus into Yoruba by Olanipekun Esan. With it s 
title, Teledase - meaning something like 'The Creator's Will Be 
Done,' its poetry and its willingness to just translate the English 
words, this play is much closer to Sophocles' original). 
Attempts by foremost dramatists, Soyinka and Clark to 
define their dramaturgy within a theoretical structure have helped 
to transform orality into a literary culture. In the essays The 
Example of Shakespeare' and 'The Fourth Stage', the writers' 
ultimate concerns are theories of drama. Whether the ends are 
attained is one thing, it is another thing whether similar exercises 
in theatre history have been as devoid of a locus in the socio-
political reality as the essays have been. In one case the reference 
is to William Shakespeare's classicism, which Clark finds ideal, 
in the other it is to Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy'. Soyinka's, 
an elaboration on the tragic impulse with the Yoruba cosmology 
draws heavily on metaphysics. The language of the essay is 
poetic and hermetic, perhaps recalling the temper of the essay it 
is reacting to. One of the salient arguments in the essay as it 
relates to theatre - that the dramatic conflict is resolved through 
the communal will epitomised by the audience in the theatre as 
part of the performance - yields a social dimension only at a 
different level of interpreting an entire superstructure of myth, 
ritual and cultic symbolism. Yet Soyinka and Clark are, like most 
educated Nigerians, products of a colonial education that has 
profoundly altered their consciousness and, linguistically at least, 
alienated certain audiences from their theatres. 
Bertolt Brecht and Arthur Miller were like Soyinka and 
Clark faced with the problem of relating to societies completely 
different from Aristotle's. Weimar Republic showed the classical 
definition of poetry (and poetic drama) by Goethe and Schiller 
as grossly inadequate, and 'Short Organum' was written by 
Brecht, disrupting the unities of time, action and space and 
substituting Alienation Effect for Aristotle's catharsis. Miller's 
'Tragedy and the Common Man' grappling with post-Depression 
American nightmare questions the suggestion that only nobles 
were capable of a tragic experience. Unlike Soyinka and Clark, 
Brecht and Miller wrote in languages spoken by majority of their 
countrymen. 
Demas Nwoko, like many others who have berated the 
colonial legacy of the Nigerian theatre points his finger at two 
types of dramatists that came to prominence at independence. 
Two of the opening paragraphs of his'Search fora New African 
Theatre' bear quoting as some length, if only to demonstrate that 
the problem lacks no real and timely perspective. He writes: 'An 
aspiring dramatist enters university either in his country or in 
Europe or America. If hechooses to study English or French in his 
own country, he continues the grammar school pattern. He 
studies more European classics and watches them performed by 
the local European community whose taste for art hardly ever 
goes beyond European classics. So when he writes his first play, 
he models it after Sophocles and Euripides and other Greek 
dramatists or after Moliere or Shakespeare. For this show of 
promise he is sent to Europe or America for advanced studies in 
Drama. He gets the first shock of his life when he discovers that 
the people there have been doing things for two thousand years 
(or at least four hundred years) ahead of what he knew to be 
theatre. Before he settles down to the task of catching up on lost 
time, he is told by everybody that he should become African. This 
is not only a shock, but it is confusing. He is allowed to stay the 
year, studying his craft between persistent demands to show his 
Africanness. At the end of the year he is sent home to research 
into his own culture, he occupies.a post in the local university and 
forms his own generation of artists. 
'The second type of student goes overseas straight from 
grammar school to study Drama and receives the same formation 
as the artists of his host country. At first, not much notice is taken 
of the fact that he has a different cultural background, as he is 
required to fulfil similar examination requirements as every other 
student. At a later stage of his studies, he is encouraged to apply 
his new knowledge to his own culture but he is not shocked 
because the preservation of cultural identities is one of the 
principles inculcated in these overseas institutions, and he has 
absorbed this in the course of his first play which turns out to be 
a scientific application of modern western theatrical techniques. 
He too comes back to join the home university where he meets the 
first type still digging deep into the past. He joins the search with 
his interestfor compiling native customs which he quickly reduces 
to scientific terms to fit into the idioms of the Western culture he 
has acquired.' 
Nwoko published his essay in Nigeria Magazine in 
1970, at the beginning of the decade purportedly signally the 
indigenisation of the theatre in Nigeria. The war ended in 
January 1970, followed by the Gowon regime's policy of 
reconciliation, rehabilitation and reconstruction. National unity 
through culture, sports and education became a priority project. 
There was the National Youth Service Corps scheme, the 
international airport and the National stadium, all made possible 
by the oil boom. Universities and states proliferated under this 
and subsequent regimes. Some of the plays of Rotimi and 
Ogunyemi have been categorised as identifying with the spirit of 
unity and tribal harmony that this period preached. But 
indigenisation was only in name. Soyinka's 'Towards a True 
Theatre' in which he says the Arts Theatre in Ibadan 'cannot 
boast practicalities such as ventilation or sound proofing' was 
written eight years before Nwoko's. But when the Nigerian 
National Theatre was to be built as one of the may construction 
works of the decade it was not up to the likes of Nwoko, who in 
1969 began constructing an ambitious theatre at Mokola, 
Ibadan, to design the theatre. Wholesale like a piece of furniture 
the theatre plan was lifted from Sophia, Bulgaria. Its parts were 
fixed together at the cost of N24 million. It was completed in 
December 1976, in time to host the Second Black and African 
Festival of Arts and'Culture, FESTAC, in February 1 977. One of 
the ways in which Nigeria has matched Britain history for history 
is that both opened their National Theatres in 1 976, Britain only 
five months earlier! 
In most states of the country, the elephantine project has 
been duplicated as cultural centres, only this time built by 
Nigerian artisans. It will be a great day when Nwoko's New 
Culture Studio dedicated (but far from completed) in December 
1995 begins to steal shows from the National Theatre and the 
Cultural Centre just on the other side of Mokola. 
Theatre directors, playwrights, actors and designers have 
therefore created a body of literature on the misbegotten nature 
of the proscenium stage of the National Theatre. They argue that 
it is beholden to a colonial mindset that erects a wall between the 
audience and the performer. 'There is no National Theatre in the 
full implication of the idea', writes Femi Euba, a playwright and 
director now based in the United States. He contends that the 
structure of the National Theatre borrows rather heavily from that 
of the proscenium stage which does not reflect the realities of a 
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Vol.1/ NO 4
Nigerian theatre. Euba's is actually a critique of theatre practice 
in Nigeria, which he believes is intolerant of the ideas of a 
genuine professional, and hence his deploring of the stage 
structure which is but one of several criticisms of an incongruous 
idea. 
Adelugba, giving a talk on 'Basic Premises of African 
Theatre' at the Indiana University, Bloomington, U.S., in 1 974 
said of the soon to be completed National Theatre: 'It seems to 
me that the idea has been slavishly taken over. There has been 
no attempt to relate the ideas to the needs in Nigeria.' A year 
later, he was told by an interviewee, BayoOduneye that there 
was the need for 'a collection of theatre artists from all over Africa 
(to gather for a conference) so that we can come down and talk 
about what we mean by black theatre or Nigerian theatre 
because we don't know it yet.' These criticisms would have been 
a great deal clearer with a closer look at the character of the 
Nigerian state itself. For the character of the Nigerian theatre is 
closely related to the character of its elite which is in turn shaped 
by the political character of Nigeria as.a country. For a long time, 
Nigeria was thought to be one indivisible country. The civil war 
was fought to keep it so. Now it's no more so, in fact it had never 
been and one needs no further proof than the general, loudly 
ignorant argument about the non-negotiability of the unity of 
Nigeria. This is a fashionable slogan born as a reaction to the call 
for a sovereign national conference to examine the national 
question and, if need be, reexamine the basis of the Nigerian 
federation. The call itself predates the annulment of June 1 2 1993 
elections and the unwillingness to listen to it is at once responsible 
for the hanging of the writer Ken Saro-Wiwa and his eight coactivists 
in November 1995 and for the current political problem 
that has seen a horde of politicians, journalists, lawyers and 
soldiers either in jail or in exile. 
It is not true that Nigeria is non-negotiable. If an idea has 
survived for 36 years the impression is easily created that such 
an idea must be strong or valid to have stayed as one piece for 
that long. But everyone knows that Nigeria has never been 
stable. Long before independence it was clear that the arrangement 
was merely one of political expediency on the part of the 
British. Only the zeal to wrest power from them led the politicians 
to pretend about this structure in which they had no part in 
bringing about. It was a basic fact. In less than seven years that 
opportunistic silence became very costly, and ever since the war 
was won and lost, Nigeria has been kept together by a balance 
of terror. Soyinka in his book The Open Sore of a Continent 
writes: 'The inviolability of national boundaries is therefore a 
fictitious concept, borne -out of nothing more substantial than 
faith, and therefore, every bit as questionable for those of the 
rational world.' 
THEATRE AS BUSINESS 
At the beginning of the second week of September 1996, 
a one-day symposium was held in Lagos on the theme 'The 
Theatre Artist as a Businessman'. Itwas organised free by an arts 
marketing company, Tall and Wide collaborating with the 
NANTAP. The consensus at the symposium attended by more 
journalists and businessmen than theatre artists was that for too 
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long, the business aspect of the theatre arts practice had been 
neglected in the curriculum. 'Our teachers have not taught us 
much', said Toye Arulogun, chief executive of Tall and Wide and 
until recently head of Client Services in an advertising agency. 
'They taught us only practicalisation of the discipline. We are 
now teaching ourselves. 
Four facilitators spoke on public and personal relations, 
marketing, management and financing in the theatre. Although 
the attendance was low, the forum was significant in pragmatically 
relating to the cultural atmosphere of the Nineties. It is the 
era of free trade, of subordinating all else to the dictates of the 
market. The Nigerian electronic media had been deregulated 
and in 1996 alone, at least two private television stations began 
test transmission and another is expected before the end of the 
year. The most vibrant cultural department now is the home video 
which thrives, on the one hand at the expense of the film industry 
rendered moribund by lack of finance, and on the other as a result 
of inability of live theatre to secure its own economic base. One 
of the facilitators at the symposium, Charles Igwe, husband of the 
soap opera director Amaka Igwe, manages Crystal Gold, the 
marketing company that in two weeks allegedly sold over 
40,000 copies of the second part of Violated, a video play 
which people paid N500 to see when premiered at MUSON 
Centre in early August. Musical concerts are held almost every 
other day in Lagos and in each case are jampacked. Every 
Sunday at the National Theatre at least four Yoruba home videos 
The most vibrant cultural department 
now is the home video which thrives, on 
the one hand at the expense of the film 
industry rendered moribund by lack of 
finance, and on the other as a result of 
inability of live theatre to secure its own 
economic base. 
are being screened, occasionally the shows are moved out into 
bigger halls because of the large crowds. 
Yet the argument at the symposium was for the live theatre, 
not the video market. In fact, Arulogun, a theatre arts graduate 
insists that the main idea is to contain the threat of the videos. 'The 
questions that will matter are: what is the play you're doing, 
where and in what time of the year are you doing it? These are 
the things that will contend with the threat of the videos. Afterall, 
people are going to the theatre to see the home videos.' 
Mike, ever keen on the marketability of a theatrical product 
also spoke recently about the need for theatre artists to 'go into 
the universities and to do workshops on producing, fund-raising 
for the theatre because that's what we're not taught in the 
department. We are taught business management, not producing 
for the theatre, which is a problem on its own.' He has a 
structure comprising two organisations, the Collective Artistes 
and the Performance Studio Workshop. While the CA does 
public relations and promotions that raise money through the 
mam stage productions, the PSW sustains the promotions by
developing individual talent through workshops, training 
programmes and in the area of developmental theatre. 'You put 
up an activity, you design a proposal and you now go to look for 
funds,' he says, adding, 'there's money in (the theatre), it is how 
to get that money that constitutes problem for the average theatre 
arttsl without training in devising a proposal, mapping out how 
the proposal will work.'In 1 994 before the long oil-workers strike 
that complicated the political crisis and saw people like Soyinka 
leaving the country, Chartered Bank sponsored his production 
of The Lion and the Jewel. 
This is the approach favoured by Arulogun and his friends 
in the business community. They think that the corporate sponsor 
not only wants concrete proposals to justify funding, he also 
wants to see in the person shopping for funds the image of himself 
the clean-shaven, suit-wearing briefcase-clutching individual, 
tucking his theatre 'personality somewhere inside his designer 
socks.' And they get responses. Apart from Tall and Wide, 
George Coker and Associates has in the past worked with 
Collective Artists to raise funds. There is, in this approach an 
attempt to look beyond the ready funds of donor agencies whose 
ends are often incompatible with those of a theatre professional 
hoping to do popular plays as independently as possible. 
But there must be no mention of Wole Soyinka to a sponsor 
in 1 996, for obvious political reasons. 1 will not make the kind 
of mi stake Israel Eboh made,' saysAdewale Adeduro, marketing 
manager of MUSON Centre and a facilitator at the symposium. 
'Doing a Soyinka play might make commercial sense because of 
the syllabus but it doesn't make business sense, it's unrealistic' 
Here is the crunch: There is usually a very wide gulf 
between the expectations of people like Jeyifo and Etherton 
about the theatre as a vehicle of political consciousness and the 
agenda of Effiong's Anansa Playhouse of creating audience by 
cultivating the youth. (Effiong is the director of Cross River State 
Council for Arts and Culture). Although the argument can be 
made that it is important to engender interest before tackling the 
question of what kind of theatre, the two positions are informed 
by certain mutually exclusive conclusions: Jeyifo believes that a 
play must be consciously created for an urban mass audience 
and that it must deal with their sociopolitical problems in order 
to be valid and acceptable, but Effiong's position suggests that 
over politicisation of themes is a repellent. 
And there lies the real problem: To tuck a Soyinka play 
away on the basis of the author's politics, which may be different 
from the politics of the given day is very Nigerian; to address a 
problem by keeping silent about it. The problem is not even the 
one we would ordinarily think is at the heart of Nigerian theatre's 
crisis of relevance: that is, the ethical problem of striking a 
balance between the consciousness of a writer and that of his 
audience, to stylise the original nuances that went into the making 
of Kongi's Harvest in such a way that the Ogunde/Jide Kosoko 
crowd can relate to what is, simply, its experience. No, that is not 
the problem, but how to abandon everyday politics altogether, 
sever all links, real and surreal, with Soyinka and Radio Kudirat, 
just to get a living space, to make money to do theatre or vice 
- versa. Desirable and inevitable as the input of businessmen is 
for the survival of contemporary theatre, that is the price the 
theatre artist has to pay for working with them. 
Now TheTrials is not a political play, by any standard. And 
Arulogun would not touch it with a 100-metre pole Yet business 
must continue and under an atmosphere of silence about the least 
fundraising name. Not only will Arulogun as producer not touch 
a play the government does not like, he will readily do any that 
the government does like, which is not likely to be Kongi's 
Harvest, a play about a maniacal dictator who sacks a natural 
ruler or Morountodun the story of a peasant revolt or for that 
matter Hopes of the Living Dead in which lepers assert their rights 
in spite of enormous weaknesses Maybe Yerima's 'The Silent 
Gods.'
'Amona' the story of a military man, a drug baron who 
seizes power to cover his misdemeanours but finds he is 
unpopular, was successfully staged in Abuja in May. But the kind 
of opportunity Tomoloju and Kakaaki Productions have had with 
the project does not come often, and it does not equate with a selffinanced 
theatre. Its source of funding has its own kind of politics 
as Okolo's experience has shown. In times like this, when the 
theatre desperately needs to stay alive, Jeyifo's preference for 'a 
drama (emerging) from a conscious class analysis of our society,' 
is part of the inconvenience to be quietly set aside. There will be 
exceptions, when a truly subversive play, using a lot of music, 
dance and spectacle will lead distinguished guests by the nose 
and spit at them, and slip handbilled messages through seemingly 
harmless phrases and gestures. And runs away. But an 
exception does not prove a case, except it is the kind of exception 
that disrupts the pattern of history, which no amount of'conscious 
class analysis' or historical stocktaking or hardnose bargaining 
ever manages to anticipate, much less preempt, but which in this 
particular case must surrender its immutability to precisely those 
forces.
And while the audience waits in the illusionary dark of the 
theatre for one such, the show must go on GR 
Notes 
Etherton Michael. The Development of African Drama; Hutchinson 
&Co. 1982. 
Jeyifo, Biodun; The Truthful Lie, Essays on a Sociology of African 
Drama: New Beacon Books, 1 985 
source book; Nigeria Magazine, 1981, 
Ogunba, Oyin & Irele Abiola (eds); Theatre in Africa, Ibadan 
University Press, 1978. 
Ogunbiyi, Yemi (ed); Drama & Theatre in Nigeria a critical 
Soyinka, Wole; Ibadan: The Penkelemes Years (A memoir i 946 
- 1965). Spectrum Books Ltd, 1994. 
Literature, the Arts, Culture and Education (LACE) Occasional 
Publications, Vol. One, Nos. 6,8,9. Vol. 2, Nos. 4,6 & 7. 
•MDORAi 
African Quarterly 
on the A rts 
Vol. 1/NO 4