FROM SAMBISA TO KONGI FOREST
Anice- looking panama can serve you much good for this journey. There is no shade from the sun except the handful of beautiful trees around the Freedom Park in Lagos. Your eyes accompany scores of children named Footprints of David who are re- enacting the drama of the abducted Chibok girls with the title, Seizing Sambisa. You cannot help but empathise with the reality being reconstructed on stage. Every child has a dream to be someone great in future. Depending on their ages and early childhood experience, children always seem to have very noble ideas of what they want to become. “I want to be a fireman”, “I want to be a teacher”, “I want to be a nurse”, “I want to be a lawyer”, “I want to be a musician”, “I want to be a footballer” and similar chants usually emanate from children when asked to state their ambition in life. Having expressed their ambition, through speech, dance and choreography, the child actors in the recent play production began to trek to the ramp, climbing back and forth until they returned to the stage. The moral of the story is that the kidnapped children have dreams and purpose in life other than the one they are currently forced to pursue. The drama is a reminder of the need to recover these young ones from the hands of terrorists who interrupted their lives.
That play ended about 6 p. m. and the next play at the Lagos Black Heritage Festival 2015 was Wole Soyinka’s The Beatification of Area Boy: A Lagosian Kaleidoscope. The British- trained Nigerian actor, Wale Ojo was billed to perform in the play that would start at 7p. m. One could hear the voice of the cultural activist, Jahman Anikulapo through the surroundings speakers as he did a countdown to the show. The chairs were being rearranged in a communal style. This reporter ran into the cast of the production some minutes before the performance and decided to engage them in conversation. The lead actors were already in the green room while the supporting actors who were around were also mindful of the time. One of them, Micheal Okorie, a creative arts graduate from the University of Lagos who was a former member of the Crown Troupe spared some minutes to give an insight into the production. Incidentally, Segun Adefila who founded Crown Troupe was the choreographer for the production.
“The play is directed by Wole Soyinka although he had two young directors as his assistants Wole Oguntokun and Dr. Duro Adesanmi. Kunle Badejo is also a choreographer. The play is three- hour long. It is an experimental drama and it is site- specific. It is a theatre- inthe- round but like Prof said, if only they had all the necessary funding that they require, they would have projected every location on screen. We shall be performing at various locations within the park. Anywhere we are acting, the audience didn’t have to come with us with visuals on screen. There is a wall in the main performing area. Acting will be going on in the food court, on the ramp and other locations. It would have been a technologically- enabled performance if only the right funding was received by the production team,” he revealed.
The rehearsals for Beatification of Area Boy started in March. Okorie who played the roles of a prisoner and a part of the street mob, and the wedding entourage only joined the production two weeks earlier.
“You know, one uses more than one mask in a day. Your ability to transform into different roles is what makes a good actor. I always perform as a guest artist at the National Troupe,” he said while explaining the demands of being in the theatre profession. The production was the first in which the actor would work directly with Soyinka and he was amazed by what he discovered about the legendary playwright and Nobel Laureate.
“You know that Wole Soyinka is old now and the older actors who had worked with him earlier would say he used to be very temperamental. He wants you to give him what he wants. Now he gets what he wants easily. He doesn’t need to shout at anyone. He lets the actor understand his role so he can deliver it. After working with him for three to five days, I came to the conclusion that he is human. We have always seen him as a demi- god. He cracks jokes with us; he makes us laugh during rehearsals. It is fulfilling to work with Wole Soyinka. I can finally write my CV and add to it that I worked in Wole Soyinka’s production and with Soyinka,’’ he said excitedly.
In the early 90s, The Beatification of Area Boy was published. For what it’s worth, the play is another attestation to Soyinka’s penchant for telling the story of ordinary people using elevated, poetic language. The playwright smoothly transports the wretched into a world of the elites with the juxtaposition of characters on stage. Leaning on the traditional African theatre, Beautification of Area Boy is set mostly in a public square in Lagos, a city that is a melting pot of individuals of different socio- economic status from the intellectual to the unlettered. The idiosyncrasies of these ones were reconstructed on stage us- ing archetypal locations such as a roadside food joint, security post, barber’s shop and a trader’s stall. As expected, the locations for some scenes were moved from the main stage to the ramp and food court. Just as advised, the members of the audience moved along with the actors by carrying their chairs to each location.
Although the play defies the conventional style of drama with a logical plot and a protagonist, Sanda, the educated security man in Maroko seemed to have the most lines. When he was quiet, he was attentive to the lines of other actors, while visibly preoccupied with newspapers piled up on a stool beside him. He was a bystander in the scene where the angry mob followed a man who had claimed to have been robbed of his manhood. It was a scene that pictured the scapegoat motif of play where the masses are the victims of poor governance. In his line of job, Sanda has seen it all but his old flame unearthed some memories he, perhaps, wanted to forget.
The theatre- in- the- round tends to be demanding of actors and the technical directors. For instance, during the play, the actors had to make sure that they are visible from every side of the stage by constantly distributing their lines around almost like a town crier. Then lighting director also signaled the scene changes by directing his spotlight to the next location providing the intended panoramic view of Lagos as scripted. The entire park was preoccupied with the dramatic action so much that those who were not usual theatre- goers turned their seats at the surrounding beverage spots to watch the three-hour long performance which was punctuated by songs composed by the playwright and brilliantly performed by seasoned actor and multi- talented minstrel, Tunji Oyelana who played the role of the visually impaired beggar.