TMA 112

INTRODUCTION TO NIGERIAN THEATRE AND DRAMA

Back ground to Nigerian Theatre History

• variety of folk opera of the Yoruba people of south western Nigeria that emerged in the early 1940s. It combined a brilliant sense of mime, colourful costumes, and traditional drumming, music, and folklore. Directed toward a local audience, it uses Nigerian themes, ranging from modern-day satire to historical tragedy. Although the plays are performed entirely in the Yoruba language, they may be understood and appreciated by speakers of other languages with the aid of a translated synopsis.

• Nigerian theatre deals with three types of themes: the fantastic folktale, the farcical social satire, and the historical or mythological account derived from oral tradition. Generally speaking, both text and music evolved from a synthesis of liturgies from different religious sects.

• Although there are more than a dozen traveling theatre companies, three professional troupes are particularly notable: those of Hubert Ogunde (author of Yoruba ronu *“Yorubas, Think!”+ and Journey to Heaven); Kola Ogunmola (The Palmwine Drinkard and Love of Money); and Duro Ladipo (Oba koso *“The King Did Not Hang”+ and Eda *“Everyman”+). Each of these troupes has created a distinctive style shaped by the tastes of its founder, who generally writes or adapts and produces the plays, arranges the music, and performs the leading roles.

• This contemporary dramatic form grew out of biblical episodes in Christmas and Passion plays presented by separatist African churches in the 1930s and ’40s. Some of these plays have been performed abroad, notably, Oba koso and The Palmwine Drinkard

• In 1945 Ogunde was the first to establish a professional touring company. Some of his plays are satires on Yoruba types: the jealous husband, the stingy father, the reckless son. Others deal with topical events in Nigerian politics.

• In 1947 Ogunmola organized some of his pupils into an acting troupe, forming his own Theatre Party. Ogunmola’s operas reveal a Christian influence in the use of biblical material for the basic plots. Ogunmola employs folklore by incorporating praise poetry, proverbs, and incantations into the dialogue, as evidenced in his celebrated production of Amos Tutuola’s novel The Palm-Wine Drinkard.

• In the early 1960s Ladipo, a composer of church music who wished to preserve the traditional arts, wrote cultural plays based on historical material. While he was no doubt influenced by his predecessors, Ladipo employed ceremonial drumming, chanting, and singing as well as traditional costume appropriate to specific historical or religious groups represented in his productions. Some of Ladipo’s actors had performed in religious rituals before joining the theatre company; thus, their ceremonial material was incorporated within a contemporary mold.

Historical Perspective of Nigerian Drama

• Nigerian drama has come a long way, from the

pre-colonial, traditional, unscripted performances of the griots and the village entertainers in the various villages and local communities, down to the structured and yet unscripted dramas of the colonial epoch where the performances of Hubert Ogunde, Kola Ogunmola, and their contemporaries held sway. According to the West African Pilot of 9th July, 1947; “no sooner had one man, ex-policeman Ogunde, started than other individuals joined the wake”.

• Ogunde and his contemporaries succeeded in taking theatrical performances away from the concert halls to the community playgrounds that the ordinary people often frequent. Clark (1979) opines that:

• …one of Ogunde’s major contributions to the history of professional theatre in Nigeria is that he withdrew the theatre from the direct patronage of court and church and gave it to the people…(p.x)

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• Clark (1979) and Obafemi (2001) further add that, those years heralded the formation of what today has become a robust and multi-cultured bank of Nigerian traditional cultural reservoir. Apart from Hubert Ogunde, there were other native artists who started performing their craft long before Ogunde came on the scene. Artists like A. B. David, Dawodu and A. A. Layeni were all established performers of native music and service songs for different churches or native air operas. But the church songs and native operas were all devoid of dramatic action, in contrast to Ogunde’s performance of his first native air opera titled The Garden of Eden and the throne of God.

• He included dramatic action and realism. The activities of the above mentioned performers gave rise to professionals like Duro Ladipo and Kola Ogunmola and later the new theatres of Moses Olaiya, Ojo Ladipo and Oyin Adejobi. All of the early producers made use of folk lore as the base of content production; they also used satire, history and politics.

• For more than five decades, drama as a constitutive form has been a source of entertainment to the people. Nigerian dramatists have used their genre as a means of documenting historical materials and as a vehicle of creating social, economic and political consciousness among the people. The specific origins of Nigerian drama can be traced to the first pre-occupations of the Nigerian people.

• Ogunbiyi (1981) opines that; • …as an expression of the relationship between man, society

and nature, drama arose out of fundamental human needs in the dawn of human civilization…which is to say, that Nigerian theatre and drama originated with the Nigerian himself, embodying his first pre-occupations, his first struggles, successes, set-backs and all….(p.3)

• The above statement is a truism about the origins of Nigerian drama since drama evolved alongside humanity. It is also a testament to the sociology of drama and its mode of deployment in Nigerian drama and how it has evolved throughout the formative years of formal theatre in Nigeria up to the present time.

• It is also a testament to the sociology of drama and its mode of deployment in Nigerian drama and how it has evolved throughout the formative years of formal theatre in Nigeria up to the present time. The influences that prevailed to form what today is considered as Nigerian theatre are many; the most significant one is the early European variety theatre. This type of theatre influenced both individual theatre groups and institutional theatre practitioners. Performers like Duro Oladipo, Kola Ogunmola and Moses Olaiya founded their groups based on the structural ideologies that govern the European concert party theatre groups (Obafemi, 2001).

• James Ene Henshaw, Wole Soyinka, Ola Rotimi and their contemporaries equally formed their theatre groups following the structural ideologies of the colonial concert party theatre. It should however be noted that most of these theatre practitioners used their art as means for political agitation for independence. They served as a stage through which the nationalist idea for independence was shared with the masses. As a result of this involvement in the mass movement for independence, the colonial authorities organized a clampdown on the activities of most of the theatre practitioners. The period from 1945 to 1950 saw most of the theatre groups actively involved in the movement for the political emancipation of the country (Clark, 1980). This period coincided with the formation of

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• a nationalist movement known as the N.C.N.C. (National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons). This was a nationalist group that was pushing for the political rule from the hands of the colonial government (Obafemi, 2001; Ogunbiyi, 1981). During this period, plays like Ogunde’s Bread and bullet and Human parasite were used as means of creating awareness among the Nigerian People. Clark (1980) alludes to this period when she states that:

• …theatre participated in the cultural renaissance in the forties so it did in the nationalist movement, and by so doing often clashed with the law. It was during this period from about 1944 to 1951 that there was, for the first time an attempt to organize a cohesive national front for the specific purpose of accelerating independence from colonial rule… (p.72)

• After independence in 1960, the academic scholars mostly based in the University College Ibadan took to writing plays and forming theatre groups like Soyinka’s “1960 Mask”, Ola Rotimi’s “Ori Olokun Theatre Company”. These university based theatre groups helped with the formation of a strong base for what is today known as Nigerian Theatre and Drama. The National Arts Theatre is the primary centre for the performing arts in Nigeria. The monument is located in Iganmu, Lagos State. Construction was completed in 1976 in preparation for the Festival of Arts and Culture (FESTAC) in 1977 (Clark, 1980; Obafemi, 2001).

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