‘I’m on a mission to publish my ‘scattered’ works’

Bookshelf: You recently launched two plays titled ‘Doctor of Football’ and ‘A Play of Ghosts.’ They have been acted on stage for quite a long time. Why now? Uzor Maxim Uzoatu: I have been having all kinds of experiments with both plays on several platforms. I felt that reprinting both finally will help free me […]

Bookshelf: You recently launched two plays titled ‘Doctor of Football’ and ‘A Play of Ghosts.’ They have been acted on stage for quite a long time. Why now?

Uzor Maxim Uzoatu: I have been having all kinds of experiments with both plays on several platforms. I felt that reprinting both finally will help free me to do other things. There is of course the abiding cause of raising enough funds to perform ‘Doctor of Football’ all over Nigeria, in all the geo-political zones. ‘A Play of Ghosts’ needs to be given a proper command performance as opposed to the somewhat limited runs it thus far earned.  

Bookshelf: Are you satisfied with the attention both plays have received before now?

Uzoatu: I think that it was the playwright George Bernard Shaw who espoused the theme ‘satisfaction is death.’ Once a writer feels satiety, then there is no need to forge on. There has been considerable attention for the works, but a lot more needs to be explored to expose them to a much wider public.   

Bookshelf: What was the experience like working on both books?

Uzoatu: The first play ‘Doctor of Football’ was produced in my teenage years, and got its first performance back in 1979. I have played football all through my life, from primary school to the adult years. Back in elementary school in Onitsha there were teammates who believed in the efficacy of making juju with fetish priests in the bid to win football matches. The idea seized my imagination, and it was such a joy writing the play. 

Football is a worldwide industry such that in many cultures there are certain characters that purport to make magic for the winning of football matches. It is from the milieu that I drew the title character of ‘Doctor of Football’. But of course I had to extend the image by ensuring that myth can be used to re-direct the purposes of humankind to a positive end. 

‘A Play of Ghosts’ was forged while I was in the university, in Ife with Professor Wole Soyinka as our Head of Department. There was so much revolutionary fervour around such that I committed the consciousness to the play dedicated to a rendering classmate Owei Lakemfa and our departed comrade Chima Ubani. ‘A Play of Ghosts’ depicts the down-and-out on stage acting out their poverty against the backdrop of a very oppressive society. But then these mere ghosts on stage must get into the wider society of the living to effect a revolutionary change on the community.   

Bookshelf: How do you view the translation of plays from stage to book form?

Uzoatu: Of course the play needs to work on stage in the first instance to earn the bearing of theatre. The published play can then function in regard to Father Time from year-to-year, if it is truly relevant. The ancient Greek plays, such as ‘Oedipus Rex’ by Sophocles would have been lost to mankind if the text did not survive. The great Shakespearean tragedies, notably ‘Macbeth’, ‘Hamlet’, ‘King Lear’ and ‘Othello’ can be read today even when not seen on the stage. 

Bookshelf: Earlier you had published a book of poetry, ‘God of Poetry’, described as a celebration of poetry.  Could you elaborate on the work?

Uzoatu: I have been writing poetry for such a long time that even my enemies call me ‘The Poet’. I refused to publish a collection of my poems despite so much pressure that I should put out my poems as bound books. Fire burnt my library and I lost some poems, some manuscripts. But then, life goes on. ‘God of Poetry’ makes the point that we antedate the Muses of Ancient Greece here in Africa and Nigeria.  

Bookshelf: So you are both a playwright and poet. How did this happen?

Uzoatu: I write all things as the spirit drives me. In fact I need to put my whole literary life in order by publishing the things I have scattered here and there. Poems, plays, novels, short stories, journalism, essays-all are grist to the mill. There is the crying need to sort things out henceforth.  

Bookshelf: How did your career as a writer begin?

Uzoatu: There has always been the demon of writing lurking in my inside from elementary school days. But along the line, I felt that a revolutionary change of the society was a more worthwhile venture to pursue than the sissy copout called writing. I actually felt guilty writing when I ought to be in the bush as a guerrilla seeking to change the world like Che Guevara and Fidel Castro. Well, I guess I am back to writing for good. That’s why I resurrected my earliest play ‘Doctor of Football’ and the other play ‘A Play of Ghosts’. All my writings not destroyed by fire will someday have a place in the sun.  

Bookshelf: How do you view the development of playwriting and poetry in Nigeria today?

Uzoatu: The early playwrights like James Ene Henshaw of ‘This is Our Chance’, the great literary output of Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka and JP Clark in the same manner that the ‘nationalistic’ early poetry of Nnamdi Azikiwe and Dennis Osadebe paved the way for the ambitious forays of Gabriel Okara, Christopher Okigbo, Soyinka and Clark. The modern-day playwrights and poets are holding aloft the torch with aplomb.  

Bookshelf: You were nominated for the Caine Prize for African Writing in 2008 for your short story ‘Cemetery of Life’. Do you still write prose fiction?

Uzoatu: Of course I still write prose fiction, though my literary agents in London, Radala & Associates, have since closed shop when I was not forthcoming with the waited-for manuscript. It is incumbent on me to ensure that they did not go kaput in vain. 

Bookshelf: What usually informs your writing?

Uzoatu: I believe in life, and it is very crucial to add to the knowledge extending the frontiers of living. The onion needs its many layers, and a little drop in the waters creates the waves unto eternity. 

Bookshelf: When you are not doing anything related to the arts, what do you do?

Uzoatu: I plot freedom and play football.