It feels good when text comes alive on stage – Asiyanbi

Bookshelf: Your play, ‘shattered,’ for which you won the BBC African Performance playwriting competition, is now taking place every Sunday, all through the month of October. How do you feel about that and is it in any way connected with Nigeria’s 55th independence anniversary? Bode Asiyanbi: Well, I will say it’s always a good feeling […]

Bookshelf: Your play, ‘shattered,’ for which you won the BBC African Performance playwriting competition, is now taking place every Sunday, all through the month of October. How do you feel about that and is it in any way connected with Nigeria’s 55th independence anniversary?
Bode Asiyanbi: Well, I will say it’s always a good feeling when text comes alive on stage. That said, I think the true feeling would be in the ability of the play to hit the bull’s eye in the mind of the audience with regards to the important subject matter. October in the annals of the nation, Nigeria is a month of vision, hope, desire and paradigm shift. It is a serious month, worthy of the heavy subject the play attempts to tackle.
Bookshelf: Before now, has it drawn this much attention in terms of stage performance? How successful has it been?
Asiyanbi: Sure, it premiered at the 2013 British Council Lagos Theatre Festival to heartening reviews, and if by successful you mean the reaction of the audience or the incessant requests to have it staged in the country and beyond, then maybe the tag can stick. Success for me though is the ability of the play to force the audience to think, rethink and reflect, and in that I can say with some level of confidence that it has.
Bookshelf: The BBC had mentioned the theme of ‘rape’ as the reason for your selection at the time and the fact that you skillfully wove the story without being condescending. How did you achieve that?
Asiyanbi: By telling a human story and remaining true to it by avoiding the landmines of blame, finger pointing and a single story.
Bookshelf: Many Nigerians will perhaps agree with that. Rape has become a kind of epidemic today. Minors and infants, as young as three-months-old are the victims of rape in Nigeria, not to talk of adults that are attacked virtually on a daily basis. What impressed on your heart to write such a story?
Asiyanbi: One of the duties of a writer, I believe, is to channel anger and vexation of the spirit to the creative process. Rape angers, it vexes the spirit, it provokes the muse and strikes the creative chord so hard that you can do nothing but scream ‘this should not happen.’
Bookshelf: What did your research work entail?
Asiyanbi: It was a process. A gradual and subliminal one albeit. If you go beyond the news to talk to real people, you will be sure surprised by the insidious prevalence of this canker. At a point I became very afraid because I was hearing stories that stretched back to pre-teen and adolescent years. It is not normal. It’s crazy. The fact that people will judge or tag you with the blame does not make it a passing incident. And the victims live the rest of their lives nursing the wound. Those wounds do not afford the victim the poor consolation of scarification. They never become scars. They remain a festering abrasion.
Bookshelf: What was your writing background like?
Asiyanbi: I heard a little voice in the middle of the night saying, rise up my son, and write. Seriously now, I grew up with books all around me. I had little choice than to pick them and start to read, and when I started to read those writers, I wanted to write like them. The tides of life, family expectations, the society and of course, my desultory inclination if you like, took me on a voyage to Ife where I graduated with a degree in microbiology and a stint in the banking industry. The muse, the sirens, the divine, Lancaster and everything in between, came to the rescue with a degree in Creative Writing and now I’m back on steady waters. I write full-time now.
Bookshelf: Do you have a preference for playwriting?
Asiyanbi: I have always tilted towards prose. I have a strong predilection for it. Playwriting comes after that, maybe, maybe not, you’ are never really sure of these things.
Bookshelf: You worked with the BBC World Service Trust as a writer on its groundbreaking radio and television drama series, ‘Story Story’ and ‘Wetin Dey.’ How did this happen?
Asiyanbi: I was in Ife, I think my third year, when I got a call from Jenny Horrocks. The BBC producer of my 2005 winning play, ‘Beguiled.’ Hakeem Mogaji came to Bush House and spoke about needing writers for the BBC radio project (‘Story Story’) he was in charge of Nigeria. My name came up and she gave him my details and the rest is history. This segued into the ‘Wetin Dey’ project later. I was drafted on board as one of the first writers. I still believe that was the best piece of television drama ever to be aired on Nigerian television.
Bookshelf: ‘Wetin Dey,’ aimed to sensitise Nigerians on HIV and AIDS, is still aired on local TV. How challenging was it?
Asiyanbi: Writing true and honest stories creatively is always a challenge, and when it is about a sensitive theme as HIV/AIDS then it goes several notches up. We had to creatively tell the stories with honesty, passion and great sensitivity and of course we had to tell balanced stories. So it was challenging, but worth it and certainly an unbelievable experience.
Bookshelf: Your short story ‘The Diagnosis,’ was a winning entry for the British Council Lagos Theatre Festival 2014. You gave an in-depth diagnosis of Lagos as a city that separates winners from losers. Sometimes stories form in a writers mind over time and it would not be inappropriate to say they are pieces later put together. What led you to write such a piece?
Asiyanbi: You know Lagos is a state of mind. You could be in Abuja and have a Lagos state of mind. Lagos could be a friend, a foe, a fraud, a lottery, an inspiration, a pain in the backside or a shaman. The victors in Lagos have learnt to use the city and not the other way round. Whenever you are in the city, take a pause, step out of the bustle and see Lagos from the outside – the faces weaving through crowds, the cars chasing expectations, the hardy beggars, the towers of concrete and the water bringing dirt and life. I won’t say I told a story by piecing together experiences. I just took a snapshot of Lagos and gave it life.
Bookshelf: When you write, do you reflect on how it will affect society or do you just plunge into it?
Asiyanbi: Every story that is true to itself will affect others because it is a human story. I don’t start with any audience in mind. When the story grips me by the throat, all I want to do is get it off my neck. Other feelings may come after.
Bookshelf: How do you think awards have helped in shaping your career as a writer?
Asiyanbi: Self-doubt is the curse of writers. Not curse in the true sense of the word but one that has got an instructive slant about it. The awards have helped forge the doubts, in a way, into a certain self-belief that sings; why not write a story set in Jupiter or the Mariana Trench, because I believe I might just get away with it. Just.
Bookshelf: What do you do aside from writing?
Asiyanbi: The answer is writing. When I’m not writing, I’m writing, or thinking through solitary walks. A writer always writes, if not on paper, the computer or the papyrus of the mind.
Bookshelf: What are you working on at the moment?
Asiyanbi: A screenplay, a novel, a television series and another stage play.