Segun Sofowote’s play of ‘many whispers’
Title: Went Forth A Whisper Author: Segun Sofowote Page: 132 Publisher: Ariya Productions Reviewer: Oghogho Arthur Obayuwana Set in the late 40s, the acts in this book are centered on two imaginary towns of Oroki and Arigbajo, where characters such as Adisa Anifowose, Oso, Ayinde, Jagun, Omontayo, Balogun Fagbamin, Morenike, Ajibike […]
Segun Sofowote’s play of ‘many whispers’
Title: Went Forth A Whisper
Author: Segun Sofowote
Page: 132
Publisher: Ariya Productions
Reviewer: Oghogho Arthur Obayuwana
Set in the late 40s, the acts in this book are centered on two imaginary towns of Oroki and Arigbajo, where characters such as Adisa Anifowose, Oso, Ayinde, Jagun, Omontayo, Balogun Fagbamin, Morenike, Ajibike as well as Agbenti and Finonsi, exerted.
Spread into 33 sequences, it is rendered in a language simple enough for comprehension, yet displays a sophisticated elegance that allows lines that are falling in place as prose to be arranged and rendered poetically. ‘Went Forth a Whisper’ should require a well horned cast to produce on stage. Lovers of plays and drama should fish out this book and include it in their collection.
The power of Sofowote’s pen is easily felt by his deployment of a telling poetic prose as can be seen in these lines forming part of the book’s prologue… “Uncouth power, child! The gleaming axe in the hands of a tree-feller is a tempter, a challenge to his quality, his pedigree! In muscle, mind and moral, is he man enough/ man enough over his weapon? Is he the slave of the master? The wielder or the wielded? The herder or the herded? Does the man ride the horse or the horse the man? On his high horse, feels he competent to assault fellow dependants and guests of Time and the Earth, the all-hosting stoics who admit, nurture and retire muscle and weapon?”
The essence of ‘Went Forth a Whisper’ is not introduced to readers forcing a conscious readership of its pages to be able to have an idea of its story as you read on. So in this case, the taste of the pudding also has to be in the eating!
However, I have put some words and phrases in the introduction of sequence 1, (lifted and rendered below) in italics, to provide a glimpse into the setting and “meal” being served in ‘Went Forth a Whisper’ and form your own picture of what the book is all about.
Note – “Daybreak. Aninfowose’s palour in Oroki town. From outside, sounds of peaceful ‘neighbourhood striving’. As the scene opens, Oso ‘prostrates’ himself and then assumes a squatting posture before Aninfowose who is emerging from the inner recesses of the house, his sleeping wrapper draped from his left shoulder across the chest and back, a bowl of water in his left hand and a chew-stick in the other. His delight is quite apparent as he stops to accord his son the full complement of their ‘family citatory poetry’.”
Since the Moonlight Playgroup, founded by Segun Sofowote in 1977, he has not looked back. He sure knows what it means to be active. Baba Sofowote knows that the man who retires quickly becomes dead alive!
Earlier than that, precisely in 1971, Ariya Productions had been born and with it, the creativity of Sofowote as a producer was to unfold with many artists benefitting from same.
I know him as the grand master of the arts, a man who is nicely put together in gait, expression and demeanour. But in the words of others perhaps more discerning and more researching and who had earlier experienced him in the service of his calling, he is actually a cat with nine lives. Indeed One reviewer of Sofowote’s works once shed light on Atoka the Yoruba photoplay series as well as The Magnet, maintaining that Sofowote became “the first dramatist/production director/editor in Nigeria to produce dramatic works in the medium of plays in photos and running text of dialogue and captions”.
To most of those reviewers, Sofowote is a theatre and literature guru, actor, dramatist, director, dancer and choreographer, writer, and even humourist.
Of course, more appendages would include: Producer, presenter, script writer and trainer, music composer, lyricist arranger, singer, choral director, percussionist, record producer, broadcaster, presenter, graphic artist, elocutionist, public speaker copywriter and art critic among others of similar hue.
This poet and lyricist hails from Irolu-Remo in Ogun State of Nigeria. But the globe has been his canvass. Like him, his drum dance drama, The Arbiter is much travelled. As we celebrate him today, we remember Sofowote’s other works which include: Sailor Boy In Town, The Royal Pigeon’s Perch, The Square Ring (an adaptation of Anton Chekov’s The Proposal), and another of his The Bear, (children’s musicals 🙂 On The Hill, Going Home, Working Together, The Singing Bone). Also a number of Yoruba titles including Eiye Melo? and Asiko Non To. Apart from his English as She is Spoke: A Non-native Speaker’s Speech Companion, there is also Three Tales of the Tortoise (retold and retouched) which was on the Nomination List for the 2008 Noma Award for Literature in Africa.
Sofowote who will turn 81 in the last quarter of 2020, is a tireless old war horse who is perhaps one of the unsung performers and artistic content creator and curator of our time.