The 7th Jos Festival of Theatre and Three Nigerian Plays

This year, from Saturday 23rd February to Friday March 1 2013, the Jos Repertory Theatre partnered with the U.S. Embassy, the Alliance Francaise, the Czech Embassy, and other private investors to put on the 7th Jos Festival of Theatre, which was free and open to the public. The theme of the festival was “Challenge Perceptions.” […]

This year, from Saturday 23rd February to Friday March 1 2013, the Jos Repertory Theatre partnered with the U.S. Embassy, the Alliance Francaise, the Czech Embassy, and other private investors to put on the 7th Jos Festival of Theatre, which was free and open to the public. The theme of the festival was “Challenge Perceptions.” The performances included three Nigerian productions: the workshop creation Banana Talks, Wale Ogunyemi’s play Queen Amina of Zazzau, and Femi Osofisan’s Midnight Hotel; two American productions:  August Wilson’s Jitney and Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and the Czech playwright Vaclav Havel’s Audience.  Rather badly for an American, I missed seeing the American and Czech plays; however, I did attend the three Nigerian plays Banana Talks, Queen Amina of Zazzau, and Midnight Hotel. After seeing the final production, I was sorry I hadn’t gone every night.
The first performance, Banana Talks, a workshop creation of the Repertory Theatre was a wild nonsensical but nevertheless hilarious two-man production performed by the Repertory Theatre veterans Ebuka Ifebunso and Akolo James Anthony. The conceit revolved around two characters Jack and Wilson, who claim they were apes that became humans. The performance (which felt quite similar to the two-act workshop creation Combubaration performed by the same actors at last year’s Theatre Festival)  satired many of the problems of current Nigerian society, from illiterate teachers and hospitals with no supplies, to charlatan pastors and Hausa-speaking kidnappers with sulky American-accented captives.
The first full-length play performed, Queen Amina of Zazzau written by Chief Wale Ogunyemi, is an epic drama that re-imagines the life of the famous Hausa Queen Amina (Osasogie Efe Guobadia) as daughter of Queen Bakwa Turunku  (Olajumoke Mitchell Olatubosun), her coronation as queen, her battles that conquered large swaths of territory, far into the Nupe kingdom, and finally her bored peacetime dalliances that lead to her demise.  She is warned in a prophecy that any man who shares her bed and goes on to sleep with another woman will be her downfall. True to her praying mantis totem, the female of which decapitates the male after mating, Amina takes many lovers but does not allow them to live. Her attempt to escape the prophecy and her ultimate demise reminds me of the ancient Greek tragedy Oedipus Rex by Sophocles. The question I had as I watched is whether Amina, like King Laius, Queen Jocasta, and their son Oedipus in the Greek play, hastens her own downfall by trying to keep the prophecy from being fulfilled. What I loved the most in the performance was the way the actors often repeated English lines in Hausa and threw in other Hausa asides. Director Patrick-Jude Oteh told me that the original play “did not contain much Hausa,” so “in my directorial approach, I gave the actors an idea of what I wanted to say and they gave the interpretation in Hausa.”  The ad-libbing in Hausa by the actors added much to the life and the humour of the play, at least to those audience members who could understand Hausa. The dances ostensibly performed as entertainment for Queen Amina were fantastic, particularly the antics of dancer Luka Stephen Tagwai, whose acrobatics left the audience shouting. One of my favourite moments for sheer spectacle was the coronation scene where actors come to the “shrine” carrying dozens of clay pots filled with flame.
The final play I watched during the festival was a performance of Femi Osofisan’s comedy Midnight Hotel, directed by Olajumoke Michelle Olatubosun. A veteran actress, this was her second stage directing work, but it was performed so well that one would think she had been directing for years.  The play is set in the seedy Midnight Hotel in Lagos, run by the pompous Chief Jimoh (Godwin Ogbaka), who won’t let anyone forget his chieftaincy title, and his bumbling assistant Bicycle (Abraham Omale). They offer various degrees of “service” to their guests:  a property inspector Asibong (Chukwuebuka S. Ifebunso), who is told his room has ghosts; the “Honourable” Awero (Osasogie Efe Guobadia), who is seeking a discreet place to carry out her affair with the famous Pastor Suuru (Akolo James Anthony); and finally the earnest village Headmaster Alatise (Sunny Adahson), a defeated and broke gubernatorial candidate who has come to Lagos looking for work with his three giggling daughters in tow (Dorcas Tobi Okeshola, Eniyome Edor, and Juliet Ejenma). The contract-seeking adulterers are hard pressed on every side as the hotel employees and other guests constantly interrupt their tête-à-tête. Akolo James Anthony gives a brilliant performance as the smooth-talking yet hard drinking, smoking, and contract seeking Pastor, overcome by occasional spasms of guilt. Osasogie Efe Guobadia transitions from her dignified performance as the Hausa-queen Amina into the hilarious hustling Yoruba- speaking politician, determined to take advantage of her position as the only female member of the Parliament land allocation committee to “sample the goods.” Godwin Ogbaka, nails his role as the grumpy newspaper-reading hotel proprietor Jimoh, who is motivated to run errands for his guests only by the promise of another chieftaincy title, and Sunny Adahson elicits guffaws as the proverb-spouting elder, who never quite understands the subtext of the Lagos hustle. The play is interspersed with musical numbers, accompanied by a chorus and a guitar-wielding Songmaster (Emmanuel Ekpe), in which the characters comically sing about their hopes and desires. This is the only part of the play I wished the actors had enunciated a little bit better, as it was sometimes hard to hear what they were singing. And that is a shame because I imagine that Osofisan’s politics come out most clearly in the music. But this is the only critique I had of the energetic performance. Midnight Hotel is a riotous farce. The audience was whooping with laughter. I don’t know the last time I have laughed so hard.  Osofisan leaves no character un-mocked, but under all the laughter is a hard-edged critique of contemporary Nigerian society and its insanities.
One of the things I love most about theatre is the individual life a play is given through the interpretation of the director and each actor. No two performances are the same, and unlike film, much of the performance is dependent on the live participation of the audience. The Jos audience, which numbered in the hundreds each night I went, was enthusiastic, roaring with laughter and shouting out jokes. The actors seemed to have unlimited energy, and the chemistry between the performers and the audience was electric.
Fortunately, though the festival in Jos has ended, the performances are not over. The Jos Repertory Theatre will be taking three plays to the Merit House in Maitama, Abuja in March over three weekends with August Wilson’s Jitney, Tennessee William’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and Femi Osofisan’s Midnight Hotel. I’m tempted to come to Abuja just to see the plays I missed. The theatre troupe is that good.