INTRODUCTION
In the last post, we introduced the first generation Nigerian playwrights and listed some of their plays. In this unit, we will introduce some playwrights who are tagged the second generation Nigerian playwrights, and their preoccupation.
3.1. Revolt in Nigerian Drama
Drama mirrors the society in very concrete terms through the interaction of actors on the stage or on the screen. The playwright therefore records the social realities in his society and presents the same on stage. Drama is therefore a product of the society since its conceptualization is usually ignited by the socio-political issues of a particular society. The first generation playwrights except for Ola Rotimi, did not dramatise revolt in their plays.
Revolt is an act of protest against or a rejection of an existing authority, concept or an idea. To revolt against something is to oppose or refuse to do or accept that thing. It involves a break-away from or to rise against constituted authority. It could be violent, or non-violent, in form of mild protest.
The revolt dramatists refer to those who use their works to urge the oppressed to revolt against their oppressors. They use their works not just to protest against inequality, injustice, or oppression in the society but insist on a revolt against the perpetrators of injustice. Their aim is to correct the imbalance for the emergence of an egalitarian society.
Revolt in drama is a product of man’s discontent with his world and the desire to create an enabling environment for the realization of a perfect society. Revolt in drama seeks socio-political changes that would reverse adverse situations of modern life which perpetuate the “…disintegration of the traditional world order” (Brustein 5). Revolt in Nigerian drama was therefore born out of dissatisfaction with the leadership and the way socio-political issues of the nation are handled.
Many scholars believe that revolt in Nigerian drama was enkindled and sustained by the Nigerian civil war and the oil boom. The war was said to have radicalized the minds of many Nigerians while the oil boom created and intensified class stratification and intense capitalism. (Obafemi 120). The new upper class accumulated wealth to the detriment of the working class and other citizens. This deepened the gulf between the rich and the poor Nigerians. The rich gets richer while the poor gets poorer. The political class is more interested in self-aggrandizement than in the wellbeing of the electorate. The government concentrates on self-enrichment instead of on the provision of basic amenities for the people.
At the intellectual level, a new set of radicals emerged who are very critical of the government, the political class and the socio-political events and situations in the country. Among these radicals were a new crop of playwrights whose “writing skills were sharpened by events into instruments to declare the personal and social trauma they receive from the war” (Obafemi 120). Their plays deal with contemporary social problems in order to raise awareness among the people and advocate revolutionary alternatives as remedies to the situation.
Nigerian playwrights like Femi Osofisan, Bode Sowande, Esiaba Irobi, Tess Onwueme and a host of others reject the recourse to gods for solution to societal problems. They insist that man is the originator of his own problems, so, the solution to these problems lies within the scope of man.
Through their play, they try to influence the “…people’s consciousness and social attitudes” (Gbilekaa 2). They insist on a restructuring of the society from a capitalist structure to a socialist one that is expected to produce an egalitarian society.
However, this seems to be an impossible task since the power elite seems willing to entrench social justice or relinquish power. In this case, the only option left for the people, according to these playwrights is to destroy the self, greedy and oppressive individuals and structures through a collective action. This insistence on revolutionary alternative has given rise to concepts like radical theatre, protest drama, theatre of commitment, political theatre, theatre of revolt, and revolutionary aesthetics in Nigerian dramatic literature and criticism.
It is important to specify that a playwright like Wole Soyinkais very radical and critical of the government whenever it errs, and issues and other abnormalities in the nation. He is not regarded as a revolt playwright because he does not seem to subscribe to the dramatization of revolt on stage.
3.2. Femi Osofisan
Femi Osofisan was born in a little village near Ijebu Ode. He lost his father very early in life. However, he managed to complete his primary and secondary education with the help of his relations. He proceeded to the University of Ibadan with a government scholarship. His first degree is in French. He also studied at the University of Dakar and Novvelle Sorbonne, Paris and back to the University of Ibadan where he obtained his Ph.D. He was been a lecturer for the greater part of his life and has taught in many universities here in Nigeria and abroad.
Osofisan’s first literary work Kolera Kolej (1975) is a novel but he is principally a playwright. He has been an editor of many literary journals, was a founding member of the Editorial Board of Guardian Newspapers. He has also been the General Manager and Chief Executive of the National Theatre, Lagos. Osofisan who also writes as Okinba Launko is an outstanding poet, a translator, critic and theorist of literature. He “features as one of the longest-running columnists in Nigeria’s leading newspapers (he) has written over fifty plays” (Blurb. Women of Owu).
Osofisan is best known in the theatre where he has acquired a solid reputation as an actor, playwright, director, and songwriter. His plays have been performed in various parts of the world. Femi Osofisan is regarded as the father of revolt theatre in Nigeria because his plays are about the first body of literary drama that devotes their themes to the problems of the peasants and the working class – the oppressed class. In his plays he “seeks to arouse his audience into critical awareness of the prevailing social decadence and thus move them into taking appropriate action…his plays consistently attack all forms of corruption, oppression, injustice and tyranny. He is a social crusader with an optimistic view that through the collective action of the people, a better society could emerge.
Osofisan like his predecessors utilizes myth and history but he is not concerned with mere recreation of myth and history but subverts and reworks them and other forms of oral tradition to suit his ideological perspective. In his plays he urges the people to take up arms and “undertake a complete overhaul, of the political structures that oppress and dehumanize them (Gbilekaa 75).
Osofisan’s posture of revolt in his plays stands out. The plays present “a restless search for fairness in a world of abandoned justice”, (Awodiya 13). Social revolt dominates his themes as his characters revolt against their oppression to reflect the playwright’s vision of a better society. He enacts myth of rebellion in these plays to confront the “betrayal of aspirations, pervasive squandering of human and material resources and widespread corruption that has accompanied Nigeria’s independence since 1960”. (Awodiya 13).
Osofisan uses his character Leye and Sontri to revolt against the oppressive and tyrannical leadership of Alafin Abiodun, the King in The Chattering and the Song; in No More the Wasted Breed Osofisan insists that accepted norms and values can be challenged, rejected and reformed. This explains why the belief in the infallibility of the gods is rejected in that play. Similarly, he argues in a Restless Run of Locusts that there must be a radical rejection of retrogressive and outmoded values for the entrenchment of a viable social transformation and in Moruntodun, Marshal, Bogunde and Baba lead the peasant farmers in a revolt against injustice, exploitation and the oppressive system of taxation. His plays dramatize issues of social concerns in the contemporary Nigerian society and most of the characters are drawn from the middle class and the peasants.
Another significant aspect of Osofisan’s dramaturgy is that women assume control roles in the plays. Osofisan does not seem to subscribe to the dictum that women in the traditional Nigerian society are supposed to be seen and not heard. The female characters, lead or join others in revolutionary actions for positive changes in the society.
Osofisan advocates a radical alternative to present capitalism in the Nigerian society which encourages individuals to enrich themselves at the detriment of the suffering masses, and protects the greedy, selfish, corrupt and vulgar acquisition of material wealth. He is acclaimed to be the “…most articulate, and the most ambitious in his use of the subversive potential of the theatre to shape the audience’s perspective of the social revolution which they find inevitable in the country” (Obafemi 174).
Some other plays by Femi Osofisan are Who’s Afraid by Solarin?. Once Upon Four Robbers, Red is the Freedom Road, No More the Wasted Breed, Midnight Hotel, Farewell to a Cannibal Rage, The Oriki of a Grasshopper, Altine’s Wrath, Esu and the Vagabond, Minstrels, Another Raft, Birthdays are Not for Dying, Fires Burn and Die Hard, The Inspector and the Hero Women of Owu and many other.
3.3. Bode Sowande
Like Osofisan and other radical playwrights, Bode Sowande is concerned with the use of theatre as a weapon for mass mobilization of the oppressed poor for a mass revolution which he finds inevitable in the society. He uses his plays to present the political and economic contradictions in Nigeria especially through the presentation of the suffering majority and their exploitation by the privileged minority.
He maintains a socialist stance and believes that capitalism which supports materialism is the main cause of social ills, marginalisation and depravity in the country. He therefore uses his plays to attach these ills and insists on a revolutionary alternative as a panacea for societal conflicts. His most popular play is Farewell to Babylon. In this play, there is a revolution and as overthrow of the despot, Field Marshal.
His other plays include The Night Before, Sanctus for Woman, Tornadoes Full of Dreams, Flamingo.
3.4. Tess Onwueme
Osonye, Tess Onwueme came to limelight as a Nigerian female playwright in 1985 with her award winning play. The Desert Encroaches (ANA Prize for Drama). Her plays show that “both powerful and powerless people, regardless of gender, exist in the society (Evwierhoma 5) .
Tess Onwueme was born in Ilah, a village near Ogwashi Uku in Delta State. After her primary school she attended the Mary Mount College, Agbo, Delta State and Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife where she obtained a degree in English/Education and a Ph.D from the University of Benin. She got married at the age of 19 and has five children.
Tess Onwueme, with about sixteen plays, is considered the most prolific African female playwright. As a woman, she is expected to use her works to champion mainly the cause of women’s emancipation and empowerment but she goes beyond that. Onwueme concerns herself with the plight of the oppressed in the society, irrespective of gender.
Revolt resounds in almost all the plays written by Onwueme. Revolt provides the motive and material for her plays. In some of the plays, the revolts are radical as we see in The Reign of Wazobia and in others, the revolt takes the form of protest or firm rejections of authority. In The Broken Calabash, she presents a revolt against parental authority with its fatalistic consequences. In the play, Ona revolts against her parent’s insistence that she marries in the family. She also presents a total revolution, an organized opposition to constituted authority. In The Desert Encroaches where a group wrests power from leadership. Then she said it, the poor exploited, oppressed and dehumanized men and women of the oil rich Delta region of Nigeria revolt against the government, the foreign oil companies and other government agencies.
Onwueme’s dramaturgy is unique in her portrayal of female characters. In her plays, she presents very strong female characters who champion the cause of the oppressed, and initiate revolutionary changes for the progress of the society. She presents women as role models but at the same time, presents women who indulge in despicable acts. By this portraiture, we find prostitutes, lesbians, drug traffickers and other women with ignoble characters.
In some of her plays, she condemns women who indulge in crimes to make money and admonishes the younger girls to listen to good counsel from their parents. It also emphasises the need for the education of the girl-child, if the women in the plays especially in Shakara, Dance-Hall Queen, were educated they would have fared better in the society.
In her plays, Tess indeed revolutionalised female creativity. As a woman, many people expect her to present mainly the positive images of women as they struggle for power, identity, self-esteem, assertion, emancipation and empowerment with the attendant conflicts in a patriarchal society. She is expected to present only decent women who triumph despite obstacles and stumbling blocks set by men and tradition. She presents instead, progressive women who pursue their hopes and aspirations in honest ways and overcome their trails in the end. She also presents those women who are overwhelmed by the society because they are egoistic, greedy and corrupt. She goes further to expose the intra-gender battles and conflicts that endanger the total emancipation and progress of African women.
Onwueme encourages the oppressed person to revolt against his/her misuse by any body, institution or society. Tess Onwueme won the African Literature Association’s prestigious Fonlan-Nicholas award. This award is given annually to an “African writer” whose works have demonstrated commitment to democratic ideals, humanistic values and literary excellence in Africa. In her acceptance speech Tess contends.
Now that you have hired me to follow the footsteps of Fonlan-Nichols in their irrevocable advocacy for the rights of the many who have no power, no place, and no voice to claim/assert their dignity and identity lost, stolen or denied, I accept… to serve this role of solicitor and advocate for the oppressed..
http://www.uwec.edu/newsreleased/09/ap/042/Onwuemeaward.htm
This award confirms Onwueme’s position as a revolt playwright who uses her works to speak for the voiceless.
4.0 CONCLUSION
This module presents a brief survey of dramatic literature in Nigeria since the 1940s and 1950s. The Onitsha Market dramatists of this period portray the problems of a changing society as a result of its contact with the Europeans. Their plays reflect the poor educational background of the writers. After that educated graduates like Soyinka and his group emerged in the Nigerian dramatic scene. This first generation playwrights in their plays propose a tragic vision which supports individual heroism. The revolutionary aesthetic school of the second generation playwrights treated in this unit believes that social change can only come when people are made aware of their problems and incited into action. They insist that the oppressed should not accept their lot meekly but to end their oppression through mass action. Another group of the second generation playwrights use their plays to lay bare the ills of the society and destroy the system through their actions but do not propose a revolutionary alternative for the amelioration of the social ills. Many of them present such problems and allow the audience to take a decision. In all these, the dramatists try to act as the conscience of the nation.
5.0 SUMMARY
In this unit, we have presented to you some of the dramatists of the revolutionary aesthetics school of Nigerian dramatic literature. Only three playwrights are presented here but there are many more. The unique feature of the revolt plays is that they urge the oppressed to revolt against their oppressors. The playwrights condemn the injustice, inequality and the marginalization of some members of the society by the privileged few. They insist that the problems of the society affect everybody so, all those who are affected by the problem should unite and collectively overthrow the initiators and perpetrators of such problems.
6.0. TUTOR-MARKED ASSIGNMENT
State clearly why Femi Osofisan is regarded as the father of radical theatre in Nigeria.
7.0 REFERENCES/FURTHER READINGS
Awodiya, Maida (1996). Femi Osofisan: Interpretative Essay I. Lagos: CBAAC
Evwierhoma Mabel (1994) Female Empowerment and Dramatic Creativity in Nigeria.
Ibadan: Caltop.
Ezenwa-Ohaeto (2003) Winging Words: Interviews with Nigerian Writers and Critics.
Lagos: Kraft Books.
Gbilekaa, Saint (1997) Radical Theatre in Nigeria. Ibadan: Caltop.
Kolawole, Mary E. Modupe (1999) Zulu Sofola: Her Life & Her Works. Ibadan: Caltop
Publications.
Obafemi, Olu (2001) Contemporary Nigerian Theatre: Cultural Heritage and Social
Vision. Lagos: CBAAC
Osofisan, Femi (2006) Women of Owu. Ibadan: University Press.
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