Playwriting and Directing in Nigeria: Interviews with Ola Rotimi (review)

Ola Rotimi, who died aged 62 in August 2000, was a playwright and director whose reputation—despite occasional productions of his work in the US, Britain, and some parts of Africa—never really extended significantly beyond his own country, Nigeria. This is the wider world's loss: I regard him as one of the foremost theatrical talents of modern Africa, and a playwright who often (in, for instance, historical dramas such as Kurunmi, Ovonramwen Nogbaisi, Hopes of the Living Dead, Akassa You Mi) wrote back from the colonized world to the world of the colonisers—re-interpreting history from an African standpoint. These works are epic both in theatrical scale and in imagination. Elsewhere Rotimi offered a brilliant reworking of Oedipus Rex (The Gods Are Not to Blame), powerful political statements (for instance If . . . A Tragedy of the Ruled), and wonderfully witty political satires (Holding Talks, Our Husband Has Gone Mad Again, etc.). The dynamic of much of his playwriting arose from his "mixed" Nigerian background—a Nembe mother from the Rivers and a Yoruba father. His theater drew enthusiastically from the performance traditions of many parts of southern Nigeria, with dance, music, and animated storytelling integral to his style. Realizing that one of the banes of modern Nigeria was the ease with which unscrupulous politicians could divide and rule on "tribal" or ethnic lines, Rotimi would often cut through such tactics by uniting actors and audience through urging, via his characters, that "each one, tell one," translating (in, for instance, Hopes . . .) from English to Hausa, Hausa to Yoruba, Yoruba to Igbo, Igbo to Tiv, and so on through the range of languages shared by the characters. His work was vigorous in its narrative, challenging in its humane politics, and vibrant in performance. (There is surely a strong case to be made for the publication of his collected plays by an international press.)

Effiok Bassey Uwatt offers an affectionate homage to Rotimi by editing and introducing this collection of twelve interviews, ranging in time from 1973 to 1997. The ubiquitous Bernth Lindfors offers the first—a model of how the interviewer should allow the subject to do the talking—and other contributors include the veteran Nigerian theater scholar Dapo Adelugba, Onuora Ossie Enekwe, Margaret Folarin, and—from Rotimi's period teaching at Macalester College, St. Paul, Minnesota—a wide-ranging discussion with David Chioni Moore.

There is inevitably overlap in much of the material, but the collection forms an important resource for those concerned with Rotimi's work and also, hopefully, for those who would want to take it on to performance. A useful (though not complete) bibliography is offered. (Among others, essays on Rotimi in Modern Drama 33.1 [March 1990]; in African Literature Today 12 [1982]; in Oyin Ogunba and Abiola Irele (eds.), Theatre in Africa, 1978; in ARIEL 14 [1983]; and C. Brian Cox (ed.), African Writers, New York, 1997, might usefully be added.)