Inside the Lagos Theatre Festival (3)
The pleasurable part of the Lagos Theatre Festival is that there is a wide spectrum of plays lined up, curated and fringe. With about 100 performances scheduled over six days, the headache one feels is deciding which ones to see and what time slot to see them.
Festival Director Kenneth Uphopho gives a reassuring advice: “If you begin tonight you’ll be able to see at least 10 of the shows,” he says during his welcome remarks on opening night (27 Feb.) at the Council Chamber of City Hall, where hundreds of guests are seated. Behind him, a larger-than-life image of a pair of Eyo masquerades loom.
Uphopho’s tenure as director comes to an end in a few days and he uses the opportunity to thank everyone who has contributed to his successful run since he was first appointed. In a short clip screened earlier to profile the festival’s progress from its humble beginnings in 2013, he thanks the British Council for introducing and sponsoring the festival, adding specifically that many actors, directors and technical hands have benefitted from the various workshops hosted during the festival.
“For five years we have created an enabling environment where artistes and the audience meet to experience performance in its most interactive form, fostered collaborations among producers, directors, artistes and the audience in the simplest ways possible,” he writes in the festival pamphlet, adding that the festival has re-defined the culture of performance in general in the host city and become the birthing place for new work and new voices, a springboard for international collaborations.
“My journey as the Festival Director has produced over 300 shows, 50 new producers, employed 2000 artistes during a three-year tenure and only recently, to cap it all, Lagos Theatre Festival was listed as one of the Top 20 festivals in the world.”
When the festival launched in 2014, it featured four companies (three from Nigeria and one from the UK), 16 shows in two days; this year, there will be at least 40 companies, 110 shows across six days.
“The 2018 festival is 100% managed by a Nigerian team and has come a long way making an impact across the Lagos theatre ecosystem,” says Ojoma Ochai, British Council Head of Arts for West Africa. “I am particularly proud to announce that this year the LTF is transitioning from a British Council project into a Nigerian organization…the Board of Trustees will steer the continued growth of the festival into the future and British Council will continue to support by facilitating UK connections to the festival and the Nigerian theatre sector at large.”
I am surprised to hear that the British Council will henceforth take a back seat but I am pleased by Chair of the Board Supo Shasore’s assurances that his team will build on the current achievements.
The evening’s speeches done, the audience is treated to the soulful and soul-searching solo performance by Scottish-Kenyan storymaker, Mara Menzies. Mara’s evocative narrative first travels to a long lost time in today’s Kenya, where the society lived by a well defined code of conduct and taboos. One of them was that women should never eat meat! Any woman who does risks severe punishment, her husband included.
As sometimes happens, there is always that person bold and brave enough that challenges the rule that men have chosen to live by. In this Kenyan folklore that Mara shares that woman is Washu, who severally — and secretly — cuts and eats pieces and chunks of meat until she was caught (more than once) and banished from the village. But in the end, her defiance and a series of unexpected events brings a long-standing tradition to an end.
Widely travelled, Mara has built a reputation for “crafting bespoke stories for unique occasions and working with a wide variety of audiences”; she completes her performance with a story set in Nigeria at the beginning of the world, an era of purity and innocence when benevolent deities reigned and humans were at one with nature. I was hard pressed not for feel sore for the hunter whose unbridled desire for vengeance cost him the one soul he cherishes most — his mother.
“Mara Menzies is passionate about bringing African stories to life,” goes a profile piece on tracscotland.org. “She delights in sharing tales with a variety of audiences and her stories range from traditional folklore such as ‘How the cat came to live indoors’ and ‘The Seven Day Story’…She is keen to keep up the oral tradition of African storytelling in Scotland and to find audiences with whom she can share the wonders of Africa through the spoken word.”
If there is anything that Africa needs right now, it is many more storytellers like Mara. The breed, which has nearly vanished, needs replenishing.
