Towards a True Nigerian Theatre

As the production and consumption of theatre in Nigeria declines, experts weigh in on its current status and what the future holds.

Editor’s note: This essay is available in our print issue, Demas Nwoko’s Natural Synthesis and the Rise of African Architecture. Buy the issue here.

I did not know very much about the circumstances surrounding the lynching of Deborah Samuel Yakubu in 2022, only that she had been a student of Shehu Shagari College of Education, Sokoto and had been accused of blasphemy. I remember the mass outrage in the aftermath of the incident, but I also remember how quickly tempers were calmed: in only a matter of days, as is the norm on social media, attention had become diverted to other matters. Quite frankly, I had almost completely forgotten about the incident until one fateful evening, 17 November 2024, at the Wole Soyinka Theatre, University of Ibadan, where Professor Wole Soyinka’s latest play, Canticles of a Pyre Foretold, was being staged. It was the second outing of the play, and I had gone to see it with my friend. Despite the less-than-perfect production (the sound might occasionally be delayed, the lights might go off too soon, and always, you could see the crew milling about the stage at ‘lights out’, moving things around to set the next scene), it was a thoroughly enjoyable experience. More than simply telling the story of the lynching, the play, which someone would later describe to me as inflammatory, attempts to present a thesis on religion while simultaneously offering a critique of Islamic excesses, amongst other topics.

It occurred to me in that hall, as the play gradually climbed to climax, that the tragic incident of Deborah’s lynching had not until then been commemorated in the arts: there were no songs about the incident, no poems, no films—at least none that I had seen. No creative had taken it as an opportunity to address the religious extremism bedevilling the country, and it had, once again, fallen on the shoulders of theatre, the most neglected, taken-for-granted of the art siblings, to start difficult conversations. Oh, woe that the once redoubtable theatre of Nigeria had been reduced to the occasional badly produced ‘inflammatory’ show! The government’s seeming renewed interest in theatre, as demonstrated by the renovation of the National Theatre (now Wole Soyinka Centre for Culture and the Creative Arts) and Lagos State’s partnering with theatre practitioners on the Lagos International Theatre Festival, seems like a step in the right direction, but is it not too little, too late?

This essay features in our print issue, ‘Demas Nwoko’s Natural Synthesis and the Rise of African Architecture’, and is available to read for free. Simply register for a Free Pass to continue reading.

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