\

··.V

-

BOOKS:

FEMI OSOFISAN

(16 June 1946- )

r·'{. . ,_,) -;· •. r .

/'. .· I :-

·, ___ _

1 (" ,. · ~ f=r !:;

Kolera Kolej (Ibadan: New Horn Press, 1975); :· [A..:!v· u-.. , L,..:-cn"",,<f ,/ ' ;;: .:..... , ~ Restless Run of Locusts (Ibadan: Onibonoje/Piess~ 1975); The Chattering and the Song (Ibadan: Ibadan University

Press, 1977) ; ~ .ca r,c

Who's Afraid of Tai Solarin? (Calabar: Scholar1s Press, 1978) ; - -·- ··?J '--' Once Upon Four Robbers (Ibadan: BIO Educational Publis:t;icrs-,-Y-980); Morountodun and Other Plays (Includes Morountodun, No More

the Wasted Breed, and Red Is the Freedom Road), (Lagos : Longman P~r:hers., ... .l.~-A;; f ,· · ~ rqg-z,);,

Farewell to~ Cannibal Rage (Ibaaan: Evans Publishers, 1986); Midnight Hotel (Ibadan: Evans Publishers, 1986); Two One-Act Plays (Includes The Oriki of~ Grasshopper and

,··~- Altine's Wrath), (Ibadan: New Horn Press Limited, 1986); / '.Birthdays Are Not for Dying (Ibadan: New Horn Press Limited,

forthcoming); Esu and the Vagabond Minstrels (Ibadan: New Horn Press, Limited,

forthcoming).

SELECTED PRODUCTIONS:

Oduduwa, Don't Go!, Ibadan, 1967; You Have Lost Your Fine Face, University of I badan, 1969; A Restless Run of Locusts, Akure, 1969; The Chattering and the Song, Unibadan Masques, University of

Ibadan 1976; Who's Afraid of Solarin?, University of Ibadan, 1977; Once Upon Four Robbers, University of Ibadan, 1 978; Farewell to~ Cannibal Rage, University of Ibadan, 1978; revised ,

University of Benin, 19~4; Morountodun, Kakaun Sela Kompany, University of Ibadan, 1979;

revised, 1980; Birthdays Are Not For Dying, University of Ibadan, 1980; The Oriki of~ Grasshopper, University of Ibadan, 1981; revised

University of Benin, 1985; Altine's Wrath, University of Benin, 1984; Esu and the Vagabond Minstrels, University of Benin 1984; revised, University of Ife, 1986.

\ ,...._ ___ _

Femi Osofisan is a man who wears many hats. Playwright, poet, I

theat1:e director, university professor, 1 i terary theorist, and V

newspaper critic, he is part of a generation who have

experienced Nigerian independence as an empty slogan. Thus, he

fashions a committed literature designed to shatter the enduring

shackles of religion, custom, and colonialism and to stimulate a

confident, imaginatively self-critical sensibility capable of

charting a course towards a more humane, egalitarian society.

Writing in English, he targets his dramas at those whose

education enables them to manage the nation's destiny, but his

manipulation of the theat~J(s rich non-verbal resources, coupled

with an exploitation of indigenous, African performance

aesthetics, means that his work has the potential to reach an

even wider audience. Within Nigeria he is often viewed as a

radical intent upon completely destroying the past, but his

radicalism actually builds upon the b est of tradition while

seeking to encourage pervasive change.

Born Babafemi Adeyemi Osof isan in Erunwon, a Yoruba farming

village located in what was then known as the Western Region, CV

the playwright was three~ months old when his father died.

Early experiences of poverty were p-a.•~~~, to Affect him ~u..s r~ 1,;M +o s__"'d +o be.

profoundly, »rz:'1('§t &&11.~r--:•~:S:ha lack a sense of stability, l ·: .9,,

dependent upon a variety of relatives who could house him and

later assist in paying his school As 11.... U>..-t.S ~t \.(:e..,,.«-~ 1

fees at Government College, 1.+-er e).

Ibadan.

position of the educated elite

heAdisavow~. the privi l eged Q,/

•se.t!t!.2ks in favor of an ideological

identification with the impoverished, Nigerian masses.

2

.-.--1 r J_ I? ~ d~

While at Government Coll ege he wrote short stories and poems /\

and edited the school journal. Graduating in 1965, Osofisan won

a scholarship to the University of Ibadan, where he wrote scripts

for various student events and eventually became president of the

Dramatic Society. As part of the requirements for the Bachelor

of Arts in French, he spent 1967-68 at Senega l 's Universit/ de

Dakar, where he trained with the Daniel Serano Theatre Company

while earning a Diplome d'Etudes Superieures. Over t h e next two

years the fledgling playwright gained additional experience in

acting and directing for both theat~~ and television through his

affiliation with the Or i sun Theatre, a professional company

established at the University of Ibadan by drama pioneer Wole

Soyinka and managed by Dapo Adelugba during Soyinka's

incarceration.

~ g~~!l~~s Run of Locusts, one of Osofisan's earliest

published plays, was written in 1969 while he was senior at~

l/ltt.\v€.fS1171 Ibadan . At the time Nigeria was engulfed in a civil war, which

had erupted less than a decade after independence fro m Britain.

Like several other African nations, the country had already

experienced military coups. To young , university men like

Osofisan, it seemed apparent that the generation which had

negotiated freedom was bankrupt, and the stirring rhetoric of the

Negritude movement of the 1930's and '40's had no counte&art in

the socio-political realm. To them, so it seemed, would fall the

task of building a nation and forging an art directly confronting

the crises challenging the African continent. They rejected the

style and vision of the earlier generation of poets and

3

e,j•1 r playwrights ~ Christopher Okigbo, Wole Soyinka, ~ J.P. Clark -

,A.

in favor of an art largely devoid of a metaphysical orientation

and reflective of a contemporary, urban idiom.

Thus, in this early play protest against the devastating

effects of political greed, as evidenced in the Western Region

elections of 1965 and 1966, was strident, and the manipulation of

plot, transparent. Chief Michael Kuti, representative of an old .

guard intent upon consolidating priv~lege inherited from the

British, and Sanda Adeniyi, the young reformer eager to avenge

the political thuggery suffered by his brother, both resort to

campaign violence. Left to mourn their deaths are the women who

recognize their failings, love them nonetheless, but can fashion

no effective action against their husband~esses.

A similarly desolate landscape, in which the oppressed assume

the violent characteristics of their oppressors and leave the

women to mourn their deaths, obtains in Yo~ Ha~.§_ _bos!: Yo~_!: Ki~.§.

Face, originally produced in 1969 at the University of Ibadan and

later rei,titled and published as ged Is the Freedom Road. A

disguised commentary on the regime of Lt. Colonel Yakubu Gowen

who had come to power in 1966, the play is set within the

context of nineteenth century, intra-Yoruba warfare. It traces

the meteoric rise of a warrior who must brutally renounce all

allegiance to his own people as part of a strategy to regain

their freedom. Though Akanji mounts a successful counterattack,

he also unleashes a new round of violence in which the soldiers'

promises of liberation and dignity soon degenerate into looting

and death.

Graduating from the University of Ibadan in 1969, Osofisan

4

initially rejected a scholarship for postgraduate work,

preferring instead to teach in a secondary school and launch a

writing career from there. Within three months he was back on

campus, disillusioned by what he describes as the

teachers'intellectual mediocrity and preoccupation with

superficial values. Graduate work in Drama took him to the

U . . t/ d . niversi e e Paris III, where a quarrel with a faculty

supervisor who refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of African

drama led to his withdrawal in 1973 and return to Ibadan, from

which he obtained the Ph.D. the following year.

While in Paris, however, Osofisan completed his only novel to

date, Kolera Kolej. A surrealistic treatment of current events,

the novel concerns a college granted its independence from the

state after an outbreak of cholera quarantines faculty, students,

and staff. Among its predictably corrupt faculty members and

female students wanders a mysterious poet with his dog; an

equally elusive Muse figure seduces and yet accuses him of being

a "dead conscience," unwilling to translate his beautiful words

into some tangible reality. Inspired by this woman, the poet

attempts to warn his society about the new messiah which it so

eagerly embraces, but he is killed in a coup. At the novel's

conclusion an illusionary hope i s rekindled, and the people can

"begin to die again with renewed fervor."

In 1975, when New Horn Press was about to publish the book,

Osofisan decided to add a postscript, largely in response to

audience reactions to the dramatization of this novel as well as

to productions of Kole Omotoso's !g~ furse, and Dejo Okediji's

5

Rere Run. Because all three plays concluded pessimistically with

the rebel destroyed by reactionary forces, spectators seemed to

interpret these works as demonstrating the futility of struggling

for positive, social change. Thus, Osofisan appended a second

ending in which a scheme to silence all opposition by selling

them off as cheap labor to "the mother country" is defeated, and

the Muse's voice is heard welcoming the imprisoned back to

freedom.

§.Q!l9:, which were first written in the period of 1970-1973, \:)e~s_V'I

Osofisan e.eg-i;as to abandon realism with its tidy categorizations,

wherein minor themes or voices are subordinated to major ones,

conflict is resolved, and given the Nigerian socio-political

reality mirrored in the plays, the

powerlessness is reinforced. In its place

general populace's

he offer~Jwhat may be

described as a contemporary, African total theat~ ~~ /he

traditional, philosophical understanding of experience as a

dynamic interlock of potentially competing energies is preserved

through such devices as the articulation of multiple , conflicting

narratives of equal value; the exploitation of music, dance, and

spectacle to create moments of potentially shared transcendence;

the conflation into one experiential reality of ontological and

cognitive distinctions between human and supernatural, past and

present; and the passage of artistic hegemony from author to

audience through the conscious solicitation of its involvement i n

the production of meaning. What markfthis stylistic approach as k.l~S

contemporary $ Osofisan's sustained interrogation of history:

the connection between received wisdom and the material forces

6

shaping its articulation is insisted upon, and the audience is . () .c. 1 of\ 1

offered both images of and challenges to reformulat~ that I\

tradition in a manner which affirms its empowerment.

Thus, in Farewell to ~ Cannibal Rage Osof isan relie~ heavily

on the structural strategies of storytelling to project a ta l e

about the triumph of young lovef$over social divisions maintained

by their elders. A narrator announces at the outset that he will

tell a story of reconciliation and drafts his fellow actors into

the various roles . Since there are more performers than~

there are character parts, some people must be cajoled into

playing hills, door frames, and other scenic elements. As the

drama progresses, these elements are dismantled and reconstituted

in accordance with the demands of the plot; Yoruba songs, adapted

for the most part from popular rhythms and proverbs, and dance

provide the mechanism by which these changes are accomp lished.

Predictably, some actors tire of playing verandahs or watching

from the sidelines; they seize parts from their colleagues and

replay segments to accustom audiences to the change. Having

stated at the beginning the outcome of the story, the playwright

continually focuses attention on the means by which illusion is

created and thwarts tendencies towards emotional involvement with

the young lovers' dilemma.

Dedicated to r . h the su11vors oft e Biafran war, the play

nonetheless ends on an ambiguous note in which the vision of

unity is affirmed, and the difficulties of burying historic,

ethnic animosities are acknowledged. Interestingly, Osofisan

reports that one of the play's chief stylistic features occurred

7

almost by accident, for in selecting the script as an examination

piece for Ibadan students in the late 70's, he found it necessary

to institute frequent role changes as a means of assessing their

acting skills. This anecdote highlights an i mportant element of

his creative process, for he always directs the first productions

of his plays, scrutinizing closely actor problems and audience

responses, tasks which he regards as a necessary extension of the

act of writing.

The Chattering and the Song, which premiered first in 1976 at

the University of Ibadan, likewise utilizet a traditional

performance mode, that of a riddling competition related to ~

success in love. It also markfe his interest in the Agbekoya

Farmers' Rebellion of 1968-69 as a moment in Nigerian history

when a genuinely populist uprising seemed possible. I n the p l ay a

group of middle-class supporters of the Farmers' Movement gather

to celebrate an impending wedding. They drink, exchange r i ddles ,

and finally enact an historical play as a way of cementing the i r

sometimes tense relationships. But the jubilant atmosphere is

disrupted when a jilted lover reveals his identity as a secre t ~

service agent and arrests the wedding couple for~ p o l i t i ca l

activities; the remaining friends mus t decide how to translate 6 vl"1

their rhetoric o f vague opposition to the government into some I\

concrete plan of action.

A play-within-the-play is an instan ce of Osof i san's

interrogation of history. Whereas the eighteenth century Alafin

Abiodun, whose drama is re-enacted, is usually regar ded as a hero C 0. cJt;-e_

who restored pea ce to his kingdom, the playwright e l). oer~e:s to

depict him as a previously benign ruler who now invokes the

8

sanctions of

exploitation.

custom and religion to perpetuate political ed 05o+is .t.....,

The change allow$~ to question the relationship ... _

between tradition and hierarchy and to dramatize the fact that

individuals can disrupt a pre-established order; by inviting the

audience at the play's end to join the actors in singing the

farmers' anthem, he challenge~ them to decide their position vis­

~-vis the struggle for social justice.

The next year saw the playwright adapt Nicolay Gogol's comedy

The Inspector General. Re-titled Who's Afraid of Tai Solarin?,

the play closely follows the Russian drama of a sacked civil

servant who manages to fleece a group of rural government

officials, fearful of having their corruption uncovered. Its

title refers to Dr. Tai Solarin, a tireless social critic who

served as a public complaints commissioner for several western

states during the Obasanjo military regime of the mid 1970's.

The following year Osofisan turned his attention to yet

another controversial issue confronting the nation. Once QP2~

Four Robbers questions the morality of public executions.

Stylistically inspired by Efua Sutherland's ingenious use of

traditional Ghanaian folklore, the play concerns a band of

thieves given a trick formula by which they can successfully rob,

provided they kill no one, steal from the rich, and commit their

crimes in public places. Each member is given a portion of a

song, unknown to his colleagues; when they work together, their

victims are entranced and leave their property untended.

Bickering among the group enables the soldiers to capture them

and start the public executions , but at the last moment, the o ld

9

man who has narrated the entire drama freezes the action and

demands that spectators decide the fate of these petty criminals.

Stage directions indicate that should the audience choose death,

the executions are to be mimed in such a way that each one

becomes progressively more intolerable to watch; should it choose

freedom, the actors are to proceed to rob the audience. Osofisan

reports that at most performances spectators agree to spare the

criminals' lives. More important, perhaps, than the specific

consensus which they finally reach is the process of debate, for

it approximates a level of responsibility the public must assume

in charting a course of national development.

In 1979 Osofisan returned to the subject of the Agbekoya

Farmer's Movement with his production of Morountodun, mounted

first at the Arts Theatre on the Ibadan campus and then t oured { ....

off campus by his theatre group, the Kakaun Sela 'Kompany. Its ~j

subsequent publication in 1983 garnered for the playwright the

first Association of Nigerian Authors prize for literature .

Produced at a time of transition from military to civi l ian rule,

the drama exploits archives housed overseas in London and local

newspaper accounts concerning the government's use of a f emale

agent to infiltrate the agrarian movement of some ten years

earlier. This historical detail allows Osofisan to draw

parallels with a much earlier history or myth of the Yoruba queen

Moremi who also infiltrated enemy ranks to save her city from

destruction. Whereas the actual Agbekoya operative was

successful in fundamentally compromising the protesters , in

Osofisan's account the agent Titubi e v entua l ly re-examines th e

Moremi model and opts against the status quo and for the farm e r s

10

instead.

But the actors abandon their fict i ve roles before t h e

narrative of the farmers' protest is concluded. The audience must

decide which is more important: the factual detai l of the

farmers' eventual defeat, offhandedly mentioned as a concession

to its desire to know "what happens next," or the im ages it has

witnessed of a people collectively moving to assert their

interests. In making that decision, the audience, of course,

ultimately determines the meaning of the artistic enterprise; it

begins the process of its own empowerment.

Parallels between Beckett's tramps in Waiting for Godot and a

marginalized, Third World intelligentsia led Osofisan to write

The Oriki of~ Grasshopper. Produced first i n 1981 for the annual

African Literature conference sponsored by Ibadan's Engl i sh

Department, the text concerns a radical profe ssor wh o conti nues

to rehearse the Becke tt play while waiting for sec ret service

agents to arrest him for allegedly fomenting campus unrest.

Alienated from the university, busine ss, and working -cl a ss ,vov'j +ov->~r

communities which find his ivericd towered protests agains t

injustice unprofitable and therefore incomprehensible, Im aro

loses even h i s leftist friends when it is revealed that one of ..,.,

his actors, who is also a wealthy business man, has i n tervened I../

with the pol ice on his behalf. Though Imaro argue s for a

principled, ideological flexibility, his chief collaborator s e e s

only duplicity. Neither the Poz zo of the state nor the Godot of

socialism will arrive for Imaro. Like Beckett 's tramps , he is

left alone, psychologically immobilized and chanting "Let freedom

11

come."

The next year Osofisan wrote and directed thirteen episodes

for the television program "The Visitors." A murder mystery

series, the assignment allowed the playwright to combine popular

forms with social commentary. To date, several of those egj.,sodes /4'..1._ry__c~r-... .A-,,.T. :/.

have been transferred to the stag~ and one of ~:&e-~~~~

W:r.a..th--l=tas- bee:& published. During that same year his Kakaun Sela I

Kompany premiered Midnight Hotel which freely acknowledges the

playwright's debt to both Feydeau and Brecht. A hilarious farce

concerning rampant materialism, the play is set in a seedy Lagos

hotel where politicians, businesS:-men and women meet to transact , ./

commerce and sex. Interviews with Osofisan reveal again the

crucial connection for him between writing and rehearsal: a

casual decision to include one song led to the conscious crafting

of several songs designed to contradict the slapstick quality of

the spoken text; time constraints necessitated the creation of a

Brecht-like Songmaster who periodically brings out an overs ized

songbook from which cast members sing lyrics.

Speaking in more serious tones, Osofisan wrote ~Q ~Q~~ th~

Wasted Breed which was filmed for television in 1981-82 with a ----

cast composed of members of the Unibadan Performing Company. A

refutation of Wale Soyinka's ~he Strong Bree~, it renders in

dramatic form Osofisan's long-standing objections, expressed in

various essays like "Ritual and the Revolutionary Theatre,"

"Literacy as Suicide, 11 and "The Al terna ti ve Tradition. 11 In the

play a fisherman, desperate to find a cure for his dying son, is

preparing to renounce his materialist views and honor the gods.

At the same time two gods, disguised as an old couple, arrive

12

onshore to determine whether the inhabitants, who have for a long

time ignored their divinity, should be spared ultimate

destruction. A debate ensues concerning the principles of

d.e

obe l/fnce and self-sacrifice, demanded of the poor by a

priesthood indebted to the rich. Won over by Biokun's arguments,

the old man/god banishes his wife and the religious observance

surrounding her to death. Ushered in is a new age when men will

learn to master their own destinies. Thus, in place of the elder

playwright's allegedly ellipti)style and ahistoricJ metaphysical

vision, Osofisan posits a more pedestrian poetics and a secular

humanism.

In 1982 the playwright took a sabbatical from university

teaching to serve as a founding member of the editorial board of

The Guardian newspaper (Lagos), which had been formed during the

second Shagari presidential election campaign to function as an

independent voice. The position not only afforded him q forum

from which to comment on important issues before a more diverse

audience than might ordinarily view his plays, but it also

provided a mechanism by which to feel the national pulse. The

next year, having helped to establish the paper on a firm

footing, he resumed teaching, this time as chairman of the

Theatre Arts Department at the University of Benin. Through his

moves to Benin, the University of Ife, and back to Ibadan, where

he currently teaches, the peripatetic Osofisan ha-s- maint ai'ne d his

connection to The Guardian, effectively merging the roles of . ·- --

intellectual, artist, and activist.

The most recent play to achieve significant circulation is Esu

13

an_s th.§ Vagabond Minstrels, produced first in 1984 at the

University of Benin. Structurally, it is another example of I . •

contemporary, African total thea~~e. Posing as a priest, the god

Esu promises wealth to a group of starving musicians if they each

bestow a gift upon a truly needy recipient. Predictably, all but

one of the musicians choose those who can clearly reward them

handsomely, while the loner selects a poor, pregnant woman and a

leprous couple from whom he contracts the disease. The priest/god

returns to evaluate the artists' choices, claims an inability to

decide the leprous musician's case, and demands that the audience

make known its opinions. Though some may argue that in a context

of pervasive greed, selfishness is appropriate, spectators can be

expected to vote that the generous musician be restored to

health, and the greedy ones, punished. But the fairy tale ending

in which this man is hailed as "humanity's last remaining hero,"

is punctured by scripted objections from actors sitting incognito

in the auditorium. They question Osof isan's alleged radicalism

and argue that songs and magic have no relevance to the severe

crises plaguing the nation. Again, the audience must voice its

opinion. The play's production history at the University of Ife,

where it had an extensive run in 1986, attests to various

reactions: some religious conservatives objected to the god's

desacralization; some experts in Yoruba culture deplored the

Christianizing influences evident in the portrayal of the god and

chief protagonist; some leftists denounced the piece as a shift

to the very mystification Osofisan found offensive in Soyinka;

and some sympathizers applauded the author's attempts to render

the traditional cosmology applicable to contemporary rea l ities.

14

As the responses to his latest play suggest, Femi 0sofisan is

an artist who generates controve rsy. Thoroughly grounded in a

Nigerian social and cosmological reality, his plays also speak to

those outsiders who cherish the potential of men and women to

both dream and struggle. It is likely that he will continue to

exploit popular forms and mine traditional thought in order to

create a provocative theatre which challenges audiences to re­

think basic values and reclaim the power to alter their worlds.

ti[t~a L. Ri

TELEVISION SCRIPTS: "The Visitors" Series, BCOS TV, Ibadan, 1983

Altine's Wrath A Debt to the Dead ~ Date With Danger Fires Burn But They Die Not The New Cathedral At the Petrol Station Mission Abandoned A Hero Comes Home Operation Rat~p To Kill ~ Dream v-J

u..._J.e, pse ov.~w, o-f-POETRY: (also .Ma Okinba Launko)

"From Upon Ifa ... Prose Poems, 11 0pon Ifa I 1 (March 197 6): l; I 2 (May 1976):35; II 1 (October 1976):1-2; Special Issue II 3 (February 1977); New Edition I 1 (1982): 1-2; New Edition I 2 (Special Issue 1982) 1 "War's Aftermath," 0pon Ifa I 1 (March 1976) :13'.,

11 Two Variations, A Theme, 11 Opon Ifa I 2 (May 1976) :13;

11 1 Remember 0kigbo, 11 0pon Ifa New Edition I 1 (1982) :14-16j

"Like a Dead Clock Now" in Chinua Achebe and Dubem 0kafo, eds., Don't Let Him Diel (Enugu: Fourth Dimension Publishers, 1978): ~-28; __ _ Minted Coins (Ibadan: Heinemann Publishers, 1988).

15

ESSAYS

"The Origins of Drama in West Africa: A Study of the Development of Drama from the Traditional Forms to the Modern Theatre in English and French_,~·~J:~s~ __ t!E~Y..~..£.§i ty of Ibadan

1 197 4j

/Ph!D, ~e,-fd.+, o"' 1 \

"The Quality of Hu.rt, (1): A Survey of Recen~ Nigerian Poetry ," Afriscope Lite:i;sar~~ (Lagos),~~ 7fe_(l97~: 45-48J51-53,j

"The Quality of Hurt, (2): The.New Voices," Afriscope/'~E!.~!.T_Q_ ~~,Y~ 9 f (1974': 46-55 ' passim. e...

' --' I id:- 'J I

"The Environment as Hero : A Note on The Interpreters," l£~da~ Literary Review, ! 1 ~l~ (197~j

"Criticism and the Sixteen Palmnuts: The Role of Critics in an Age of Illiteracy, 11 Chindaba, 3 (October 1977).

"Literacy as Suicide: Artist and Audience in Contemporary " Nigerian Society," Afrisco~

1 ~-.:i±e..];.a,-r.~~ s~~~.......---

~Fe&wl:ia.:t<¥ 1~7''"1. I I ( { ! q7,); 2- I - 2 3;, "Tiger Ogunba Press,

on Stage : Wale Soyinka and the Nigerian Theatre, 11 in o . and A. Irele, eds., Theatre in Africa (Ibadan: University 1978)! !S-1-75)

lt-r: I , 3 "'fhe-S-ag-a -~~ 'the Trail of Ozidi, 11 Positive Review, ~, Nos"'.3 (1979): 36-40;

"Anubis Resurgent: Chaos and Political Vision in Recent Literature," Le Francais au Nigeria, 10_7l2C-@eptember 1975(- 13-23; rpt. in A. Banjo, c. Brann, H. Evans, eds., ~~~1 Afri~~~ Studies in Modern Language Teaching and Research (Lagos: n.p., 1981).' ~185-198.

' <:t'\ "Domestication of an Opiate: Western Paraesthetics and the Growth of the Ekwensi Tradition,11 Positive Review, ~ 4 (1981): 1-/2-_;

"Festac and the Heritage of Ambiguity," in o. Survey of Nigerian Affairs, 1976 ~ 1977 (Ibadan; Publishers, 1981);

Oyediran, ed., London: Longman

"Do the Humanities Humanize?: A Dramatist's Encounter with Anarchy and the Nigerian Intellectual Culture," Faculty of Arts Lecture, University of Ibadan, 9 January 1981; abbreviated r p t. in Politigue Africaine, 13 (Mars 1984): 65-78j

"Enter the Carthaginian Critic?" Okike~ A&ican Journal Of New ~..__ -:--o Wl::.;h,ti~, ~ 21 (July 1982): 38-44j J

"Ritual and the Revolutionary Ethos: the Humanist Dilemma in Contemporary Nigerian Theatre, 11 Okike ~22 (September 1982): 72 -81 J J I)

16

"The Alternative Tradition: A Survey of Nigerian Literature After the war ' II ¥t'..,,b ·• -~-e:;-_p..J:.d , . .,~e-q~i-s-t-o-ry-.::'.'.e-f-, -A~:e-l!--ican':.~L it: er at'tiFes=-· i!! -·- :- ,~-·-··"

.Rt.Hrepean .Languages ·· ('Gen.e,.v.a-:e:-~m-,e-rnationa1 · Comparative~--X---c___..As.&_9.C--iat;);-o.n_, 19 ~~. in A. Gerard, ed., European ~~!!9:~~g§.

/ ~,Eiting: i!! Sub-Saharan Africa £ ... -;.a (Budapest: Akademiai Kiado, 1986): V ti(, 1.: 1 g/ -11(·

I

"Drama and the New Exotic: The Paradox of Form in Contemporary Theatre," African Theatre Review, 1 ~ 1 {April 1983): 76-851 "The Author as Sociologist," ~es!_ :frica ~ (27 August 1 984 ) : 1731-173];

Be~_!'.!g Translation : Tragic Paradigms ang th§. Dramaturgy Qf .Ql~ Rotimi and Wol~ Soyinka. (Ife : Ife Monographs on African Literature, 198 6~'))

' The Orality of Prose: A Comparatist Look at the Works of Rabelais, Joyce and Tutuola. (Ife: Ife Monographs on Literature, 1986j'Jl ::i:"'+-e.:rvlev

REFERENCES

F. Odun Balogun, "Kolera Kolej: A Surrealistic Political Satire," Africana Journal X~ (1981): 323-332j r(t-. ~-S'"~VM. 5,'.f.uciic-.;;. ,·.., A_fr:c~

/.... 'f<>1 . :_,.,;._- I' {·!f[!) t--:2-•.-.. .- . . ) · ·. '· · n-2-7 .

Ossie Enekwe, "Interview with Femi Osofisan," 1'..h§. Q,E§.§..!lf.!.§.lg Review ~)-.,Z/"2(197 9)-:<~ 76 -e-o;

~ --Biodun Jeyifo, "Femi Osofisan as a Literary Critic and Theorist," MatatuJ 2 . €Q~~r (1987) ~ Lf7 -5'1;

Biodun Jeyifo, The Truthful Lie: Essays in~ Sociology of African Drama (London: New Beacon Books, 1985); . ~ 51-54/ 82-87j

Gerald Moore, "Against the Ti tans in Nigerian Literature, 11

Afriscope ~g;_;;;;;:g;;z.;.~ (November 1979): l<=t, 2-/-22-1 -z__.'.:>; / 77~

I • r~ Gerald Moore, "L'image de la ,Revolution dans le ;rheatre Africain," Le Mende Diplomatigue (Paris), 12 Ma y 1982;

Olu Obafemi, "Political Perspectives and Popular Theatre in Nigeria," Theatre Research International ~ 3 ~.uttMll=P (1982): 235-244. ---- I t; 0\ Olu Obafemi, "Revolutionary African Literature Today, 1{

Aesthetics in Nigerian Theatre," ( 19 8 2) : t I f-13 b I

17

Yemi Ogunbiyi, "Nigerian Theatre and Drama: A Critical Profile" in Dra:!!!~ ~nd Theatre i.D. Nigeria: A Critical So~!:_ce Book (Lagos: Nigeria Magazine, 1981): 3 - S-3,

I

Chinyere Okafor, "Creating New Awareness Through Shock Drama," Nigerian Theatre Journa1

1t

11 (1984): 9-15.

Niyi Osundare, "Social Message of a Nigerian Dramatist," West Africa ~ (Qanuarff287 1980) : 147-150. ---

Sandra L. Richards, "Nigerian Independence Onstage: Responses from 'Second Generation' Playwrights," Theatre Journal, 39/ ~ 2

,,,,--4M-e-Y(1987): 215-2271 ~) -

Sandra L. Richards, "Towards a Populist Nigerian Theatre: The Plays of Femi Osofisan," New Theatre Quarterly, 3 EA~t 1987): 280-288, - - / } A Sandra L. _Richarqs, "'Wasn't Brecht an African Writer?': Parall~ls ' B~twe~ri ~r.,.ecl1tian Theory, African_ Performance Patterns, and / 6ntemp'cg_ary Ni'gerv ,' nr'ama," Brecht Yearbook, 14 ( 1988).

18

j')fif' . ,

I h· l: I • I• I J, ,, · th · ; . ~; I

v .. n .t 01·,

!': l (' h 1·d

p : Ii·;, : . ni

I' 1 I 11 1'1 i V . : I ' . 1 t ·y

l I I i n o 1 .,. , ; ( , : • ( , i·: i u ;'l ') 4 ~' · i '.) ! , ::i

Ii T :; ·{

p:.·.:i -:: t1.'/ ·iv -:, p,-, i ·: ,.- ,. :·,h I I:, ,- . ,I•

To d · t. 1 3::' V,:I',. ! •>t t lit , ll V .: n 1 r· . 1i,

:st q.~ .:1nc1 :;uh'.; · .. ··1u,0 n : : -1 ,ur, 1 ·_: 11 ;!.

;-:i . _, •J ..:· ,. I, i 1" 1. , ; n , p -:·1 1 • ,· · ·: 1 , . • : > i , i I I 1 . ·') . I .~ I

I h,·t: u•J nout l'l l fl 1\,•V•· ·, i'1 : ,1 ) : ! '1 I I 11 I . : 1· : I y' •,I I I 1 I.;-. ,j:. r, I

\ .. i),, I t·, •. ( I Jj I · · i, I ; ( j). • ' I ,,,. J>• ·I

111,,:i i 11 i . ' i n··:·u C · )i\ ll ., 1 I i):: .' I i l i,, ' ! ~I,., I '·' ;1) r J ·, '

1. , r, u . · a , · ·:· ·J u : .:1 ; l·,1 1-t. t, orn ;1bc;,:1 i·

, : (: I l; 111 I, ii Ii,,, , ; I ,111d ,,\h l ( ·, i <, I

, .- ; , I'/ 1 i •. :

., ·-) ~ I I I I :''" ' 11 . : I · o ' I 'I I ii ( . I' . It . l1 1) 1'l,.' ,.:.,. k i n !~. .. L , u n 1, o , ,J l •.' I (> 1'1 t

To I d ~'i e: . :, ;·,\ ,:, n y <) r , f ·• : ,n ,,, '.~(;f ' d,:• l i C., I =:Jnd ·~\1b:. · ,:11 r,: 111'-'J ;:,_1 I ,':i flli I II ,::W . j t '.: fi (II• 1 I< l ;

,_1 _;in ·d ,. h at pen n .. m,-.. :-_",,, i•/ h i C h \•/ ,·.:1 :; ,_: • , ' ,; I . ,·I I . I •

po_,-~r··.· pri~ .- in 11;::" . .'.

I ii

t> 1 \lf11n

. it· .. : . ,·; r

·:11 '· I ' r· ; ··I: I::,

I , '- (1 • > I

i •Ji, 1

·d II i l ~: ii • I '.

) ( )\II I I • I

i ; l I\·, I I . . ; ) :·- I 1 '/ \.V i

()i', ()'l f! I

I I ·~ t

I , · I,

) .. 11 ,

. I

/11 l.1 . '

( 1 I , t I I ·

,. I' I ' .•• I I I ~ ' ' I

: '-'111 11: Ii I .. • • f ..

I il I,- I l

\ :1 • . . ,l; i , ,

! ! .. 1 • ,,.-, ., . I j <:

1·1 i 1·, 1 I I :

~ , . r J : ,

~ ., j I ; ·v· ' t I

·t !1 i ., p 1· • · :,:; : j ':1 j , , l.f I ", Ii , I I • ' i V·l' I ~ I l i ! ' l l t . : I I 11 I•·

:,,.ur. .. . ,, .-qu,--nt p1·,·::1.I ,11 .. ,

p : ' '.J ,: i_ I '-. •:; I \'/ h i (; h I I • I ' .

~ r· ·, , , t Ii .: pa ·=1 -=· . ;_·. 1 :·, )' 0 l/ 1'1 ·~! ·~ I' '•,'I' i t .:; )" S • i j·, I

_- \ 1.I

' · J j• I

:, ' I ,

I ,, : ' ~ I • I ' I l : ) >

I, · . .11,,1 r;,,,,. 1•"> 111 ·1·, ,,: ' . . 'l) <)il

I J· cl 1111 })I

'l' , •. , I I ••"ill

.I I . · n I

~-Vl' I •. ! l I i.

• · .• ll 11 ,, 11 · '"

j I

!'I' 1 ,u :' - 'J l 11 .. 1

I' ·.11, J( . I I I ' •. !

tn.' e.,·i ti :h Coun, 1 I J: . I 1 i '.111, I 1·1· I' 1·1 (' '

I it ; . I : I

p 21 '::.i ~~- t h 7 I' t ·-· ·? I l , p, , I , ,., I j 1 I 11

The most 1·-2 ,:: ent p l.·, ' . • 1 II I l ',.1 :1 l I 1 ,, ' l · , ,'11 . I ,,I ,

t L -? Va ·~ ,:,Don d I·: i ll ·· r ' ..

c, k i n b .:.. L a u n k o ~·1 · -.- .3::; L ·ir:,i r .,,.cl,

( . i I ' I I • I ll j • 1 : l i I l _; .:f 1 ·1 ) 1 ,:it' ,·j : J i ,··1 ( l , ! '. ' , ,.; ;

I · ; ·.:; I l I i i : f' -.· ,·j , : '' :·/ ,

_i 1

· •• i __ ,. t h d a y_ :~:_ i\ r· c- ,\J -.:. ·t·

P; ·c-· :3c- L1mi-L,•d, 1•j <.u)

In:=:..•,-. ·c tn,· .:-:.nd : h -.. 1

, .. _,,,

l'c., .

i· ·, 'i I rt· 1 : i

j 11• j 1. J.1

F: :, u c.1nd t h , · \iaJ .. :1l.) ,. ,1.-; r·1 1:1 :-1 ··--- ····-· · . .

E n ·: ·1 i ~_;i, t c, ( .- p p 1 • ,..., • .. 1 n 1 .- ; i · ) "r < ·, 1 : d

I '· •J ';

F 1 I

t, r· c· , h r., , • i:· " t· t· , , _t_J _ II - _ ''.'-' ,__,_, __ - ~ i I I l i ·1 i ' -~ , I <Jl [ [ 1 < j , l I) I

'··' i· h I ' 1:_I ._ :x· : ;~ I . ~t ·._! 1 .i • :, : 1\ ·1 , : r , ·! ~ · • 1_ J . ,

i::,U I ' II l',d I , l -~ ; l <1'(1 ._-, 11 • l i /1

· p _Ii I') ·.;! ·,_, -;. c' ! . ·: , 1 ·J , I I \ , id

I . ) :~ / ;

I'~ j •'!i·, ·j ·:,/. • ,·. hill ii , i.i n j '•/ . I' i "I, 'f c";j i / , ._,cJ ,.t; ) 1 ; , •.,. ;

V _"- EE:. ·:-:0 1-1, · in j\ibo, : f, ·1i ' .. --1 ·, 1 J;;.01..-l. rn, 'i'.):-}:1 , ( . . ;·, 1i·1·--;i. r ,,, 11 "'

\•l ho 1., 1\f1·_, id oT ::. --, 1 ; i;1 :' 1 p (·< , I I i.,0; · ;·1tiol'! · .. : 1 t. 1·1 11,,1. ur, '·' '; •. •I , ·, , .

1.--, ·1 t. L L \fl:::- 1 1.)t · ·-: , I: I,· I . . I

"' 11 . ,) ;

.\Iii I i·. I - ·,.,, , .. th

/\ D · ·. I.> t t o t /'1 ·:: U . ~'.: tD1·!::_e ~iT::.b:--·~; . __ ~j1 ·'. --: , . F i 1 • ~-- -~- b u r· n 1:-·. u t r h · v 1 , 1 . , , , t T h ~---FT'= ,./ ' :1 t h .,/3 t" _. ·1 ..

b t .... .. ti'le· P -.. t1·01 ··.:r r· ' ' ;~,p i:-~,T; ·a-n··-~_6.3·11(i,J1 ),::,,

. 1+.: 1 · o C 0111,,; s ,·I nL, ,:··

i.Jp,=._r·ati_ on k,~!__! _~T_1· .:1f) T o :< i I I 2 1 .J r· =- a m A ::: ll C C e :5 S ~; t O r· \/

.,

T. j-1 ,_- AU d i •,:, Ii C - /\ I "' '.) 1 ·1 ,

:- ,-,(.; F~~:ii:- ·-,:orri.::: :-: '·· .1 i i n ··

M ll 'y'iW,:, A\•lodi·,'-) 1 1

• i11.

; t I I ' '

' 1 :·, • • I l _; ' I) '

,I

N i ·3 0 I ' _i an l:'.i.:: .. '.:. ;:~:~ .. ~ -·~ ! : 7 1.) U I ,_, I h _ ( L a g o .:: : G u a r· d i .: , n , .. c· .!'. , ~. 'i

" ~·-

,\ d ·'::: r· .,_. m i •::. ,:j m i k u ; 1 I ·: .

I 1 -·; )

i° \-; · ,·1 I I ' .' , II

.-. . ,\ / ;

l 1·

I ·, ;

,, r·

I I, .. Cj. i 1 ·, , J :_; .' '

·. 1 i 1 ll i ,J-J II l'l.1 ) i y 1

i-1.

L O O k a t s O y ; n k a ' ,J :-:; 0 f I :3 ,J n l ,J n cl ::: () ,,1 a n cl e I s r:. l c'i y s ii i n 1 .• : I • i t ·j C ,J 7 Theo r' y an cl A f ,~ i ca n L i t -. .- r· ,1 -r u r· •: : ,·:: a i '1 b ,:1 r· ::::: t 1.1 d ·i -· :; i n /~-; r· i c : .. i n 1 .. i tr: t • .:::1 -

t LI r· e : 3 I e cl s . I~ • . Van ,:I ma l i I E . c5k~;·;- """/;~-- ·:(r,:;_--f,: · ( I b a~T.~1n ·:· H :- i I)•:: man n

E cl u c .=-, t i o fD l 8 o o k s ~n ·:' .::· r· i ·J L i rn i t •.c' d 1 1 '..3 B 7 ) : 1 2 1 -- 'j 3 •j •

A-0:et=ern i Ba mi k u n I ~ 1 11 N i •J : r· i ,., n

Minte d Coin s 1 11 Comrnonmw • .::1 ·1th (_19 e 9 ): 1 o s - 1 1 6 i ·-·- ·- .......... _____ __ _ · -- ·--

P0litic._ l E ... , S.Jy:3 ··nd ····------··-···-- ...

C: hr· i s E g ha r' e vb a 1 11 Th :: C ..1 r r· i ·. 1· :· i tu~ 1 as :-1--:: d i um of

N i ·Jer· ian Df"E1ma: Th,: 1:--arriri ·1 .~ ~~ o,: f:o vird:.:-i ,nd O.;o f i s .1 n, 11

cal Theory ,,i n d /,fr·\'c an 1..,;;_,::,r· 1tu1 · --:, : r: a1 .. . ba, · 3tudi,:=::3 Lite I ' a t LI r· e : ] .. ; .... 2 5. ::-~.--6 > .... - ... ··- .......... .. ..... ---·· ----- ... . ... .. ................ ..

Vi .~ion in in C:r·i ti­

in /\ fr·ic .:in

Ed de Ij i , 11 The: Mythic Im,_;Jinut ·ion ,~111d H-:-r-oic A.r·ch-2t:yp -?. .. ,: Fr· om Mo ,·e mi Myth to CL, of i ~-.tn 1 :: Mo,·ountudUll. I I _ i '.' i::=.c:.i .. ~ .. 5-~:'.:~_l_ Ofl_~·:: \?l'Y ... :,nd A f ,. i c c.1 n L. i t e r· ,:..1 t u , .. c: : ,_:: :.1 ·1 <'.1 b a , · :3 t u d i :: ... ·i n A. ;· r· 1 c: a n L 1 t ' r· , .. 1 t 1. • i-- • : 3 : 8 1 ------·---- • -·-----···- ~ ·-·---··-,,,.·~·--- -, . . ..... _. _____ -·4 ···-·-·-··-- ··-·----,--.. .......... -~-·.

98i

E:1 i od u n .J e y i f o , 11 Th, .. . _, tr· ; ca 7 Osofisa n 1 s Mi d n·i,;:iht Hot;-1 ;"

, •. n ,3 1 o ·~' u ·. ~; o t' t I, .: S . conJ R~public:

. ·--·------- . .. 2L~06- 2410.

,/ 0 :~ I:: :'' f r· i c ,] ~ 3 .'J 0 -ef. 2 (J S-.pt2n1b ,::. 1· l:J8 2l:

'·-z ----..... ~ I,::. • t" I I r: - · . n ·t' . · , - ,.. L .• t , - .. · " ,.- " . i" - (' · -1 TI ·, - · • "' t 11 r (J '." .. ~ . .. :. .. ·- _- y: 0 1 • _ . Iii 1 . . ..... • 0 1 --·:-- n , .1_ .... • 1 .•. I d I y ~ I 1 .. 1 ~- ,j n C , Q ,_ 1 .:, • ,

M a_!~!._1:!_j. Z e, t ·,; c b r: ~:~:'l'---y~1::-~---~t-_r._1_!::·:: !2.; .. ?_c_M, ~- l<,_H_l_:t:·.Ll_r>-- \!.'~-d (:i_~-:~~~-±~~l':1_~t. 1 I' ? ( 1 9 8 7 ) : 4 7 - 5 1 ; r· p I: . -, n fJ ·~ , • ::; p ,:: c t 1 ·,1 e 3 o n r~ 1 J c- r· 1 .-, n L 1 t 1:> r· .::i t u r· e , ·1 7 O 0 1- t I , , r:. • ,.,, - ;:, t .... ··l Y ·. , ... --.. ~·::; ... .... t --:--·s ·-.-- -:.. .., i;·· · ') .. 3--:2- - -· .. . ...... - ............. _ .... ... . ----- -- --..:.<:?. .. :.2::. r· r .. ::. _ 12_, ·. <. • · .. rn 1 L .! u n > 1 y 1 • '/. ... ) ~ .•

Odia Ofe·i mun, 11 c,·itici::;n1 1Liter.:3cy as Suicid ·_, 1 :1

O.::;otisan, 11 Cr·itici:-; n, _,_. V i i i ( 1 9 7 7 ) : 3 6 - 3 8 , ] ·.

.,;::: Homicic; '.": A R::p1y tu ;: ,:mi Osot·i::..:rn 1 :c, \Tr'i .. ,;C\)fl ' 7 1 b\A4 ( 1877); 31··3?. p~ot ,2:

1-fc~iii i'c 1 d ;-:· .L\ 6 r· i..:: t F! -. p 7 y l I I !.."- f r· i :3 Cop 2 7 '

Modup e o. Olaogun 1 '1 f·.ir·.:ibl;;::0; in th>;; T he .. ,tr· .- : A s,·· i-=f Study 0 ·1·

F ;~ rn i o so f i s ..:1 n 1 :s P l .::i v :::; , 11 q ~LI~ .. ::,:. , '.2 7 f ·, 8 ~ h ( 1 9 3 8 ) : ,~ ~ --- 5 5 / • '(';t· '\

Te s s Aka u l: e Onw u ·: m - , 11 C1~,'.Jf i'::;~,n 1 • Ne \'/ H .. ; ro: 1,1om ~-n . , :_. Jv~v n ts of

u n fl'lac k 'it-lom: n ~) oc i .~, 1 R 0 Co n ::; t r'l! Ct i On 1 1 ::~~!.~: ~~--;- /.\ '.3_c h O i_. .. , I '_l .Y, ) '? .. ~.'L!~l-~ · L

5/ 1 (1 98 8): 25-2~

~~an cl r· a L . R i c h .:ir· cl s , 11 \•/ .:i :.: n 1

,.

w i t h C o n t :: rn po r- a r· y I! 1 ·.1-:: , . i a n

1(53 -- 183 •

f·.r· ·:c l,t .::i n Atr·ica1·1 lt-/r·;!>?i ·? : P . . r· :J1·1e ·1s

c,,·.-.--,:n._i, 11 Th::· ?.r· ,:~ c ht V-.:a1·l)ook ·in tl9:

----

REVISION , REFERENCE S:

F • O cl LI n B a l o g u n 1 11 K o l e r .::i I( o I ,;; j : /, S u , · r· .-. .:, l i :: t i c

.A.fr· i can a . .Journal Ji~- 4 ( 1 J 8 1 ) : 3 2 3 - 3 3 2 ; r· pt. African Literatu( ~ 4 (1986): 17-2 7.

-/

/es

L; b r& ~ v·/e _____ ;

4

Po ·l ·i t ical S :: ti 1· -9, 11

I'! s u k le .. : :3 t ud i ,_; s i n ,. ___ ,.,._ ,.. ....... ···-'"·-·~----- . ··---- ··----

I . oa_,,. r I e ,es

------.,.

BOOKS:

FEMI OSOFISAN

(16 June 1946-

Kolera Kolej (Ibadap: New Horn Press, 1975); A Restless Run of Locusts (Ibadan: Onibonoje Press, 1975); The Chattering and the Song (Ibadan: Ibadan University

Press,1977) ; Who's Afraid of Tai Solarin? (Calabar: Scholar's Press, 1978) ; Once Upon Four Robbers (Ibadan: BIO Educational Publishers,1980); Morountodun and Other Plays (Includes Morountodun , No More

the Wasted Breed, and Red Is the Freedom Road), (Lagos: Longman Publishers, 1983);

Farewell to~ Cannibal Rage (Ibadan: Evans Publishers, 1986); Midnight Hotel (Ibadan : Evans Publishers, 1986); Two One-Act Plays (Includes The Oriki of£ Grasshopper and

Altine's Wrath), (Ibadan: New Horn Press Limited, 1986); ·7y-e. ·u \-Birthd£.Y§. _Ar~ No! fo_!: Qying (Ibadan:· New Horn Press Limited,_) 0

_,."{.

--~rthcom1ng); ~ ~'.A... ' and t~e Vagabond_ Mins tr~ls ( Iba_dan: New __ H?_rn Press, _ _!,imi ted ,

forthcoming). >1->:U1 rs :..,kt,vl..1 /__,<!, ,·t-~ ,, (c~ __ .,( 1 ~ , ,, L·Ji--.-t- ......... l

SELECTED PRODUCTIONS:

Oduduwa, Don't Go!, Ibadan, 1967; You Have Lost Your Fine Face , University of I badan, 1969; A Restless Run of Locusts , Akure, 1969 ; The Chatterrri'g and the Song, Unibadan Masques, University o f

Ibadan 1976; Who's Afraid of Solarin?, University o f Ibadan, 1977; Once Upon Four Robbers, Unive rsity of Ibadan, 1978 ; Farewell to~ Cannibal Rage, University of Ibadan, 1978; revised ,

University of Benin, 1984; Morountodun, Univer sity of Ibadan, 1979; revised, Kakaun Sela

Kompany, 1980; Birthdays Are Not For Dving, University of Ibadan, 1980; The Oriki of a Grasshopper, University of Ibadan, 1981; revised --Univers i ty-of Be nin, 1985; Altine's Wrath, University of Benin, 1984 ; Esu and the Vagabond Minstrels, University of Benin 1984; revised, University of Ife, 1986.

1

The next year Osofisan wrote and directed thirteen episodes

for the television program "The Visitors." A murder mystery

series, the assignment allowed the playwright to combine popular

forms with social commentary. To date, several of those episodes c~n d. Si..L~~~~-~/

have been transferred to the stage,---a-Rd- tme or-~he1n-, kl-tin-e!..s C.::__

~-pub 1 i shed. ____ , During that same year his Kakaun Sela

Kompany premiered Midnight Hotel which freely acknowledges the

playwright's debt to both Feydeau and Brecht. A hilarious farce

concerning rampant materialism, the play is set in a seedy Lagos

hotel where politicians, business men and women meet to transact

commerce and sex. Interviews with Osofisan reveal again the

crucial connection for h i m between writing and rehearsal : a

casual decision to include one song led to the conscious crafting

of several songs designed to contradict the slapstick quality of

the spoken text; time constraints necessitated the creation of a

Brecht-like Songmaster who per iodically brings out an oversized

songbook from which cast members sing lyrics.

Speaking in more serious t one s, Osofisan wrote No ~or~ th~

Wast ed Breed in 1982. A refutation of Wole Soyinka's The Strong

Bre es, it renders in dramatic form Osofisan's long-standing

objections, expressed in various essays 1 ike "Ritual and the

Revolutionary Th ea tre," "Literacy as Suicide," and "The

Alternative Tradition." In the play a fisherman, desperate to

find a cure for his dying son, is preparing to renounce his

materialist views and honor the gods. At the same t ime two gods,

disguised a s an old couple, arrive onshore to determine whether

the inhabitants, who have for a long time ignored their divinity,

12

should be spared ultimate destruction. A debate ensues concerning

the principles of obediance and self-sacrifice, demanded of the

poor by a priesthood indebted to the rich. Won over by Biokun's

arguments, the old man/god banishes his wife and the religious

observance surrounding her to death . Ushered in is a new age

when men will learn to master their own destinies. Thus, in

place of the elder playwright ' s allegedly elliptic sty l e and

ahistoric, metaphysical vision, Osofisan posits a more pedestrian

poetics and a secular humanism.

In 1983 the playwright took a sabbatical from university

teaching to serve as a founding member of the editorial board of

The Guardian newspaper (Lagos), which had been formed during the

second Shagari presidential election campaign to function as an

independent voice. The position not only afforded him a forum

from which to comment on important issues before a more diverse

audience than might ordinarily view his plays, but it also

provided a mechanism by which to feel the national pulse. The

next year, having helped to establish the paper on a firm

footing, he resumed teaching, this time as chairman of the

Theatre Arts Department at the University of Benin. Through his

moves to Benin; the University of Ife, and back to Ibadan, where

he currently teaches, the peripatetic Osofisan ha-s-m-a-intained hi--s---€

wt e 11 ect ua 1, ax t i-st,-and--aet.-ivrs~

The most recent play to achieve significant efi~m~ is

~ and the V~abond ~instrels, produced first in 1984 at the

University of Benin. Structurally, it is another example of

13

Nigerian social and cosmological reality, his plays also speak to

those outsiders who cherish the potential of men and women to

both dream and struggle. It is likely that he will continue to

exploit popular forms and mine traditional thought in order to

create a provocative theatre which challenges audiences to re­

think basic values and reclaim the power to alter their worlds.

----Sandra L. Richards

p.,

TELEVISION SCRIPTS: "The Visitors" Series, BCOS TV, Ibadan, 198;/

Altine's Wrath A Debt to the Dead ~ Date With Danger Fires Burn But They Die Not The New Cathedral At the Petrol Station Misslon Abandoned A Hero Comes Home Operation Rat='rrap To Kill a Dream ,· r. · - -- --_::-_·=::> (7 cT-e- e,. cl tl... L~'"Ll'Y\./)

POETRY: (also aka Okinba Launko)

"From Upon Ifa ... Prose Poems," 0pon Ifa I 1 (March 1976):1; I 2 (May 1976):35; II 1 (October 1976):1-2 ; Special Issue II 3 (February 1977); New Edition I 1 (1982): 1-2; New Edition I 2 (Special Issue 1982} .

"War's Aftermath," 0pon Ifa I 1 (March 1976) :13.

"Two Variations, A Theme," 0pon Ifa I 2 (May 1976) :13

"I Remember 0kigbo, 11 Open Ifa New Edition I 1 (1982) :14-16.

"Like a Dead Clock Now" in Chinua Achebe and Dubem Okafor, eds., Don't Let Him Die! (Enugu: Fourth Dimension Publishers, 1978), p.28.

Minted Coins (Ibadan : Heinemann Publisbers, 1988).

-- - · ----------------------

Femi Osofisan (16 Jurie 1946 - )

Sandra L. Richards -Str,wJa,:d University

'Sl-ct,'h /..-dt &_

BOOKS: Kotera Kole} (Ibadan: New Horn, 1975); A Restless Run qf Locusts {Ibadan: Onibonoje, 1975); The Chattering and the Song (Ibadan: Ibadan Univer-

sity Press, 1977); Who's Afraid qf Solarin? (Ibadan: Scholars, 1978); Once )!Pon Four Robbers (Ibadan: BIO Educational

· Services, 1980); Morountodun and Other Plays (Ikeja: Longman Nige­

ria, 1982)'f-=tcomprises Morountodun, No More the Wasted"Weed, and Red Is the Freedom Road;

Litterature et societe (Paris: Karthala, 1984); Farewell to a Cannibal Rage (Ibadan: Evans, 1986); Midnight Hotel (Ibadan: Evans, 1986); D Two One-Act Plays (Ibadan: New Horn, 1986Al:.,lS!om-

prises The Oriki qf a Grasshopper and JJ.ltine's Wrath;

Minted Coins, as Okinba Launko (Ibadan: Heinemann, 1987);

Beyond Translation: Tragic Paradigms and the Drama­turgy qf Ola Rotimi and Wole Soyinka (If e, Nige­ria: University of Ife, 1986);

Wonderland and Orality qf Prose: A Comparatist Look at the Works qf Rabelais, Joyce and Tutuola (Ife, Nigeria: University of Ife, 1986);

Another Raft (Lagos: Malthouse, 1988); Cordelia, as Launko (Lagos: Malthouse, 1989); "Birthdays Are Not.for Dy~·n "and Other Plays (Lagos:

Malthouse, 1990 - I mprises Birthdays Are Not.for Dying, Fires urn and Die Hard, and The Inspector and the Hero;

Esu and the Vagabond Minstrels (Ibadan: New Horn, 1992).

PLAY PRODUCTIONS: Oduduwa, Don't Go!, Ibadan, 1967;

You Have Lost Your Fine Face, Ibadan, University of Ibadan Theatre, 1969;

A Restless Run qf Locusts, Akure, Nigeria, 1969; The Chattering and the Song, Ibadan, University of

Ibadan Theatre, 1976; Who's Afraid qf Solarin?, Ibadan, University of

Ibadan Theatre, 19 77; translated (into

.-

--\

\

o so~'sa-1 ~"--..,

Ma_.s*1-I0~:29

Femi Osofisan

Yoruba) as Yeepa Solarin Nbo, Ibadan, Univer­sity oflbadan Theatre, 1988;

OnceJ!jon Four Robbers, Ibadan, University oflbadan Theatre, 1978;

Farewell to a Cannibal Rage, Ibadan, University of Ibadan Theatre, 1978; revised version, Benin City, Nigeria, University of Benin Theatre, 1984;

Morountodun, Ibadan, University of Ibadan Theatre, 1979; revised version, Ibadan, Kakaun Sela Kompany [sic], 1980;

Birthdays Are Not far Dying, Ibadan, University of Ibadan Theatre, 1980;

The Oriki of a Grasshopper, Ibadan,· U niversity of Ibadan Theatre, 1981; revised version, Benin City, Nigeria, University of Benin Theatre, 1985;

Midnight Hotel, Ibadan, Kakaun Sela Kompany, 1982;

Altme's Wrath, Benin City, Nigeria, University of Benin Theatre, 1984;

Esu and the Vagabond Minstrels, Benin City, Nigeria, University of Benin Theatre, 1984; revised version, Ife, Nigeria, University of Ife Thea­tre, 1986;

Another Rafi, Ibadan, University of Ibadan Theatre, 1987;

Aringi,ndin and the Nightwatchmen, Ibadan, University of Ibadan Theatre, 1988.

TELEVISION: The Visitors [series], BCOS-TV, Ibadan, 1982 o More the Wasted Breed, BCOS-

1 Ibadan, 82.

OTHER: "The Origins of Drama in West Africa," Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Ibadan, 1974; .

"Like a Dead Clock Now" [poem~in Don't Let Him Du, edited by Chinua Adiebe and Dubem Okaf1 (Enugu: Fourth Dimension, 1978), p. 28;

"Tiger on Stage: Wole Soyinka and the Nigerian Theatre," in Theatre m Africa, edited by O. Ogunba 9-6 A. Irele (Ibadan: University Press, 1978), pp. 151-175;

"Anubis Resurgent: Chaos and Political Vision in Recent Literature," in West Aftican Studi.es in Modem Language Teaching and Research, edited by A. Banjo, C. Brann, and H. Evans (Lagos, 1981), pp. 185-198;

"Festac and the Heritage of Ambiguity," in Survey of Nigerian Affairs, 1976 & 1977, edited by 0. Oyediran (Ibadan & London: Longman, 1981);

'•· ,,

DLB125

2

DLB125

"The Alternative Tradition: A Survey of Nigerian Literature After the War," in European Lan­guage Writing in Sub-Saharan Africa, edited by A. Gepard (Budapest: Akademiai Kiado, 1986), ~ II: 781-798.

SELECTED PERIODICAL PUBLICATIONe - ( UNCOLLECTED: "The Quality of Hurt, (1): A

Survey of Recent Nigerian Poetry," Aftiscope, 4, no. 7 (1974): 45-48, 51-53;

"The Qyality of Hurt, (2): The New Voices," A.friscope, 4, no. 9 (1974) : 46-55;

"The Environment as Hero: A Note on The Interpret­ers," Ibadan Literary Rev-iew, 1, no. 1 (1975);

"From )1pon Ifa ... Prose Poems," Opon !fa, 1 (March I.)..\ 1976) : 1; (May 1976): 35; 2 (October 1976): 1-2; special issue (February 1977); new series, 1, no. 1 (1982): 1-2; special issue, no. 2 (1982);

"War's Aftermath" [poem], Opon !fa, 1 (March 1976): 13; .

"Two Variations, a Theme" [poem], Opon !fa, 1 (May 1976): 13;

"Criticism and the Sixteen Palmnuts: The Role of Critics in an Age of Illiteracy," Chindaba, 3 (October 1977);

"Literacy as Suicide: Artist and Audience in Con­temporary Nigerian Society," Afriscope, 7 (Feb­ruary 1977): 21-23;

"Domestication of an Opiate: Western Paraesthetics and the Growth of the Ekwensi Tradition," Positive Review, 4 (1982): 1-12;

"I Rem.ember Okigbo" [poem], Opon !fa, new series, 1, no. 1 (1982) : 14-16;

"Enter the Carthaginian Critic?," Okike, 21 (/July 1982): 38-44;

"Ritual and the Revolutionary Ethos: The Human­ist Dilemma in Contemporary Nigerian Thea­tre," Okike, 22 (September 1982): 72-81;

"Dram.a and the New Exotic: The Paradox of Form in Contemporary Theatre," African Theatre Re­v-iew, l (April 1983): 76-85;

"Do the Humanities Humanize? A Dramatist's En­counter with Anarchy and the Nigerian Intel­lectual Culture," Politique Africaine, 13 (March 1984) : 65-78 ;

"The Author as Sociologist," West Africa (27 August 1984): 1731-1732.

Femi Osofisan is a playwright, poet, theater director, university professor, literary theorist, and newspaper critic, and he is part of a generation who feel they have experienced Nigerian independence as an empty slogan. Thus he fashions a committed literature designed to shatter the enduring shackles

3

Femi Osofisan

Femi Osofisan

of religion, custom, and colonialism and to stimu­late a confident, imaginatively self-critical sensibility capable of charting a course toward a more hu­mane, egalitarian society. Writing in English, he aims his dramas at those whose education enables them to manage the nation's destiny, but his manip­ulation of the theater's rich nonverbal resources, coupled with an exploitation of indigenous, African performance aesthetics, means that his work has the potential to reach a wider audience. Within Nigeria he is often viewed as a radical intent upon com­pletely destroying the past, but his radicalism actu­ally builds on the best of tradition while seeking to encourage pervasive change.

Born Babafemi Adeyemi Osofisan in Erunwon, a Yoruba farming village located in what was then known as the Western Region, the play­wright was three months old when his father died. Early experiences of poverty affected him pro­foundly, causing him to lack a sense of stability and to be dependent on a variety of relatives who could house him and later assist in paying his school fees at Government College, Ibadan. As a consequence, he later disavowed the privileged position of the educated elite in favor of an ideological identifica­tion with the impoverished, Nigerian masses.

While at Government College he wrote short stories and poems and edited the school journal. Graduating in 1965, Osofisan won a scholarship to the University oflbadan, where he wrote scripts for various students events and eventually became pres­ident of the Dramatic Society. As part of the re­quirements for the Bachelor of Arts in French, he spent 1967 and 1968 at the Universite de Dakar in Senegal, where he trained with the Daniel Sorano Theatre Company while earning a Diplf me d'Etudes Sup/rieures. Over the next two years the fledgling playwright gained additional experience in acting and directing for both theater and television through his affiliation with the Orisun Theatre, a professional company established at the University of Ibadan by drama pioneer Wole Soyinka and managed by Dapo Adelugba during Soyinka's incar­ceration.

A Restless Run if Locusts (performed, 1969; pub­lished, 1975), Osofisan's earliest published play, was written in 1969 while he was a senior at the University oflbadan. Nigeria was engulfed in a civil war, which had erupted less than a decade after independence from Britain. Like several other Afri­can nations, the country had already experienced military coups. To young university men such as Osofisan, it seemed apparent that the generation who had negotiated freedom was bankrupt, and the

DLB125

4

DLB125

stirring rhetoric of the negritude movement of the 1930s and 1940s had no counterpart in the sociopo­litical realm. To the youths, so it seemed, would fall the task of building a nation and forging an art directly confronting the crises challenging the Afri­can continent. They rejected the style and vision of the earlier generation of poets and playwrighttln­cluding Christopher Okigbo, Wole Soyinka, anaj. P. Clari{3)n favor of an art largely devoid of a metaphysical orientation and reflective of a contem­porary, urban idiom.

Thus in A Restless Run the protest against the devastating effects of 1965 and 1961/was strident, and the manipulation of plot was transparent. In the play Chief Michael Kuti, a representative of an old guard intent on consolidating privilege inherited from the British, and Sanda Adeniyi, the young reformer eager to avenge the political thuggery suf­fered by his brother, both resort to campaign vio­lence. Left to mourn their deaths are their wives, who recognize their failings, love them nonetheless, but can fashion no effective action against their husbands' excesses.

A similarly desolate situation, in which the oppressed assume the violent characteristics of their oppressors and leave the women to mourn their deaths, is found in Osofisan's You Have Lost Your Fine Face, originally produced in 1969 at the Univer­sity of Ibadan and later retitled and published as Red Is the Freedom Road in Morountodun and Other Plays1 1982). A disguised commentary on the regime of Lt. Col. Yakubu Gowan, who had come to power in Nigeriayin 1966, the play is set within the con­text of nineteenth-century, intra-Yoruba warfare. It traces the meteoric rise of a warrior, Akanji, who must brutally renounce all allegiance to his own people as part of a strategy to regain their freedom. Though he mounts a successful counterattack, he also unleashes a new round of violence in which promises of liberation and dignity soon degenerate into looting and death.

Graduating from the University of Ibadan in 1969, Osofisan initially rejected a scholarship for postgraduate work, preferring instead to teach in a secondary school and launch a writing career from there. Within three months he was back on a col­lege campus, after being disillusioned by what he describes as the other teachers' intellectual medioc­rity and preoccupation with superficial values. Graduate work in drama took him to the Universite de Paris III, where a quarrel with a faculty supervi­sor who refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of African drama led to Osofisan's withdrawal in 1973

5

Femi Osofisan

-1 -\

(_ I ,J\

Femi Osofisan

and his return to the University of Ibadan, from which he obtained his Ph.D. the following year.

While in Paris, however, Osofisan completed his only novel to date, Kotera Kole} (1975). A sur­realistic treatment of current events, the novel con­cerns a college granted its independence from the state after an outbreak of cholera quarantines fac­ulty, students, and staff. Among predictably corrupt faculty members and female students wanders a mysterious poet with his dog; an equally elusive Muse figure seduces and yet accuses him of being a "dead conscience," unwilling to translate his beauti­ful words into some tangible reality. Inspired by this woman, the poet attempts to warn his society about the new messiah, whom it so eagerly embraces, but the poet is killed in a coup. At the conclusion an illusionary hope is rekindled, and the people can "begin to die again with renewed fervor."

In 1975, when New Horn Press was about to publish the book, Osofisan decided to add a post­script, largely in response to audience reactions to the dramatization of this novel as well as to produc­tions of Kole Omotoso's The Curse (published in 1976), and Dejo Okediji's Rere Run. Because all three works concluded pessimistically with the rebel destroyed by reactionary forces, spectators seemed to interpret these plots as demonstrating the futility of struggling for positive, social change. Thus Os­ofisan appended a second ending, in which a scheme to silence all opposition by selling them off as cheap labor to "the mother country" is defeated, and the Muse's voice is heard welcoming the im­prisoned back to freedom.

With Farewell to a Cannibal Rage (performed, 1978; published, 1986) and The Chattering and the Song (performed, 1976; published, 1977), both writ­ten between 1970 and 1973, Osofisan began to abandon realism with its tidy categorizations, wherein minor themes or voices are subordinated to major ones, conflict is resolved, and EJ%iven the Nigerian sociopolitical reality mirrored in the playi!-1\he general populace's powerlessness is rein­forceP.In its place he offered what may be de­scribed as a contemporary, African total theater: the traditional, philosophical understanding of experi­ence as a dynamic interlock of potentially compet­ing energies is preserved through such devices as the articulation of multiple, conflicting narratives of equal value; the exploitation of music, dance, and spectacle to create moments of potentially shared transcendence; the conflation into one experiential reality of ontological and cognitive distinctions be· tween human, supernatural, past, and present; and the passage of artistic hegemony from author to

6

DLB125

-I -\

DLB125

audience through the conscious solicitation of in­volvement in the production of meaning. What marked this stylistic approach as contemporary was Osofisan's sustained interrogation of histor~e connection between received wisdom and the mate­rial forces shaping its articulation is insisted on, and the audience is offered images of and challenges to reformulation of that tradition in a manner that affirms its power.

Thus in Farewell to a Cannibal Rage Osofisan relies heavily on the structural strategies of story­telling to project a tale about the triumph of young lovers over social divisions maintained by their el­ders. A narrator announces at the outset that he will tell a story of reconciliation, and he drafts his fellow actors into various roles. Since there are more per­formers than there are character parts, some people must be cajoled into playing hills, door frames, and other scenic elements. As the drama progresses, these elements are dismantled and reconstituted in accordance with the demands of the plot; Yoruba songs(}dapted for the most part from popular rhythms and proverbAnd dance provide the mechanisms by which these changes are accom­plished. Predictably some actors tire of playing ve­randas or watching from the sidelines; they seize parts from their colleagues and replay segments to accustom the audience to changes. Having stated at the beginning the outcome of the story, Osofisan continually focuses attention on the means by which illusion is created, and he thwarts tendencies toward emotional involvement with the young lovers' dilemma.

Dedicated to the survivors of the Biafran war, the play nonetheless ends on an ambiguous note, in which a vision of unity is affirmed while the difficul­ties of burying historic, ethnic animosities are ac­knowledged. Interestingly Osofisan reports that one of the play's chief stylistic features occurred almost by accident, for in selecting the script as an acting­examination piece for Ibadan students, he found it necessary to institute frequent role changes as a means of assessing their acting skills. This anecdote highlights an important element of his creative pro­cess, for he always directs the first productions of his plays, closely scrutinizing acting problems and audience responses, a task he regards as a necessary extension of the act of writing.

1he Chattering and the Song likewise utilizes a traditional performance mode, that of a riddling competition related to success in love. It also marks his interest in the Agbekoya Farmers' Rebellion of 1968-1969 as a moment in Nigerian history when a genuinely populist uprising seemed possible. In the

7

Femi Osofisan

-\ --\

Femi Osofisan DLB125

play a group of middle-class supporters of the Farmers' Movement gather to celebrate an impend­ing wedding. They drink, exchange riddles, and finally enact a historical play as a way of cementing their sometimes/tense relationships. But the jubilant ~ atmosphere is disrupted when a jilted lover reveals his identity as a secret-service agent and arrests the wedding couple for their political activities; the re-maining friends must decide how to translate their own rhetoric of vague opposition to the government into some concrete plan of action.

The play-within-the-play is an example of Osofisan's interrogation of history. Whereas the eighteenth-century Nigerian leader Alafin Abiodun, whose story is reenacted in Osofisan's play is usu­ally regarded as a hero who restored peace to his kingdom, Osofisan chose to depict him as a pre­viously benign ruler who invokes the sanctions of custom and religion to perpetuate political exploita­tion. The change allowed Osofisan to question the relationship between tradition and hierarchy and to dramatize the fact that individuals can disrupt a preestablished order; by inviting the audience, at the play's end, to join the actors in singing _p -~ \ farmers' anthem, he challenged them to decide their position vis-a-vis the struggle for social justice.

In 1977 Osofisan used the Russian Nicolay Gogol's 1836 comedy The Inspector General as the basis for Who's Aftaid of Solarin? (performed, 1977; published, 1978). It closely follows the Russian drama of an unemployed former civil servant who manages to fleece a group of rural government offi­cials who are fearful of having their corruption uncovered. Its title refers to the Nigerian Dr. Tai Solarin, a tireless social critic who served as a pub­lic-complaints commissioner for several western states during the Obasanjo military regime of the mid 1970s.

Osofisan soon turned his attention to another controversial issue confronting the nation. Once

,Ppon Four Robbers (performed, 1978; published, \A..l · 1980) questions the morality of public executions. Stylistically inspired by Efua Sutherland's ingenious use of traditional Ghanaian folklore in writing, the play concerns a band of thieves given a trick for­mula by which they can successfully rob peop14==-

Jprovided they kill no one, steal from the rich, and commit their crimes in public places. Each member is given a portion of a song, unknown to his col· leagues; when they work together, their victims are entranced and leave their property untended. Bick­ering among the group enables government soldiers to capture them and start their public executions, but, at the last moment, the old man who has

8

-1

Femi Osofisan

radical professor, Imaro, who continues to rehearse the Beckett play while waiting for secret-service agents to arrest him for allegedly fomenting campus unrest. Alienated from the university, business, and working-class communities, who find his ivory­tower protests against injustice unprofitable and therefore incomprehensible, Imaro loses even his leftist friends when it is revealed that one of his actors, who is also a wealthy businessman, has in­tervened with the police on his behalf. Though Imaro argues for principled, ideological flexibility, his chief collaborator sees only duplicity. Neither the Pozzo of the state nor the Godot of socialism will ever arrive for Imaro. Like Beckett's tramps, he is left alone, psychologically immobilized and chant­ing "Let freedom come."

In 1982 Osofisan wrote and directed thirteen episodes for the television series The Visitors. A mur­der-mystery series, it allowed the playwright to combine popular forms with social commentary. Several of those episodes have been transferred to the stage and subsequently published. During that same year, his Ka~ Sela Kompany premiered Midnight Hotel (published in 1986), the text of which freely acknowledges Osofisan's debt to both Ernest­Aime Feydeau and Bertolt Brecht. A hilarious farce concerning rampant materialism, the play is set in a seedy Lagos hotel where politicians, businessmen, and various women meet to transact commerce and sex. Interviews with Osofisan reveal again the cru­cial connection for him between writing and re­hearsal: a casual decision to include one song led to the conscious crafting of several songs, designed to contradict the slapstick quality of the spoken text, and the creation of a Brecht-like "Songmaster," who periodically brings out an oversized songbook from which cast members sing lyrics.

In more serious tones Osofisan wrote .No More the Wasted Breed, which was filmed for television and shown in 1982 with a cast composed of members of the Unibadan Performing Company. A refutation of Wole Soyinka's The Strong Breed (performed, 1966; published, 1969), it renders in dramatic form Osofisan's long-standing objections to metaphysical solutions, an objection expressed in various essays of his, such as "Ritual and the Revolutionary Ethos," "Literacy as Suicide," and "The Alternative Tradition." In Osofisan's plaifisherman, Biokun, desperate to cure his dying son, is preparing to renounce his materialist views and honor the gods. Two gods, disguised aslold couple, arrive to deter­mine whether the local mhabitants, who have for a long time ignored their divinity, should be spared ultimate destruction. A debate ensues concerning

.DLB125

10

DLB125

the principles of obedience and self-sacrifice, de­manded of the poor by a priesthood indebted to the rich. Won over by Biokun's arguments, the old man/god banishes his wife, and the religious obser­vance surrounding her, to death. Ushered in is a new age when people will learn to master their own destinies. Thus, in place of Soyinka's allegedly ellip­tical style and ahistorical metaphysical vision, Os­ofisan posits a more pedestrian poetics and a secular humanism.

In 1983 Osofisan took a sabbatical from uni­versity teaching to serve as a founding member of the editorial board of the Guardian newspaper (Lagos), which had been formed during the second Shagari presidential/election campaign to function as an independent · voice. The position not only afforded Osofisan a forum from which to comment on important issues before a more/diverse audience than might ordinarily view his plays but it also provided a mechanism by which to feel the national pulse. The next year, having helped to establish the paper on a firm footing, he resumed teaching, this time as chairman of the Department of Theatre Arts at the University of Benin. Throughout his moves to Benin City, the University of Ife, and back to Ibadan, where he currently teaches, the peripatetic Osofisan maintained connections with the Guardian. Not only did he continue to(a regular column of cultural and sociopolitical commentary but from about 1987 to 1990 he also authored, under the pen name Okinba Launko, a column titled "Tales the Country Told Me." Many of them were later pub­lished as the 1989 novella Cordelia, and a subsequent collection of his journalistic fiction, "Ma'ami," awaits publication.

Using the Launko name again, Osofisan pub­lished Minted Coins which was awarded the ANA poetry prize in 1987. Osofisan is the firs t author to have won this prestigious award in two different categories. As a subsequent president of ANA (1989-1990), Osofisan resumed the practice, which he and others had begun in the poetry journal Opon !fa, of encouraging younger writers. This time he focused on playwrights, persuading the British Council to publish the 1989 ANA drama prize winners' plays in a collection entitled Five Plays.

The most recent Osofisan play to achieve sig­nificant circulation is Esu and the Vagabond Minstrels, first produced in 1984 at the University of Benin and published in 1992. Structurally it is another example of contemporary, African total theatre. Posing as a priest, the god Esu promises wealth to a group of starving musicians if they each bestow a gift on a truly needy recipient. Predictably all but

Femi Osofisan

11

Femi Osofisan

one of the musicians choose those who can clearly reward them handsomely, while the longer selects a

~

poor, pregnant woman and a leprous couple from whom he contracts the disease. The priest/god re­turns to evaluate the artists' choices, claims an in­ability to decide the leprous musician's case, and demands that the audience make known its opin­ions. Though some may argue that in a context of pervasive greed, selfishness is appropriate, specta­tors can be expected to vote that the generous musi­cian be restored to health and the greedy ones punished. But the fairy-tale ending, in which the kindest man is hailed as "humanity's last remaining hero," is punctured by scripted objections from ac­tors sitting incognito in the auditorium. They ques­tion Osofisan's alleged radicalism and argue that songs and magic have no relevance to the severe crises plaguing the nation. Again the audience must voice an opinion. The play's production history at the University of Ife, where it had an extensive run (as revised) in 1986, attests to various reactions: some religious conservatives objected to the god's desacralization; some experts in Yoruba culture de­plored the Christianizing influences evident in the portrayal of the god and chief protagonist; some leftists denounced the piece as a shift to the same mystification Osofisan found offensive in Soyinka's work; and some sympathizers applauded Osofisan's attempts to render traditional cosmology applicable to contemporary realities.

As the responses to his latest play suggest, Femi Osofisan is an artist who generates contro­versy. Thoroughly grounded in a Nigerian social and cosmological reality, his plays also speak to those outsiders who cherish the potential of men and women to both dream and struggle. He will likely continue to exploit popular forms and tradi­tional thought in order to create a provocative style of theater that challenges audiences to rethink basic values and reclaim the power to alter their worlds.

Interviews: Ossie Enekwe, "Interview with Femi Osofisan,"

1.

Greeefu:ld Review, 8, nos. 1-2 (1979): 76-80; ~ \ Jean-Pascal Daloz, "Briser les barrip-es: Entretien -c.-

avec Femi Osofisan," Notre Librairie, 98 (1989): 94-97.

References: Muyiwa Awodiya, "Femi Osofisan's Theatre," in

Perspectives on Nigerian Literature, 1700 to the Present, edited by Yemi Ogunbiyi (Lagos: Guardian, 1988), pp. 223-227;

12

DLB125

DLB125

F. Odun Balogun, "Kolera Kolaj: A Surrealistic Po­litical Satire," Africana Journal, 12, no. 4 (1981): 323-332;

Aderemi Bamikunle, "Nigerian Playwrights and Nigerian Myths: A Look at Soyinka, Osofisan, and Sowande's Plays," in Critical Theory and African Literature, edited by R. Vanamali, E. Oko, and A. Iloeje (Ibadan: Heinemann, 1987), pp. 121-131;

Bamikunle, "Nigerian Political Culture in Osofisan's Minted Coins," Commonwealth Essays and Studies, 12 (Autumn 1989): 108-116;

Chris Egharevba, "The Carrier Ritual as Medium of Vision in Nigerian Drama: The Examples of Soyinka and Osofisan," in Critical Theory and African Literature, pp. 25-36;

Edde Iji, "The Mythic Imagination and Heroic Ar­chetypes: From Moremi Myth to Osofisan's Morountodun," in Critical Theory and A.frican Liter­ature, pp. 81-98;

Biodun Jeyifo, "Femi Osofisan as Literary Critic and Theorist," in Perspectives on .Nigerian Litera­ture, 1700 to the Present, pp. 228-232;

Jeyifo, "Theatrical Analogues of the Second Repub­lic: Osofisan's Midnight Hotel," West Africa (20 September 1982): 2406-2410;

Jeyifo, The Truthful Lie: Essays in a Sociology ef Ajrican Drama (London: New Beacon, 1985), pp. 51-54, 82-87;

Gerald Moore, "Against the Titans in Nigerian Lit­erature," A.friscope, 7 (November 1979): 19, 21-22, 25;

Moore, "L'Image de la revolution dans le theAtre JUricain," Le Monde Diplomatique, 12 May 1982;

Olu Obafemi, "Political Perspectives and Popular Theatre in Nigeria," Theatre Research Interna­tional, 7 (Autumn 1982): 235-244;

Obafemi, "Revolutionary Aesthetics in Nigerian Theatre," African Literature Today, 12 (1982): 118-136;

Odia Ofeimun, "Criticism as Homicide: A Reply to Femi Osofisan's 'Literacy as Suicide,1" Afriscope, 7, no. 6 (1977): 31-32;

Yemi Ogunbiyi, "Nigerian Theatre and Drama: A Critical Profile," in his Drama and Theatre in .Nigeria: A Critical Source Book (Lagos: Nigeria Magazine, 1981), pp. 3-53;

Chinyere Okafor, "Creating New Awareness Through Shock Drama," .Nigerian Theatre Jour­nal, 1, no. 1 (1984): 9-15;

Modupe 0. Olaogun, "Parables in the Theatre: A Brief Study of Femi Osofisan's Plays," Okike, 27-28 (March 1988) : 43-55;

Femi Osofisan

13

Femi Osofisan

Tess Akaeke Onwueme, "Osofisan's New Hero: Women as Agents of Social Reconstruction," Sage: A Scholarly Journal on Black Women, 5, no. 1 (1988): 25-28;

Niyi Osundare, "Social Message of a Nigerian Dra­matist," West Aftica (28 January 1980): 147-150;

Sandra L. Richards, "Nigerian Independence Onst­age: Responses from 'Second Generation' Playwrights," Theatre Journal, 39 (May 1987): 215-227;

Richards, "Towards a Populist Nigerian Theatre: The Plays of Femi Osofisan," New Theatre Qyarterly, 3 (August 1987): 280-288;

Richards, "Wasn't Brecht an African Writer? Paral­lels with Contemporary Nigerian Drama," Brecht Yearbook (1989): 168-183.

DLB125

14

Professor Bernth Lindfors 44 Beechmont Drive New Roch elle, New York 10804

Dear Professor Lindf ors

The Department of Theatre

Northwestern University • School of Speech 1979 Sheridan Road• Evanston, IL 60208-2430

27 .June 1991

Please find enclosed additions/revisions to my entr-y on Femi Osof ·isan, accepted for- inclusion in the Dictionary of Literary B i o g r a p h y v o 1 um e on A f r'i c a n a n d Ca r' i b be a n w r' i t e r' s . T l1a n k yo u f or­th ..e ._opp or-tun it y to mak<"' some revisions : not only has 0::-:of i san continued to writ -;:: at a pr-olific pace!--a mix-3d bless i ng for those of us researching living authors--but as you will notice, I hav~ been able to includ e many more bibliographic citat ions.

Hop i ng to make your editing task somewhat easier, I have also enclose d e dited copies of the pages on which the revis i ons a r e to be made .

Good luck with your research on Ira Aldridge. I look forwa r d to g you ag a in at th e next ALA meeting.

Associate Profes~ r Africd n American Studi~s and Theatr e