The founding father of Renegade Theater and Theater Republic died on Wednesday, March 27 in Canada.
Igi ti o to ki pe ni igbo. That’s to say: straight bushes don’t final lengthy within the forest, say the Yoruba of their lamentations about expertise minimize down by loss of life in its prime. This assertion got here to thoughts late Wednesday night when my editor and mentor, Molara Wooden, reported that the resourceful author and theater producer Wole Oguntokun, founding father of Renegade Theater, had handed away.
I used to be shocked. Though Oguntokun had moved to Canada, he was nonetheless in theater. When you catch the bug, it is going to by no means depart you. Educated as a lawyer, he caught the bug early and stayed in theater from the late Nineteen Nineties.
I used to be not near Oguntokun, often known as Laspapi, his pseudonym, however I adopted his work carefully, together with his weekly 'Woman Whisperer' column within the Guardian on Sundays and productions. He was gifted, however he didn’t maintain his expertise to himself. He lifted others up.
Between late 2008 and the final quarter of 2011, when the NEXT Newspaper closed down, we featured his works in our 16-page artwork difficulty, curated by the eagle-eyed Ms. Wooden. Even when we didn't wish to, our junior colleague, Obidike Okafor, wouldn’t allow us to relaxation. He went to Terra Kulture, the place the late producer often carried out his performs and handled us to tales on Mondays.
The playwright whose credit embrace 'The Ready Room', 'Legend of Moremi', 'The Chibok Ladies: Our Story', 'Anatomy of a Girl', 'Jail Chronicles', 'The Queen of the Evening', 'The Eagle 'his King', 'The Tarzan Monologues' and 'Gbanja Roulette' had a 'never-say-die' mentality. In 2012 he took his manufacturing 'Itan Oginintin', an adaptation of Shakespeare's 'The Winter's Story', to the Shakespeare Cultural Olympiad on the Globe Theater in London. He additionally staged his 'The Ready Room' on the Edinburgh Competition Fringe in 2013 and 'The Tarzan Monologues' on the similar venue in 2014.
He had written and produced all these works and extra earlier than his loss of life on Wednesday, March 27, which was World Theater Day.
His loss of life on the age of 56 is one other unhappy loss to Nigerian theater as a result of Oguntokun was an establishment. Energetic and modest, he by no means claimed pointless credit score. Oguntokun did his work quietly, felt comfy in his personal pores and skin and labored for the widespread good.
All these qualities endeared him to gamers within the theater world, who mourn a expertise gone too quickly and demand on correct documentation of Oguntokun's excellent contributions to Nigerian theatre.
Ms Wooden mentioned: “I had been an avid follower of Wole's theater actions for a few years, and I used to be amazed at how he remained simply as lively after transferring to Canada, mounting new theater productions and showing to have constructed sturdy new partnerships with Canadian arts establishments, which constructing a brand new group of creatives in a international land, at all times below the banner of Nigerian theatre. Even there he was in cost and making his area of interest. We should inform the story of Wole and the essential function he performed within the revival of theatre, with lots of of audiences shopping for tickets to see musicals in these occasions.
“We have to speak/write about his productions on the MUSON, Lagos Theater Competition, his annual and courageous A Season of Soyinka, The Tarzan Monologues on the Edinburgh Competition Fringe – and so many different exploits. We should not permit the brand new greats of the artwork scene and their ahistorical followers to behave as if nobody has achieved something outstanding but, as a result of that’s taking place in all Nigerian artwork – music, movie, journalism and literature. The people who find themselves “sizzling” now are the one ones who’re acknowledged as having achieved one thing.
Lawyer and author Deji Toye alluded to the identical in his tribute to the late playwright. “By some means you knew he was doing essential work while you went to see his performs within the late 90s/2000s. However I knew after I first realized how important it was. It was about 10 years in the past, throughout one of many first editions of the Lagos Theater Competition. After I seemed on the pageant brochure, I observed that everybody, anybody – from pageant director to administrators of particular on-schedule productions to casting leads and palms on main productions – was a graduate of Wole Oguntokun's Renegade Theater or Segun Adefila's Crown Troupe. It struck me at that second that the comparatively vibrant theater scene in Lagos that we have been then beginning to see had rested largely on the shoulders of those two gents. It struck me that we had witnessed historical past – of a generational change in Nigerian theater tradition – these of us who had seen these gritty productions below Crown Troupe's Bookarteria and Renegade Theatre's Theatre@Terra.”
The Nationwide Affiliation of Nigerian Theater Arts Practitioners additionally acknowledged his contributions, writing in an announcement by its Secretary Basic, Makinde Adeniran: “Each as a author and a theater director, WO has formed lives, impressed lives, restored lives… NANTAP celebrates this quintessential inventive genius who acting on his personal whereas most practitioners had nothing to do with something throughout the despicable rule of the late Basic Sani Abacha.”
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