from Research in African Literatures Volume 30, Number 4

From Ghetto to Garrison: A Chronic Case of Orisunitis

©Wole Soyinka

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There is no question about it, it could only have been four years of exile, traipsing through the United States, Europe, and the more fortunate parts of Africa, and becoming newly aware of the theater scene in such politically stable zones, that forcefully brought home to my mind what a contrast exists between theater life in a number of countries like Nigeria, and others, especially Europe and America. That is, what we have learnt to accept as "normal" suddenly struck me, for the first time, as being inconceivable in many of these other artistic worlds. That took me back to what we may reasonably catalogue as the birth pangs of post-Independence theater in Nigeria, especially its survival strategies. Such strategies remain an aspect of theater sociology to which not much attention is given. The mundane aspects of scrounging for funds, feed, and shelter, dodging the violence of politics and bigotry and somehow keeping afloat—or sinking—tend to fade into the realms of the superfluous once the finished product triumphantly straddles the boards—just as if they were no more than the processes of rehearsals. Then, a rather mixed experience in Kingston, Jamaica, made me begin to wonder if, once given the Nigerian-type formative experience, one does not develop a form of creative masochism . . . but now I have got ahead of my story. Suffice it to reveal at this stage that I identified this perverse sensation, a niggling nostalgia right in the midst of secure, opulent theater—for the taste of marginalized existence, as some kind of virus that, once absorbed, never completely leaves the bloodstream. I call it orisunitis, and may the Yoruba deity of Efe help all those who fall its victim!

Incubation Period
The Nigerian strain of orisunitis, a spore from that universal and near incurable virus that lurks in theater as a social agent provocateur, was successfully isolated some time during 1962 in Ibadan. It was incubated in a theatrical company that was founded in 1960 and named, for that year of Nigerian independence, the 1960 Masks. That was a group made up largely of highly skilled, middle-class "establishment" artistes who held down a mind-boggling assortment of highly placed jobs—teaching, engineering, broadcasting, business, industry, etc.—plus unsalaried housewives. Motivation was so high that they would sacrifice a succession of evenings and weekends, travel the hundred miles between Ibadan and Lagos—weekend rehearsals alternated between the two cities—for the strange pleasure of submitting to a demanding regimen, aim for seemingly impossibly standards, work on costumes, saw wood and hammer nails, splash paint on canvas, etc. They competed for the additional chore of offering hospitality for the weekend invasion of their counterparts from the twin-city, and undertook the burden of those innumerable expenditures that go with preparing, mounting, advertising shows and even soliciting funds from their individual and business contacts. They raided their homes, stores, and businesses to borrow furniture and props and obtain advertisements for the program. One borrowed, and lost a family heirloom to a production—a crystal decanter—and was obliged to endure the baleful glare of the family matriarch for years—with a theatrical appropriateness, since that play was Sarif Easmon's Dear Parent and Ogre. 1960 Masks was, very simply put, a performance family, with all its intensity of bonding, mild personality clashes, mild intrigues, and, of course, the occasional family quarrels, peacefully resolved.

Orisunitis was, however, lurking within the body. Orisun Theatre was a kind of Oedipal shift, since it proved a case of matricide. 1960 Masks began to involve younger recruits who mainly understudied the parent body and performed minor chores, but also received a special training all their own. I fulfilled the function of artistic director for the Masks from the beginning, although we never once thought of a need for any functional title—except perhaps that of Treasurer at some later stage. The operational method for building up the troupe-within-troupe was: pull in a few talented, enthusiastic, but largely untrained, usually mono-skilled youths and weld them into a versatile "strike unit." Actors would progressively acquire proficiencies in various performance modes—from drumming to acting, costuming, stage-management, dancing, and even singing—never mind if, as in a few cases, they proved chronically tone-deaf! The most effective training grounds for this "hidden agenda" were the 1960 Masks' variety programs of satiric sketches—The Republican, The New Republican, etc.—which commenced as rough drafts by members of the company, were worked upon collectively, or evolved as improvisations on selected themes. These consisted of the usual fare of social anomalies, inanities, anonymous derelictions of power, etc., but dealt only obliquely with the roots of the culture of power, its travesties and perpetrators, and the accusing condition of victims of alienation.

There was clearly need for a unit that went further. When I adjudged that the time was ripe, I could hardly wait to extract the young trainees as a separate body and launch them into their creative destiny. Plainly spelt out, this meant those areas of performance content that could not be undertaken by the parent body without jeopardizing the livelihood, and even outside relationships of its members. (This did not prevent some within that group from receiving periodic "friendly warnings" not to fool with their careers by the mere act of associating with enemies of the establishment.) The combative offspring, Orisun, safely delivered, 1960 Masks could then limit itself to a reasonably safe, mainstream theater, but also continue to service its more adventurous and unpredictable protege behind the scenes—sets and costumes, promotional, technical aids, welfare, etc., etc. It was not so much a perfect, as a needed arrangement for the times. The urge to expand the horizons of Nigerian theater in both formal and experimental directions was as strong as the evident clamor for a form of theater that would challenge the present with a spontaneity of response, as the sociopolitical life of the nation pursued its increasingly predictable path of deterioration. It was a simple case of injecting the theatrical virus of orisunitis into the sick body of the nation. Not for nothing was Orisun's outing—a series of sociopolitical sketches in the manner of The Republican series—given the overall title "Before the Blackout." The objective therefore was to ensure the survival of the voice of the theater during the "blackout," whenever it descended on the national landscape. The mother-pod strategy seemed to offer a workable solution—a "legitimate" theater that would operate within the mainstream cultural life, and a risk-taking offspring that was sheltered, in troubled times, by a secure maternal umbrella.

Out from the Mother Nest
This innovative arrangement survived only some four years, and the multiple reasons that hastened the end of such a sensible ploy belong, needless to say, in a much more detailed account of the political events (and political sociology) of post-Independence Nigeria. Orisun's role in the death of the parent body was straightforward. As our political crisis deepened, it became inevitable that I should allow the 1960 Masks to quietly withdraw and eventually disappear, while I honed the edge of Orisun Theatre. The environment had become so filled with menace that—during the political crisis of the then Western Region in 1964, for instance—I allocated a few hours of rehearsal time to sessions in self-defense, incorporating a few pieces of stage equipment—such as the fire extinguishers—into unorthodox functions.

The politicians had gone berserk. Threats, assaults, had become commonplace, with the result that audience interaction, normally welcomed in our performance routine, could no longer be guaranteed to be the spontaneous, unscripted kind. Front-of-house duties included discreet audience screening and an "early warning system." Actors learnt to accustom themselves to patterns of "alternative blocking," which ensured that they were never caught flatfooted, no matter in what part of the stage or performance they found themselves. Open-air performances were the most hazardous, but an alliance with sympathetic "stalwarts" (aka political thugs)—who saw Orisun as a voice of the underdogs—ensured that order was mostly kept during performances. I underwent my first arrest, for the possession of an "unlicensed firearm"—in reality a stage prop—even as I was engaged in the crucial last-minute directions for the opening night of a new show at Mbari. It had been discovered during an illegal search in our improvised "commune" at Agodi, three kilometers away. As the judge observed later, during my acquittal, the rusty weapon had clearly not been fired for over a decade! Virtually all Orisun performances were ready only minutes before curtain. Negotiating even a temporary bail in my own cognizance before curtain was one test that Hercules should have been compelled to undertake!

Mbari Club, which became a temporary home of Orisun Theatre, was located right at the base of the Dugbe market hub, a crossroads of beggars and touts, pickpockets and gangsters, improvised motor parks, open urinals, street vendors and itinerant preachers, beer parlors that were the recruitment centers and haunts of freelance thugs high on marijuana, local gin, and the guarantee of protection from their political masters no matter what mayhem they caused. Often it struck me that the daily street theater—to which most people remained oblivious—was far superior to anything that we could mount on the boards, but of course, while it demanded no entrance fee, payment could be exacted in rather unpleasant ways.

Finally came the 1966 military takeover, the long anticipated blackout, and an abrupt escalation of the tempo of violence and insecurity in national life. Ethnic suspicions and hostilities, revenge massacres, counter-coup, more massacres, secession, and a looming civil war. My public position of opposition to the war culminated in prison detention under the regime of the military dictator Yakubu Gowon. I still lament the missed opportunity of establishing an orisunic theater among the prison inmates. My theatrical tonsils vibrate just to think of the riotous fare that would have developed—prisoners, believe me, constitute the lost tribe of actors of the universe! Orisun in Prison—what a dream! But I had been placed in solitary confinement, with only lizards, butterflies, mosquitoes, and bedbugs for companion, and I simply had no experience in the training and management of a flea circus.

The unkindest cut of all, however, was to find, on emerging from confinement in 1969, that Orisun Theatre, in fulfilling its article of faith in one respect—it had stayed alive by every means available—had, however, failed in another crucial aspect—performance standards had fallen disastrously, and the social focus had become attenuated. The latter was a reflection of a society that had succumbed to a war hysteria with all its uncritical rhetoric of unity, national solidarity, etc., while the former was due to the loss of more than half of the pioneers, their replacement by less proficient intakes, and an overambitious schedule that involved regular slots on television. That television commitment, however, proved excellent grooming ground for up-and-coming writers such as Wale Ogunyemi, Bode Sowande, and others, but the demands on a part-time company had taken their toll on the quality of performance. I had the traumatizing duty of disbanding Orisun, but—not quite. The virus had merely gone into remission. I was not able to take up my suspended position as Director of the School of Drama at the University of Ibadan, which already boasted a thriving Travelling Theatre, literally a theater on wheels. It operated from an ingeniously carpentered mini-technicon. Each production was a renewed venture, however, made up of volunteers, staff and students alike from all departments. A genteel battle with academia resulted in its evolution into a paid Acting Company attached to the department, with a handful of the survivors from Orisun. But the unique identity of Orisun as a performing group that lived on the edge, thrived on its very precarious existence, on its inventiveness, versatility, and social focus, had disappeared under the skin of establishment. Like the proverbial thin body within an outer corpulence, however, orisunitis was constantly struggling to emerge.

Hibernation in Academia
As the first full-time performance laboratory for a Nigerian—and very likely African—university theater department, one could claim that the Acting Company did provide continuity for the Orisun method. But the frontal approach of Orisun Theatre to political issues had to be abandoned. Still, with productions like Esu Elegbara, Madmen and Specialists, The Fire Raisers, etc.—just as in the case of the 1960 Masks production of A Dance of the Forests during Independence celebrations—the repertory either remained, wherever possible, textually political, or was interpreted with a slant towards sociopolitical issues within the present. It was, however, no substitute for the adventures of the early sixties, and that craving hung like a scrim through which we savored our best efforts. There was a postwar complacency, a distinct domestic afflatus that badly needed puncturing with a consistent, adaptive orisunic iconoclasm. The university patronage was both necessary and courageous for its time, but the actors were now paid employees of that institution, mindful of their careers, while the institution, like all others, had come under direct or surrogate controls of a military dictatorship. With the discovery of oil and what could only be described as a massive public bribery operation—inflationary salary increases with arrears, allowances, uncontrolled imports, and an unprecedented consumerist explosion—civic society related to the dictator's evident plans for self-perpetuation in either a timorous or collaborative manner. A debilitating sense of alienation soon pushed me into a period of self-imposed exile.

My return in 1975—General Gowon having been overthrown—was into another university, the University of Ife, where a community a theater, a "town and gown" affair, was already in existence, nurtured by the University's African Studies Department. Just as in the case of Ibadan's Travelling Theatre, Ori-olokun theater had already acquired a reputation beyond Nigerian borders under the direction of Ola Rotimi, who was also a playwright. At the time, Ife had no theater department, but a year or two after my arrival, the idea was mooted, and eventually became a reality. Taking charge of the new department, the ghost of Orisun beckoned wildly as Ori-olokun theater became incorporated into the department. Next stage—building of confidence, a subtle political reorientation, re-training, etc.—and soon enough the former Ori-olokun also succumbed to the endemic virus. It metamorphosed into the Unife Guerilla Theatre and became a permanent feature of the "establishment" structure. By the time that Joachim Fiebach joined the department as Visiting Professor, the troupe had begun to invade other towns, taking over spaces in front of government buildings, markets, etc., sometimes inadvertently tying up traffic when it performed in the open air within sight of passing motorists. Fiebach became very much involved in the program and excursions of the company, but it was not outside the campus that he received his induction into real Nigerian life. Some competitive guerilla activity was evidently in progress because, while Fiebach was absorbed with rehearsals, his newly bought Volkswagen Beetle was abducted, not in the streets of Dugbe or Isale-eko, but right on campus, just behind my office! It was never recovered.

The relationship between the Ife performing groups was reminiscent of that of the former Orisun with the parenting 1960 Masks—the community theater for standard repertoire, and a "tactical" arm that took to the streets. Politics was back, and with it, once again, the material corruption and social distortions that had become vastly distended under preceding military rule, that of General Gowon most notoriously. The Guerilla Theatre had no shortage of material. During an infamous scandal, the Great Rice Importation Rip-Off, performance outside the House of Representatives in Lagos ended with fake sacks of rice being deposited at the doors of the assembly with a banner which read: To Him Who Hath, More Shall Be Given. Being Head or Artistic Director of a theater department has certain advantages, it must be conceded—once the mandatory formal teaching is assured: history, text, theory, sociology, aesthetics, etc. There were, additionally, Convocation Days and other "command" performances—which, incidentally, could also be put to enlightened "guerilla" use.

The pattern was this: formal performances took place in Oduduwa Hall in the evenings while a strolling theater performed in the open air during the day among the milling visitors—a captive and (in some cases, only conspiratorially) appreciative audience of thousands of family members of students and graduands, dignitaries and entourage, traditional rulers, Ministers, administrators and their exhibitionist trains. But even the formal performances sometimes became indistinguishable from the street-theater agenda. Once, Biodun Jeyifo's adaptation of Brecht's My Man Matti created an establishment uproar, while my Opera Wonyosi, adapted also from Brecht's Threepenny Opera, left the representatives of "The University Visitor"—that is, the state military governor and his entourage—apoplectic. In his view, the army had been insulted. He was restrained with great difficulty by his host, the Vice-Chancellor, from storming out, and endured the performance only by promising his hosts between gritted teeth what dire reprisals would be inflicted on the company after his report to headquarters. He sobered down as the performance continued, however, and at the end was visibly embarrassed. He admitted that he had witnessed nothing but the truth. This Colonel left campus a converted man, a rare example of the transforming power of the stage, upon which—theater practitioners, please be advised—not much stock should be placed! Those special events also had their own special budgets from the establishment, resources that would normally be unavailable at other times, and thus could be made to render extramural services to the cash-strapped itinerant arm.

Entrepreneurial Orisun
Concerning which—that is, the permanent cash-strapped condition of the Orisun parasite—and in all fairness, let it be noted that Orisun was not without serious, even grandiose plans for establishing a solid financial base for its activities. As far back as 1964, for instance, Orisun ventured into publishing, under the unregistered firm of ORISUN EDITIONS. Its premiere output was Before the Blackout, which was a mixed collection of sketches from the production of that same name and from The Republican. Later, it would publish Wale Ogunyemi, Eseoghene Barret, Wole Soyinka, and one or two others, all of whom donated their royalties to the theater arm. It was the duty of the actors to sell as many copies as they could on the road—their very livelihood depended on it, at least, so we declared. Abiodun Printing Press of Ibadan undertook what—for those times—was a risky venture, not only financially but politically. A natural evolution of the Editions was Orisun Bookshop, which we handed over to a lawyer under the strict understanding that it was his duty to make it yield profits that would constitute our very lifeline. That lawyer, Bola Ige, a true Orisunian in spirit but of the wrong time and place for us, spent most of his energy also in defending righteous causes against political tyrants—a most unproductive collaboration if Orisun were to survive! Whatever became of that bookshop in the end, I have no idea till today, as I had then embarked on an externally nomadic existence, and this time, it was not an escape program from political repercussions, but from debt collectors.

The business acumen of Orisun, alas, was even more dismal than that of the company's volunteer solicitor. One Orisun innovation in its crusade against the civilian regime of Shehu Shagari was a long-playing record with the title Unlimited Liability Company, made up of songs that were developed from the political sketches. It was not strictly an innovation, since we were merely following in the footsteps of Hubert Ogunde, certainly the most durable of the pioneers of the West African Travelling Theatre, also known as Folk Opera. For Ogunde, however, his records formed a key part of his entrepreneurial ventures. He ran one of the few truly full-time financially independent theater companies, adopting the intelligent strategy of marrying all his female artistes and raising one huge, happy theatrical family. Orisun could have done with a fraction of Ogunde's business sense. If pirating is a true measure of popularity and acceptance, Unlimited Liability Company deserved more than the Platinum Disk for enterprise. Properly marketed, this wildly popular, much sought-after recording should have provided a strong financial basis for Orisun's future activities—even beggars, after all, are entitled to their dreams of affluence!

The record's unofficial but censored status predictably increased its demand. The masses in any society are one thing; however, the institutions are another, even under a nominally democratic, in reality fascistic regime. Capitulation, even when there was no real menace, was nowhere more depressingly manifested than within the citadels of academia. The University of Ibadan bookshop, like other sales outlets, had taken stock of a consignment. When Shehu Shagari's government began its "pogrom" against the record, the management panicked and rushed over three hundred copies into hiding. They were subsequently "lost"—very likely stolen. As if that was not a sufficient setback for the bubbling financial empire, some members of the family of the famous singer Njemanze, from whose musical style one of the songs had been slightly adapted—and fully acknowledged on the record sleeve—demanded a share in royalties. Well, we no lost no sleep over that: Collect the entire sales receipts from the University of Ibadan, we said. That record, from all reports, has now become a collector's item, and that venture also marked the inglorious end of Orisun's entrepreneurial spirit.

A Winter of Discontent
1984, when I abandoned university institutionalism altogether, and 1964 were, however, wildly different environments for the pursuit of the Orisun ideal. The economic situation had changed and thus altered the material expectations of the theater artiste. It no longer seemed possible to resurrect that same dedication that thrived on minimalist rewards. Television encouraged a new genre of facile drama and soap opera, bred instant "stars" and pop artistes whose social profiles and earning power contrasted wildly with the conditions even of a university-sponsored company. Business lured many artistes away and meaningful live theater found itself in a tropical "winter of discontent." There were the periodic flashes, of course—productions such as The King Must Dance Naked and Budiso, written and lavishly produced by a lawyer turned writer, Fred Agbeyegbe, inspired by his escalating sense of social outrage. It was performed at the National Theatre, but the latter mythologized satire was heavily smothered under the broad trowel of spectacle. In any case, these were specially mounted productions, not the consistent repertory of a dedicated group. Even the popular indigenous language theater—heirs to the legacy of the two deceased giants Kola Ogunmola and Duro Ladipo—such as Baba Sala, Ade Love, and others—moved into video recordings and, later, low-budget films of indifferent standards, for survival. The social character of the generation that made Orisun possible had become far too distorted by a consumerist culture, fueled by the oil boom of the seventies and the irresponsible socioeconomic policies of incontinent governments—both the military and the civilian. Election rigging by incumbent power lost all subtlety, became arrogant and defiant. General Buhari's military fascism replaced the police state of the "democratically elected" Shehu Shagari, and was in turn supplanted by a practiced smoothie, General Babangida, who pushed the culture of public corruption to new heights. The national polity appeared clearly in desperate need of a regular dose of orisunitis, but this was precisely the time when Orisun Theatre found itself thoroughly becalmed in the doldrums!

A cafe theater! The idea was not new, but it suddenly became the sole remaining prospect. Orisun theater never actually had its own home, but it did squat undisturbed at the Mbari Club, which was shared by other independent performing companies, art workshops, exhibitions, etc., but it never did have a place it could call its own. At Ife, both the broad frontage and surround of Oduduwa Hall, with its well-stocked bar—the department head's favorite responsibility—as well as its annex, the Okot p'Bitek Rotunda, converted from a self-indulgent motor cycle shed and named after the Uganda poet, had served us as a kind of cafe theater. However, (i) it was not regular, (ii) it lacked a town environment such as Mbari in Ibadan, and (iii) it was dependent on a state-controlled institution, and establishment nervousness constantly interfered with the sense of topical urgency of the company. As was the case in Ibadan University, members had become fully incorporated into the service structure of Ife, were "tenured," lobbied for advancement—constantly made comparisons with the "conditions of service" of other departments such as Parks and Gardens, Hospital Attendants, Teaching Assistants, Security Officers, etc., etc. They had families and other responsibilities. They looked outside the university towards their age-groups advancing steadily in the open market of the oil boom and wondered why they should risk anything for the "confrontational" tendency of their directors and scriptwriters. Perhaps the varsity model was only a model for a specific time, I concluded, and that time was past. Maybe we had arrived at a point when the Orisun idea should return to an independent career and either go completely nomadic or settle in its own home, lure its audience with a fully functioning bar, an art gallery, a mini-kitchen, and an unpredictable theater menu.

The obvious choice of location was Lagos, city of excesses, and magnet for so many artistes bitten by the Thespian bug or—in many cases—the mirage of stardom. Among the former, still incurably infected by orisunitis were three to four of the pioneers. The priority, however, was a home. My first stop was the Caban Bamboo night club on Ikorodu Road where, in the sixties, both the 1960 Masks and Orisun Theatre sometimes conducted daytime or weekend rehearsals and performances. Its mercuric proprietor-musician and band leader, Bobby Benson, was dead. In his lifetime, we had often discussed the possibility of setting aside some late night hours on weekends for regular Orisun performances, but, at the last moment, this always fell through. In the sixties, Caban Bamboo was merely perfect; now, in a depressing way, it was ideal. With the death of Bobby Benson, Caban Bamboo, looted and abandoned by his contending heirs, had become a shell; it virtually pleaded for conversion into anything. I toured the premises, envisaging its transformation. A week later, I had dropped the project. His brother and executor, T. O. S. Benson, a former minister, was surprisingly enthusiastic about our take-over; he probably felt that it would result in a fitting tribute to the memory of his brother. There were, however, other bidders. A supermarket interest left no room for competition and, in any case, the economics of redesigning the gutted hulk were simply insurmountable—even for the Nobel spoils that had survived earlier draining ventures—such as a foundation for writers and artists in residence. Bobby Benson's eldest son offered us another property on Ikorodu Road, but anything short of that once familiar derelict now seemed only second-rate. So were other options in Lagos.

Then came the thought—why not the smaller, quieter town of Abeokuta? Abeokuta was only one hour's drive from Lagos, one hour also from Ibadan. Nigerians drove long distances regularly simply to listen to their favorite band or attend parties. A combination of the p'Bitek Rotunda and the Mbari Club, based in Abeokuta—why not? From perfect to ideal to sublime! How sublime I was not to know until I began to explore Abeokuta for likely performance spaces. The search trail led me back to my very beginnings—Ake, where, as a child, I would climb onto a ladder to look over the wall and drink in the processions of traditional egungun masquerades and, later, saunter out only to flee from the more fearsome of them, follow the spectacle through the streets or play with the tombolo (child maskers) on the square before St. Peter's Church. That same church was where I had habitually conflated the stained-glass portraits of missionaries and Christian saints with egungun masquerades, St. Peter especially, with his distinctive stylized halo. From the walls came a distant echo of the piping voices of children at Sunday School, marching to what was presumably St. Peter's induction hymn . . . I will make you fishers of men, fishers of men, fishers of men, I will make you fishers of men if you follow me . . . . Now the church was deconsecrated. A new St. Peter's, all modern in architectural concept and shorn of its ancient mystery—in spite of the transferred stained-glass windows—stood a short distance away. In a way, I suppose we are all missionaries of the theater, in obsessed pursuit of the conversion of minds, of sensibilities. Now the ancient church was itself presented for a most appropriate conversion, a near poetic cycle of theatrical progression. A resurrection of the profane spirit of Orisun in the very abode of The Divine Resurrection—irresistible! And it was available! All that was left was to go fishing for the men and women.

The "Sisi Clara" Workshop
It seemed fated. An Orisun veteran, Yewande (Akinbo), I discovered, was now an employee with the Arts Council in the very town of Abeokuta. The Commissioner for Arts and Culture for the state, Ogun, succumbed to the virus, while a "fifth column" within the Arts Council of the neighboring state, Lagos, quickly ensured the infection of that council. Five "old faithfuls" of Orisun—Tunji Oyelana, Wale Ogunyemi, Yomi Obileye, Segun Sofowote, and Femi Fatoba, all seasoned in a variety of experiences for over three decades—were close by in Ibadan and Lagos. They would be press-ganged to serve as a nucleus, establish the crucial esprit de corps by their very presence, and assist with training. So would Chuck Mike, a former graduate student from Ibadan and later colleague at Ife. He had long been fascinated by the mythology that surrounded Orisun, devoted some chapters to the Orisun method in his Master's thesis, and had begun trying out putative orisunic groups of his own. Increasingly pregnant with the idea, he would eventually give birth to The Artists Collective and, later, The Performance Studio. Folabo Ajayi took charge of the dance and movement department. Demas Nwoko, a protean designer, had always worked in and out of the Orisun-Mbari circle; now he amplified the sense of a creative reunion by joining to conduct design workshops.

And so it came about that, in a matter of weeks, notices went out on the radio and in print media inviting young theater artistes to apply for a place in a two-month-long "Sisi Clara" Master Theatre Workshop, named after a favorite character in a television sit-com, The Village Headmaster. Elsie Olusola, who played that character, had recently died. She had been a member of the 1960 Masks—it all seemed so fitting, and inevitable somehow, as if the ghosts of those immediate post-Independence experiments had become unbearably clamorous and demanded a voice, once again, on the immediate stage.

Theirs were not the only voices that sought to be heard. Under yet another military regime—that of General Ibrahim Babangida—society had degenerated into a corrupt, violent, and alienating space that demanded its own space of excoriation and exorcism in the performance arena. Armed robbery was now accompanied by numbing acts of sadism. The economy was crumbling but the regime remained indifferent. Overseas scams—known as "419," had earned the nation a pariah status in the business world. As with all situations of near-complete social anomie, the jettisoning of values and the elevation of moral hypocrisy, the religious business was, however, booming. The catalogue of state crimes was unlimited—military thuggery, humiliation of the civic population, establishment arson (in vastly improved editions from the civilian models, and especially prevalent in Ministry of Defence account departments), media suppression, democratic hoaxes by a manipulative dictator, a perennial fuel shortage in a country that was rated one of the first six petroleum producing countries in the world, yet the queues at empty filling stations simply lengthened every day . . . .

The centerpiece of the regime's criminality, however—one with which I remained frankly obsessed—was the act of evicting nearly a million inhabitants of a seaside Lagos "shantytown" known as Maroko. In an act of bewildering savagery even for the violent history of the nation, including colonial times, the state administration of the regime sent in bulldozers, accompanied by fully armed troops, to wipe out the settlement in one single day. It did not matter that the residents, most of whom had settled there for generations, had gone to court and won a "stay of execution." They had the misfortune of occupying a view on the lagoon, coveted for luxury mansions and condominiums by the military, their business friends, and other high-placed cronies. In went the bulldozers one early morning, leveling houses and small businesses and rendering families homeless, literally in the twinkling of an eye. Perhaps it was the fear that this egregious assault on humanity—a crime that was so staggering in its amplitude, the violent displacement of a million people in peacetime!—would soon fade, like other dictatorship crimes, into the recesses of forgetfulness and acceptance, that provided the ultimate impetus towards an altar on which we would scar public memory. I had already sent a former student of mine from Ife with a video camera to record the actualities, interview the displaced people in their new shacks, but that only left one's thirst for some form of participatory, creative vengeance unslaked, one that would involve representative voices of that brutalized humanity. Sisi Clara Master Workshop would go some way towards assuaging that thirst.

The Orisun process has always been about improvisation. The actors went to work on a theme—an event, a piece of political chicanery, an institutional or governmental malfeasance, a social tendency, state outrage, etc., etc. Sometimes a well-known song, foreign or traditional, virtually thrust itself forward for cooption or adaptation, sometimes a dance movement would develop into a mimetic exchange. The idiosyncracies of a public character, a set encounter, or confrontation that generated its own dialogue—after that, it is all expansion and condensing, selectivity, playing out variations. Discarded scraps are retrieved and woven into new situations. Props and costumes trigger off new directions, new possibilities, the build-up towards one visual gag or verbal detonation, etc., etc.—the creative ferment is palpable—at least, so it was in the early sixties. No two shows were ever the same.

Not this time, however! Or perhaps it was too short a period for the development and meshing of ensemble spontaneity. The Orisun veterans pushed their hardest, but that unique, infectious spark was gone, dampened by the disposition of new—though quite proficient—performers who, however, had become stuck in a different performance culture. Despite it all, a reasonably credible show did result. In a conscious gesture of both political and theatrical evocation, I gave it the warning title—Before the Deluge. It was toured, and perhaps a measure of its effectiveness was that it was tabled for discussion at the cabinet meeting of the military junta—the Armed Forces Ruling Council. (There was no prize awarded for spotting state security agents at any presentation—they were so obvious!) At the cabinet meeting, one hysterical voice demanded to know why the perpetrator of the outrage had not been locked up, since his identity was not in question. That same voice, when its owner, General Sanni Abacha, schemed his way into power as Head of a new military junta, would later order the hanging of the writer Ken Saro-Wiwa and his eight Ogoni dissidents.

My harassment would have been a double act of injustice, however, as I had not truly savored the Orisun essence during the exercise. To end up virtually writing all the songs, all the sketches, intervening so authorially in improvisations that I might as well have begun by scripting the show in entirety was not my idea of a successful Orisun process. Three main themes dominated the improvisations—(i) the sadistic susceptibility of Nigeria's contemporary society, a collective hysteria that had resulted in an epidemic of public lynching for imaginary crimes; (ii) the phony democratic transition process then being touted by the regime; and, most obsessively, (iii) the erasure of Maroko from the face of the earth. It was inevitable—I would eventually concentrate on the last in a new work—The Beatification of Area Boy. That play however also incorporates a street scene that was an indirect outcome of an improvisation on the first of the three themes. And the song Maroko O! had provided the basis for yet another improvised medley of scenes. As an attempt to revive the Orisun ideal, however, it was a qualified failure, but that turned out to be not quite the end of the story . . . as usual!

The workshop and performance over, Orisun went back to the drawing board. I settled down to write Beatification, a clearly orisunic piece if ever there was one. Auditions for the new play duly followed and rehearsals were scheduled to start in December '94. The dictator Sanni Abacha had been in power for one year. The Sisi Clara 1991 program of sociopolitical sketches could not have been more aptly titled—a deluge of horrors would shortly overwhelm the nation. Criticism, dissent were anathema to the new regime whose very fear and loathing of the intellectual class was translated into secret operations and open mayhem. More unarmed citizens were shot in peacetime under the direct orders of Sanni Abacha than by any other commander of troops. A nation-wide resistance paralyzed the nation for over ten weeks in mid-'94 but was brutally suppressed, the labor movement crushed and its leaders imprisoned. Writers and intellectuals were in full disarray. The powers of the secret services appeared unlimited, but fortunately, we also had our own listening posts within those services. I was assessing the needed alterations to St. Peter's Church, which would start out as our rehearsal space, and progressively convert into a Cafe Theatre, a sanctuary at last for Orisun, when word came that I had better seek personal sanctuary outside the national borders.

Once again, however, continuity was waiting just across the oceans, on an unsuspecting island called Jamaica . . . .

Yeah Man, Jah the Spirit Lives
That's the way they express it in Jamaica, and the vital essence of Orisun would hardly disagree. Beatification was to prove, fortuitously, the vehicle on which the orisunitis virus would travel. That play finally received its premiere at the Yorkshire Playhouse, directed by Jude Kelly. Six members from the Sisi Clara workshop, including three Orisun pioneers, traveled to England to participate. As I lent a hand in ironing out a scene, sometimes taking an actor aside to unblock a preconception in his head—always at the director's behest—or watched the finished product, I returned wistfully again and again to that play's interrupted career in its birthplace, and wondered whether the Yorkshire production would ever be seen by its intended audiences in Isale-eko (Lagos), in Ibadan, or St. Peter's. The production toured Europe, the United States (Brooklyn), Australia, always to uplifting reviews and reception, but it remained just a successful production. Not even the violent environment of Brooklyn, New York, came close as a substitute for Dugbe . . . .

But Kingston, Jamaica, apparently was—at least, so thought Sheila Graham, Artistic Director of a Kingston's theater group, "The Company." She read the play and said to herself: But this is Kingston! We met, and later I revisited Kingston, where I had not been for nearly eight years. Not only did I wholeheartedly agree, but when the search for a theater began for the production—there was no contest. Even after the tempting modernism of the Little Theatre, and the physical convenience of other spaces, it had to be the Ward Theatre, which looked, felt, and smelt like the Glover Hall transplanted into downtown Kingston directly from Kakawa Street, Lagos. Beatification clearly belonged in that environment. The same snacks and cigarettes vendors, makeshift stoves for the roasting of groundnuts, layabouts, itinerant lunatics, noisy traffic, and—"area boys"! A car parked on the narrow streets that ran beside or radiated from the Ward Theatre would assuredly lose a tire or headlamp—unless of course one had the sense to leave an "area boy" in charge. A throbbing market was just one street away. A stroll too far from the theater in a wrong direction landed you in a territory where everyone knew everybody else that had a right to be there, and watchful eyes followed your movements, just in case you had come spying for the enemy neighborhood, or the police.

The structure of the company that was assembled for Beatification only mimicked the 1960 Masks/Orisun Theatre relationship, for there was a crucial difference: the experienced "mother" section consisted of paid artistes, and so all the nurturing of the junior arm took place outside of the ensemble. The professional actors were there simply to master their roles in the play, so it was "The Company" that undertook the selection, training, and welfare of the younger members, who were welded into a separate entity. In short, it was "The Company" itself that corresponded to the 1960 Masks, and that team, I was to discover, was not an acting company, unlike the 1960 Masks. It was more a management group that happened to consist of some actors, an in-house playwright or two, and mounted productions by engaging actors from the professional and semiprofessional lists. The ultimate results were identical, however, for a new, autonomous entity emerged from the exercise, one that was less mature than the Orisun Theatre but more than made up for its lack of experience by a creative vitality and missionary zeal.

It was indeed a bubbling, undirected ferment of uneven talent into which I was suddenly thrust, and it made up for the horrendous frustrations that accompanied such a dubious mix of professionals, semiprofessionals, and rank amateurs, several of them unaccustomed to the discipline that is a basic condition of theater. Fortunately, Tunji Oyelana, the seasoned, but now homeless Orisun hand, could be coopted yet again to take some of the strain. After the Yorkshire Playhouse production, he had been unable to return to Nigeria, having been singled out for reprisals by the Abacha regime for his prominent role in that production, and his comments in interviews on the BBC and in a documentary that was made of the production and screened on Nigerian television. I was a WANTED man by the Abacha regime, and quite a few colleagues paid a price even for prior association with me. As frequently happened, frantic warnings from highly placed contacts reached us in time. The other actors were able to slip quietly into the country but, even so, two of them were pulled in for questioning. Until the death of Sanni Abacha, Tunji's home and office in Ibadan were placed under constant surveillance.

As with the Sisi Clara workshop, the junior sector had responded to advertisements and media promotion of what was dubbed "The Area Boy Project." They underwent auditions and a final selection process— hundreds, apparently, had applied! They also differed from the Orisun in the quality of their background, much of which sometimes made the sixties' environments of Isale-eko or Dugbe seem boarding schools in comparison. They were young—the youngest was ten, the "grandaddy" twenty-two: he had a deep baritone singing voice—but mostly they were all still at school, yet already adults and life-stressed in various ways. At sixteen, "Mamma" was living alone where she took care of her younger sister. Her father had long abandoned the family and later, the mother died. She took in washing and did other odd jobs to survive, and ensure that her sister went to school. "Clipper"—no one appeared to be without a nickname, and I wondered if this was another survival strategy, an acquired, deflective personality—"Clipper" was a boy cadet who was clearly enamored of the glamour and discipline of the military, while "Chicken," who perhaps was one of the handful without a notable background of trauma, attended rehearsals under the ambiguous shadow of her stepfather. His principles were against his stepdaughter appearing on stage, but at the same time, he found all the attention paid to Chicken's evident talents irresistible. "Molewa," by contrast, had a Rastafarian father, also remarried, who proudly appeared at rehearsals, sought every opportunity to discuss world politics with me, and appeared in photographs. "Sally" (fourteen) had lost an eye in mysterious circumstances. The widely accepted story was that she had been battered by a drunken father, but she persisted in her own tale of a mysterious bird which flew in through the window of her home one day smack into her eye. She claimed that the seemingly blind eye was not truly blind but was her eye into another world with whose denizens she could commune. And for this reason she would not agree to visit an eye specialist. "Aston" had lost his brother in a shootout, then, during rehearsals, his father was invalided and later died, victim of another shootout. "Tisha" would lose her life, at fourteen, a few weeks after the close of Beatification. She walked out of her home one normal morning and straight into a bullet from the crossfire of a gang war . . . .

These were the garrison children. At least half of them had emerged from broken homes. Most had known violence at first hand, in one form or the other. "Theater" was a strange concept to many. They grew up learning to know their own turfs and learnt that it was dangerous to stray across certain streets, or cross border lines. The politicians had created the garrisons. In order to guarantee and seal tight their political fiefdoms, they built schools in them, clinics and recreation centers of sorts, created jobs— usually in construction—for their supporters and their dependents, some of whom doubled the job of foremen and supervisors with the more powerful positions of being the "dons" of the garrisons, controlling lives from infancy to death, which for many was often sudden and violent. The marijuana trade sustained many; so did trafficking in harder drugs. The garrisons went by exotic names—Tel Aviv, Barbican, Tivoli Gardens, Trenchtown, etc., and a full generation at least—since the political wars took its all-or-nothing turn in the sixties—had been raised, gone to school, married, raised their own families, and sometimes died without stepping across the street that separated them from the next garrison. Public transport traversed these streets, moving through one garrison into the next, but you simply did not get down from the bus until you were safely in your own neighborhood.

I was pursued, it would appear, by the violence from which I had escaped. I had an early taste of it one afternoon when I toured the garrisons to obtain a flavor of this Lagos live-alike, stopping in a bar from time to time for a beer and conversation. I was accompanied—a condition to which I was learning to adjust—by an assigned security officer in mufti, but not merely to validate my presence in a suspicious neighborhood. Evidence of the activities of Sanni Abacha's overseas death squads had created this necessity in certain environments. Less than two hours after we left Trenchville, a shootout occurred, right outside the bar where we had sat. The female bartender, a buxom wit of immense vitality with whom we had passed an enjoyable half-hour or so, caught a stray bullet and was killed. For some moments, I wondered, could Abacha's roaming squads have successfully tracked me down, hit the right place but mistimed their operation? But no, it was indeed nothing more than the daily dose of local garrison violence.

Not surprisingly, theater, for a number of these youths, was primarily an escape from the violence and claustrophobia of those garrisons. Once the bug had bitten, however, it became their lives. After the preliminary selection, the lucky ones who made the short list had begun training in lighting, set construction, costume making, movement, and acting. When I arrived to make the final selection for those who would appear in Beatification, they had begun to utilize their personal and social experiences to create sketches and, under the supervision of their coaches in "The Company," bring these to near-performance readiness. Intervening in their rehearsals, I was—need I add?—plunged back to the nineteen-sixties of Orisun's birth. The violence of Kingston was of a different quality, far more arbitrary and disproportionately sudden when compared to that of Nigeria's politics in the sixties, the beginning of social disintegration that had led to the inevitability of Orisun Theatre. Nigeria from the late seventies to the present, of course, far outstrips Jamaica in the violence of robbery gangs, kidnappings, hired killers (mostly patronized by business competitors), night and daytime holdups and shootouts, siege of residential areas, thrill killings, even student (cultic) warfare, and of course—state terrorism. The Kingston kids appeared to possess the same social sensibility as the Orisun group, the same commitment and passion, but additionally, a streak of evangelism. They were eager to excel, constantly revealing unsuspected capabilities. During break or after a rehearsal of Beatification, one after the other would sneak up on me when he thought the others were not watching: "Prof, what do you think now? You think you can put back those lines you cut from my part?" Within earshot, Tunji Oyelana would break into laughter—it was all a replay of Orisun of the sixties!

The violence constantly intruded, but violence had become part of their lives. After each rehearsal, it was a quasi-military operation to ensure that they got home safely, and there were times when the police came to rehearsals or radioed my minder to pass on a message—either we let the kids return home early on account of information of an impending gang war, or else the gang war had commenced and we should keep the affected members with us for the night. Every constraint only made them more resolved to break free, and this theater activity was their personal and collective instrument. It was orisunitis, Kingston strain. Nothing was going to interfere, absolutely nothing, not even disapproving parents. For their sketches, it was all—boundless energy and exuberance. The explosion of sometimes fifty to sixty pulsating forms, fanning through the audience in their trademark opening to every performance was always breathtaking. From that moment, they totally dominated their audience and held them in a tension of expectation and dynamic reflection. They mostly created their own masks and costumes, operated their lighting. Mostly, they wrote their own songs. Poignantly, for their first outing, they settled on the title Border Connections—for most of them, they were crossing borders for the very first time in their lives. Creative borders, obviously, but also violent, artificial borders that had been deliberately erected by the absentee political kingpins. Their obsessive theme was thus—political manipulation, the exploitation and division of their communities. They decried the violence that ruled and ruined their lives and depicted the agonies of mothers who constantly buried their children. The titles of the sketches reflected a more sentimental yet more crusading mood than the Orisun stamp (which was more satiric and aggressive) but the social content was near identical: Youth Oppressed; Mi Son Dead; Mi Hungry, Mi Angry; Isn't There Another Way? Put Down de Gun! They were apostles of change and hope.

There was the usual quota of dropouts, inevitably. They either dropped out on their own or were firmly ejected for indiscipline or ego trips—like the quite talented vocalist and songwriter, given a prominent role, who imagined that he was already a star. Sanctions were firmly applied as needed. For most, however, and for most of the time, every day was a day for some artistic border-crossing. As for the physical borders, the greatest day for everyone was when, for the first time, they performed in enemy territory. Eventually, the "dons", who had either heard of the show, or watched it on television or other neutral ground, embraced it as a revelation. They negotiated "command performances" on their turfs, over which they proudly presided and played host. These were men who would end a twenty-year friendship in a burst of gunfire, for no other cause than a suspicion by one that he had been "dissed"—disrespected—by his lifelong friend. Rape was a way of life for most. Beneath the bravado of the warlords, however, was a definite war-weariness, for which the "message" of the youths offered prospects of eventual relief and a change in social sensibilities. The proof was not long in coming—the "dons" passed the word among rivaling gangs that it was time for a cessation of random violence. They sent out the word: Bring out the gun, or bury it.

The Beatification of Area Boy has invaded the Kingston stage and vanished, but there battles on a group of young performers, both male and female, who have appropriated for their now established troupe, with its ancillary activities, the name—"The Area Boys Club"—though I am now informed that they are considering a change of name to the less contumacious "The Area Youths Club." In truth, that name should be simply Orisun, but how are they to know that! They design their own t-shirt logos, caps, and even publish a mimeographed journal called The Area Boys Newsletter. Encouraged and sponsored by businesses, patronized by the very politicians who had created their alienation resources in the first place, they have been featured in television documentaries outside Jamaica. Their Border Connections performs on national occasions and continues to make the rounds of the nation with new songs, new sketches, mimes, and dances. Rap poetry is being shaped into an original dramatic form that I mentally call rap-drama—it is a genre that promises a breakthrough in street/epic theater and allied forms. The mission of the Area Boys remains tightly focused but ambitious—to transform their neighborhoods and, progressively, the society and its political culture. Now that is a mission of optimism that the pioneer Orisun of the sixties never dared assign to its being. It is a daring of which only youth are capable, and then, only such youth as have been immersed from birth in a world from which, hitherto in their understanding, there had been no visible escape.

A New Incubation?
Democratic politics (of sorts) is back in Nigeria. Prisoners have been set free, and the tortured and bereaved are undergoing communal healing. The horrors of the past are laid bare, daily. With each new revelation, the nation gasps in disbelief. On my second visit home, I drifted by instinct towards that abandoned space of St. Peter's Church, whose inspection had been interrupted four years earlier. I will make you fishers of men . . . if you follow me. It seemed to me that this was the song that the garrison kids of Kingston were singing to the reprobate dons, the degenerate politicians, and their brainwashed stooges—I will make you fishers—not killers—of men! And to think that those hard-bitten enemies of life—some of them, at least—really did listen, really did commence a self re-appraisal? Really did follow those young apostles?

Beneath the creaky boards of the now secularized church of St. Peter's, I thought I heard the scratching of orisunitis millenicus, pleading to be let out.