[caption id="attachment_52171" align="alignright" width="360"] Femi Osofisan[/caption] By Olu Obafemi A. Poring over the appropriateness of my choice to give this Birthday Lecture on the occasion of Femi Osofisan’s entry into the Septuagenarian Season, I engaged in a brief exchange, on phone, with Sola Adeyemi in February, who was acting on behalf of his colleagues who organized this very thoughtful and positively expedient literary festival. I recalled the opening statements in the interview I held with Femi in 2009, which in fact was the third in the decade- by- decade interviews I had held with him since 1978, in the history of our journey together. It goes like this; You recall it is twenty years now since we had our last interview in 1989—which was eleven years after we had the first. Ordinarily, It should be simply unnecessary us recording interviews, given the unique privilege, at least for me, of our intimate relationship. Yet, it is always critical for objective distancing, in order to make creative and scholarly mediation possible and enduring. This is the necessity, even expediency, for this interview. Now, here we are in 2016, and how apt this observation has become! I told Sola that, given the intimate relationship through friendship and brotherliness which exists between Femi (he likes to be called Egbon nowadays, even as he approaches this 70th with curious cavalier,) over the past four decades or so, can I possibly offer useful critical thoughts—do I possess the power of the ‘objective distancing’ required of me to ‘undertake a creative and scholarly mediation’ of any enduring value about our celebrant? The answer Sola gave me was both reassuring and challenging to the effect that what is required of me is not necessarily a rigorous theorizing but a talk from the angle of the closeness between us which will lend an uncommon insight into the life of the man of the moment, and which will fire the passion of participants and help set the tone of the Conference. You can all well imagine my dilemma or is it predicament? in preparing to meet the demands of this Lecture as proposed, informally, by the Organizers of this Conference. The fact is that Femi and I, and a few other close or closer friends perhaps, talk all the time—on the traumas of society, our private lives, our work as writers, teachers, public commentators and theatre workers, and so on. The boundaries of our engagements have blurred so considerably that it has become difficult to separate friendship banter form purist discourses; jokes and jangle from pedantic demagoguery; rage and rail in work-a-day and in our trade of storytelling or indeed the landscape of scholarship. Honestly, how I had wished that this cup would pass over me! But as you can see, the Organizer’s gentle but firm importunacy would not go until I am here. But when the talk becomes too personal and therefore sheer tedium, just tap the desk and we’ll sing a song! This is simply because, to write about the life and works of Osofisan and his several selves on his numerous and diverse journeys with the Muse, is at once profoundly simple and unbelievably profoundly difficult. B This is why I intend to write freely about those things, those stories of our lives in our society—in its state of degeneracy, decadence and occasional flash of promiset—the stories we live through and tell in our profession—as we struggle to make and find meaning for ourselves and our society, indeed humanity. In doing this, one finds Femi, leading most engagingly in the reconstruction and recreation, regeneration of our immediate humanity, through his many creative talents as a Humanist— which manifest in poetry, drama and theatre, critical scholarship, songs and music, teaching and public intellection—of the traumas provoked by social incoherence, inequity, squalor, poverty, sectarian prejudice, since before independence and to the postcolonial present. The term, the concept, the notion and thus the curative metaphors that I have found most apt as deployed by Femi Osofisan for capturing the travails of our lives and the life of our Motherland, as perceived, at times with supernumerary devotion is trauma (implying tremor, quaver, quiver, all forms of violence, in tremulous dimensions). And this is not strictly from the Freudian/ Jungian and Lacanian perspectives of the strictly psychological rendering of the notion, even though Osofisan is deeply concerned with the damage trauma does to the individual and collective psyche—that which takes trauma as the state of emotion which provokes and can /may ‘cause long-term damage’ but only as it leads, in this rampaging writer, Femi Osofisan and most committed writers before and after our generation as they respond to these upsetting and unsettling experiences. That is not all, but one which triggers the perennial quest for illumination and regeneration, expiation and repair—and in revolutionary terms reform and transformation. This implacable perception of trauma, and the etching of metaphors for recuperation and cure, has propelled our celebrant, Femi Osofisan, along these numerous and diverse but fascinating pathways of his creative engagements for over five decades and still going! C. Geoffrey Hartman, in his 2000’s study titled Representing Trauma: Issues, Contexts, Narrative Tools, opined that ‘True history or fiction has always required an extraordinary act of the sympathetic imagination: an identification with experiences or stories not our own’’ In our case in Africa, and Nigeria especially, this is only partly true as the implosion of trauma and violence has become part of our history and we are all, writers, politicians, workers and the masses, preys and their predators, are perennially implicated, the former from the receiving end and the latter from the inflicting end.. Hartman continues to stress that the ‘dilemma of remembering a painful past has been crucial in the last two hundred years; a period of unprecedented social, economic and political changes; genocide,; and disappearing cultures’ (and that) ‘Writers and workers of the imagination’ because of their acute sensibility, irrepressible sensitivity, have committed themselves to the art and the urgent business of witnessing and testifying to these cataclysms ‘as they attempt to preserve personal and collective memories from assimilation, repression or misrepresentation’ [caption id="attachment_52173" align="alignright" width="612"] Olu Obafemi[/caption] As all writers are acutely aware, art reflects and indeed refracts ‘ a growing awareness of the effects of catastrophe and oppression on the individual psyche,’ leading to an ‘examination of the psychological consequences of wars, centuries of slavery and human traffic, poverty, colonization, and domestic abuse have provoked ad indeed compelled creativity of unimaginable magnitude’ In the particular instance of writers before and of Osofisan’s generation, these two thousands seasons , to borrow Ayi Kwei’s epochalization of African centuries of deprivation, degradation, decimation and deculturization, have had the tendency to provoke avid creative prolificacy Trauma and its narratives, and especially the emerging creativity from it, enhance recovery from collective amnesia of the horrid experiences of life and generates illumination, social recovery and reconstruction through the consuming power of creative metaphors. From theorizing to plain witness narratives, a plethora of works of creativity have emerged all over the world—‘’ testimonies of the Holocaust, Vietnam, civil wars including our own Nigerian Civil War, terror and insurgency rage, religious violence, kidnapping, rape, racism, incest, cultism, ritual killings, money laundering and other manifestations of corruption, colonization, etc have produced creative tornadoes across the world; Contemporary writers here and elsewhere—Wole Soyinka (in his prison notes, The Man Died, Season of Anomy and Madmen and Specialist), Chinua Achebe’s Anthills of the Savannah and Girls at War, Author Koestler’s The Yogi and the Commissar, Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago, Pablo Neruda, Dennis Brutus, Toni Morrison, Jamaica Kincaid, Femi Osofisan, wa Thiong’O, Allison, and so on, have engaged their creative imagination in providing prophylactics and recuperative antidote to the damaging and ravaging impacts of trauma on man and society’s psyche with terrible lucidity and comprehensibility. D. Trauma via Violence and Dystopia and its Curative Metaphors in Osofisan’s Odyssey Osofisan is the most persistent, indeed consistent, among African writers, to the best of my knowledge, in devoting a substantial part of his life and work to reflecting, pondering and refracting on the power of deprivation, anarchy, chaos, violence and dystopia, and indeed, traumatizing experiences, to produce qualitative and socially regenerative literature: Right from the beginning of his adventure as a writer and a scholar, the question of whether ‘committed aesthetics’, as he recalled again recently, ‘dedicated to the principles of democracy and individual freedom,’ is ‘feasible at all in a season overwhelmingly determined by the demons of error…’ We find, almost simultaneously, in his creative work and scholarship the recurrence of predation, anomy, violence and the trauma they yield in our individual and collective psyches, and the commitment to finding the courage and compassion, indeed, the curative metaphors for redeeming our society. Think of Osofisan’s the two-part essay titled ‘The Quality of Hurt’(1974) on poetry; ‘ Anubis Resurgent: Chaos and Political Vision in Recent Nigerian Literature” (1975): “Do the Humanities Humanize? –A Dramatist’s Encounter With Anarchy and the Nigerian Intellectual Culture” (1981); Equally palpable in this regard are many of the essays in the main studies, collections of essays in ‘The Nostalgic Drum: Essays on Literature, Drama and Culture”(2001) and Insidious Treasons: Drama in a Postcolonial State(2001); Literatures and the Pressures of Freedom: The Challenges of the Nigerian Writer in the 21st Century’ (2010); Literature and the Pressures of Freedom (2001); The Muse of Power and the Apologues of Pain: Literature in the Forest of a Thousand Dystopias (2011). In Osofisan’s most recent review of Insidious Treasons (2016), you find the climax of this fascination with trauma and its creative therapy, (through the stage). Reflect, specifically on the pieces on ‘The political imperative African Dramaturgy’, ‘The Revolution as Muse: Drama as Surreptitious Insurrection in a Postcolonial Military State The dramatist proposes, in fact asserts, in his usually provocative polemics, in the title essay of his recent essayistic offering, ‘’ The Muse of Anomy: Literature and Contemporary Nigerian Life’’(2016), that any ‘form of artistic expression’- be it ‘fiction, drama, poetry, sculpture, music’—is a product of psychosis; since ‘the muse of art is, invariably, the muse of anomy, and that ‘horror, suffering and anguish are the bed on which the seed of literature flourishes’ (253).’ I must quote him fully to illustrate his consciousness of the creative avidity of trauma: Anomy, as we know, is synonymous with chaos, violence and anarchy. It is not normally a condition to be wished for any society. But it is, perhaps astonishingly, the fertilizing food of the creative genius. Art, it seems, is compromised by happiness. The artist, however endowed, will sooner or later, find himself lured into silence or somnolence by luxury and content…felicity and satiety (for the artist,) are dangerous drugs, the type of things that he must not pray for because, with them, the edge of his creative imagination must inevitably grow blunt. The disease known as ‘writer’s block’ is bred in comfort, and not in want.’…perverse as it may sound, the gods of creativity arrive to possess their worshippers only at such moments when these votaries are in acute distress, when they are sunk in situations of deep emotional and psychological crisis or lost in ecstatic delirium’’ (My emphasis). In short, the graver the trauma, the better the creativity.’ Because it is pain, not pleasure that accelerate the ‘creative motion’. It is suffering and not satiety, anguish and not euphoria, frenzy, not sobriety, that animates and powers the catalytic impulse to creation. Thus, the artist is most articulate and/or sublime in the presence of pain, as he tries to find ammunition to trounce pain and gain triumph, for society, since ‘the candour of genius is honed by the knife of catatonia.’ In the works of our fresh and celebrated Septuagenarian, Femi Osofisan, through the numerous detours and pathways of his restless, creative life, we encounter his engagement, dialectical and ideological disputations, locating, as Hartman graphically captures it, the importance of trauma as a ‘ multi-contextual social issue’ and its concomitant ‘consequence of political ideologies and its generational departure platforms. In 1996), lifting himself from dirge (mourning the deaths of so many writers, Ken Saro Wiwa, slain by the State, Zulu Sofola, Efua Sutherland, Ayo Mamudu, Sesan Ajayi,Soony Labou Tansi and others) to hope ( at the wake of Spring) at the tale end of Winter, he could recoil from the reality of trauma; “True, our continent is bedevilled by all kinds of problems, some of horrendous proportions,; true, there is much brutality and violence on our streets, there is widespread misery and squalor in many homes, true, the relationship between several of our governments and the people they claim to serve is that of naked terror and abuse. But even with all these, as the trope of Spring suggests, there is also in Africa incommensurable delight. Beyond the savageries, beyond the wanton cruelties, are acres and acres of generosity, of the purest compassion’ Osofisan speaks of undying resistance to prevalent Trauma,(our continent being ‘bound to violence’, in the frightening presence of the ‘the tragedies on the continent(which is) always so frightening , so absurdly grotesque… that we find ourselves trapped unwittingly in this role of self-flagellation’ (150). Finding creative strategies for dislodging trauma in the human (society’s) psyche, is, for Osofisan, a way of engaging history as it tries to move away from a-historicity, mythopoesis, individualism to adopt the option/alternative of collective engagement with finding meaning and essence to contemporary social incoherence, or indeed, how to assist society to self rediscovery. I assert, without any fear of contradiction, that right from his outset on the path of his mission as a votive of the creative Muse, Osofisan has made the interrogation of trauma as social-historical experience a creative enterprise which needs to be internalized, demystified, reconstructed, challenged and overcome, if society must gain liberation. In Osofisan’s perceptive vision, trauma, in the form of violence and dystopia, is not a subject of merely imagining as belonging to the past; it is tremulously present and terrifyingly extant, with consequences for the future if not apprehended, engaged, understood, analysed and defeated. Thus, in its varying levels of manifestations, trauma is the very dialectical climate of contemporary society, Nigeria and Africa in our case, which we ignore to the greatest peril of the survival of humanity—whether as manifest in 9-11, ISIS, Al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, ethno-religious wars, militancy of the MEND and Avengers’ coloration, the herdsmen’s terrorsm and its national equilibrium-threatening outrage across the nation, and ravaging poverty across the world, and so on, we are in the strangulating clutches of trauma and Osofisan is relentless in his preoccupation with raising mass awareness to its frightening reality and its combat. In his polemics and creative works in print and on stage these many years, Osofisan has raised alarm, with unbridled stridency, to the rage of violence on our landscape. Political violence and the corruption cankerworm dominate the story of A Restless Run of Locusts (1969) and Kolera Kolej (1975) (his first novel turned to a play). In his first poetry volume, Minted Coins (1988), under unhidden pseudonym, Okinba Launko, he alerts us to the fact of the growing kleptomania among our politicians who have shredded the national flag to sew their ‘under-pants.’ I have from 1978 to 1981 and published in 1982 and 1996) devoted attention to the works of the writers of my generation, led on the stage by Osofisan, Omotoso, and Sowande in their proposition of a revolutionary alternative to the systemic violence wrought on society by dysfunctional governance in the mould of crude and obtuse capitalism. Many other scholars and critics of Osofisan’s works-from Biodun Jeyifo (1985), Chris Dunton (1992) and Sandra Richards (1995) to Muyiwa Awodiya (1993) and Sola Adeyemi(1999) have directed attention to the numerous paths Osofisan has beaten to fashion discourse dialectics for social transformation. To cite Biodun Jeyifo’s supportive, if incomplete, statement here that ‘in Nigeria, ‘only Osofisan, Sowande, and Omotoso…have dared to believe in , and represent revolutionary alternatives to the contradictions of the semi-colonial and neo-colonial societies of Black Africa (1985: 62). To be sure, the early revolutionary plays of Femi Osofisan (The Chattering and the Song, 1976, Once Upon Four Robbers, and Morountodun then unpublished), Kole Omotoso’s The Curse (1976 and Shadows in the Horizon(1977) and Bode Sowande’s The Night Before and Farewell to Babylon, my own Pestle on the Mortar (unpublished then in 1975 but on the ABU stage, and Nights of the Mystical Beast ( unpublished also but on Leeds stage in 1980), Tunde Fatunde’s Water No Get Enemy and Oga Na Tief Man) had begun to raise, on stage, the dialectical materialist alternative to the bourgeois social reality that characterize (s)(d) governance in our society since the First Republic, provoking the literal and metaphorical conflagration on our national landscape—the trauma of violence that Osofisan’s oeuvre preoccupies through his serial pathways of creativity. As I began to mention, Osofisan himself is acutely and deeply concerned about the examples across ages and geography of trauma and violence —from Euripedean classics on the horrorsof wars, Shakespeare’s tragedies , Dickson’s London, ‘Balzac in Paris’ against the emerging Industrial Revolution in Europe, ‘Gorky, Mayakovski, Dostoyevsky (War and Peace).. He reminds us of the Cold War and the writings of Latin Americans on the communist revolutions through the works of Pablo Neruda, Las Vargas, Allende, Garcia Marqueze, and so on. What of the growth of a national literature in Nigeria through the works of our literary patriarchs in their varied involvements in the events of the cataclysmic, fratricide of 1966-70—Wole Soyinka eloquently reconstructed in ‘quartet, the prison memoirs, The Man Died and Season of Anomy Madmen and Specialits and Jero’s Metamorphosis, Chinua Achebe’s Anthills of the Savannah and Beware Soul Brotherr, JP Bekderemo Clark’s Casualties, and the post-war outings of Cyprian Ekwensi, John Munonye, Elechi Amadi, even the younger ones like Kenule Saro Wiwa, Kole Omotoso, Femi Osofisan Niyi Osundare, Tunde Fatunde, Odia Ofeimun, Tanure Ojaide, Funsho Aiyejina, Festus Iyayi, and so on. All these and the creative outpourings of generations of writers of both gnder, following immediately after; including Catherine Achonolu, Akachi Ezeigbo, Tess Onwueme, Ahmed Yerima, Esaba Irobi, Harry Garuba, and so on …have had to assemble those irrefutable , condensed traumatic experiences to curative metaphors and cathartic (not in its reactionary Aristotelian notion of that concept) processes. All of these essentialize the inextricability of literature and society, in their ‘endless process of mutual refraction and (re) construction’ and the artist’s in Nigeria having blossomed best in the period of trauma and social incoherence and dislocation where ‘the ogre of anomy triggers off their talent for the creation of beauty.’ Osofisan’s works—in all the genres aptly summarizes into Pain Remembers, Love Rekindles—a title of one of his poetic titles. In them, we encounter the phenomenal axis of rebirth emerging from the fundamental understanding of self and communal knowledge of those factors that brought violence, incoherence, dystopia and social tragedies which remain un-abating in our society since shortly before and after political independence, even raging like vampires in our street today as Osofisan turns Seventy. E. (Tribute?) This Lecture therefore trebles as Tribute, explorations of the celebrant’s diverse devices and paths trodden to mediate in our society’s and humanities many travails and a celebration of his commitment to art and society. We live in an age when such things as honouring our heroes, our mentors, our great achievers, have become a rarity. People would rather despise those who have built them, or simply pretend as if they never existed than celebrate them. Governments driven to discomfort by the bitter truth o the nib of the acerbic pen, would rather censor than celebrate writers. When teachers, colleagues, friends and former and present students, who nowadays, find it essential to celebrate one of the greatest of our compatriots and builders, like Femi Osofisan, they deserve any and every encouragement. This is my way of doing just that. I thus wish to congratulate, in no uncertain terms, all the organizers of this four-day Conference on the occasion of my friend’s seventieth birthday. Facts are facts and they are hallowed and sacred. I shall therefore continue, as I will do here, to state what is obvious about the celebrant on this occasion of his birthday, which has caused the creative and intellectual world to converge or descend on Ibadan to celebrate him. First, as you must have been inundated these past two days, is that the man’s profile simply intimidates and confounds even the most cynical, that we are dealing with a rarity. The University of Ibadan, ten years ago, gave the following citation when he gave the Faculty lecture a few years back; it liberates me from any further tinkering with a justifying bio-data. They describe Osofisan as A restless artist and multiple award winner, with over two dozen plays in print, plus four novellas and five volumes of poetry. Professor Osofisan has been honoured with fellowship from various international bodies, including the British Council, the International Writers Programme at Iowa, the Henri Clewes Foundation in Napoule, France, and the Ragdale Foundation at Lake Forest. He was Drama Consultant to FESTAC 77, to MAMSER, and to the recently concluded COJA. From 2000 to 2004, he served as the General Manager and Chief Executive of the National Theatre Iganmu, Lagos. As a scholar, Professor Osofisan has to his credit three books of published essays, including The Nostalgic Drum, published by Howard University Press in Washington; five edited books; several monographs and essays in learned journals; as well as three books of translation. He is a former President of the Association of Nigerian Authors [ANA]; a current Vice-President of International PEN, Nigeria Chapter. Osofisan was honoured with the French National Order of Merit Award in 1991; the Faculty of Arts Distinguished Alumnus Award in 2001; and the Nigerian National Order of Merit Award, which is the highest in the Nigerian academia, in 2004. This profile has of course been dwarfed by his breath-ceasing achievements and exploits in the past decade since this was written. By way of memory-waffling, I have said so in a tribute published in a book when he turned 60, in a way that anticipated the University’s encomium thus; I have used the terms profile and multi-talented rather frequently already, unsubstantiated, but without trepidation, as many of those who will genuinely celebrate Femi Osofisan must know. How else can one describe a man who has published fifty-one five full-length plays, five novels (he would describe them as novelettes, and actually published them under a pseudonym), five books of poetry, six robust works of literary scholarship (bringing his creative and scholarly outings and edited works to a daunting 100), numerous edited journals and hundreds of published newspaper columns? For his effort in painting our nation and Africa’s creative landscape literally red, as undoubtedly Africa’s most prolific playwright, inimitable scholar and itinerant player, laurels and awards have come his way in appreciable measure and from all over the world Appointed Emeritus Professor of Theatre Arts at the University of Ibadan, he was recently made a Distinguished Professor of Performing Arts at the Kwara State University, Ilorin, while also presently serving as a Fellow of the International Research Centre ‘Interweaving Performance Cultures’ at the Freie Universitat in Berlin, Germany. Becoming an Award winner literally before weaning, having won, in 1965, the First Western Nigeria Broadcasting Service Independence Prize with his Essay, ‘Five Years Ago’ and the first T.M. Aluko Prize for Literature at the Government Colllege Ibadan. Osofisan is a multiple award winner: 1982, he was awarded the City of Pennsylvania Bell Award for Artistic Performance for his role in A Flash I the Sun directed by the Prof Joel Adedeji: 1987, ANA Poetry Prize and the Regional Commonwealth Poetry Prize for First collection both with Minted Coins (as Okinba Launko):1992, Ford Foundation Fellow, Africana Studies and Research Centre, Cornell University, USA, Fellow of Drama of Other Worlds, King Alfred’s College, Winchester, England, Grand Patron of the Arts, Ghana Association of Writers: 1993, Ragdale Foundation for Playwriting, Lake Forest, ANA Drama Prize with Yungba-Yungba: 1997,made Officer de l’Ordre Nationale de Meerite, Repulique de France (having in i973 been unable to secure hotel accommodation in Paris and slept on a bench at the train station!): 2000, appointed General Manager/ Chief Executive Officer of the National Theatre: 2001, conferred with the Award of Distinguished Alumnus, Faculty of Ars, University of Ibadan; 2004, Awarded the Nigerian National Order of Merit (NNOM) in the Humanities; 2006, Conferred with the Fonlon Nichols Award by the Arican Liteature Association and Fellow of the Nigerian Academy of Letters. E. The Text In this brief talk, which I must confess I only manage to scramble together, I shall discuss Osofisan’s historic and pioneering contribution to the development of committed drama and theatre in Nigeria, as the creative arm of the rise of radical ideological commitment to the evolution of an alternative vision to the rapidly decaying obtuse capitalist structure of our fledging independent, neo-colonial nation. What do I mean by this? The politicians, to whom the mantle and maze of governance was handed, succeeded only in wrecking the dreams and promise of a new and fulfilled nation after the trauma of colonialism and imperialism. The initial nationalist efforts and political ideals of erecting a virile and vibrant nation gave way to political brigandage, ethnic nationalism, self-seeking and election manipulation and thuggery. The writers, many of who provided the cultural arm of the struggle for independence, soon retreated, having being afflicted with disillusion and near-anguish. The first generation of Nigerian writers were critical of this failure of vision of the politician, but did not really go beyond giving, through literature, a lucid but cynical expression of the tragedy of dysfunctional leadership. Writers like Soyinka, Clark, Achebe and so on, aptly painted the picture of socio-spiritual decadence that had overtaken the political terrain % a situation which eventually led to the collapse of the First Republic, first through military coups, then a Civil War and subsequently the rise of a military oligarchy and the death of democracy. The writers, however critical, offer no positive alternative solution to the sordid situation they exposed and criticised. There was therefore the need, among the younger generation, from the early seventies in all sectors and disciplines, to begin to find new options, new solution, new redeeming strategies to the failed social economy that they find themselves growing in. A radical, left-bound, elite emerged along the Ibadan-Ife axis. Prominent among them were the late Comrade Ola Oni (he being more of a mentor than a peer), Omafume Onoge, Bade Onimode, Biodun Jeyifo, Edwin Madunagu, O. O. Darah Ropo Sekoni and so on. They began to offer, from a materialist ideological perspective, new transformational strategies and vision for society what they refer to, in the summative words of the sociology scholar, Omafume Onoge, as ‘positive affirmative consciousness’. It is the literary and dramatic segment of this, one which is less explosive because creative, but no less dynamic, that the new generation of committed Nigerian dramatists emerged to represent. Femi Osofisan was clearly and unequivocally in the pioneering, driving seat of these emergent and emerging radical voices from across the apron of the stage. He was, and still is, the most articulate and most prolific of that generation both in terms of ideological commitment and the political aesthetics of all of us in that generation, which included, among others, Kole Omotoso, Bode Sowande, Tunde Fatunde and this writer. There are other writers, who are not dramatists. The poets Niyi Osundare and Odia Ofeimun, Tanure Ojaide, Funso Aiyejina belong essentially to this generation of writers who were palpably committed to the social responsibility of writers to deal, urgently with contemporary social problems in society, with the sole aim of raising mass consciousness of a positive, even revolutionary alternative, to the pervading decadence on the Nigerian landscape. As I said before, Osofisan offers a clear and lucid parameter of the departing lines between his generation and the one that came before. I shall quote a statement by him to buttress this claim. In an interview with Ossie Enekwe in 1978, he had pointed out as follows: A number of us, the younger generation in fact share this perspective...you may say we are leftists without being essentially dogmatic about Marxism but our essentially socialist leanings and convictions separate us from the older writers by a wide margin...we wanted to create an alternative tradition...from a materialist perspective. We look at literature as a social force, an ideological weapon. Now, it will be interesting to see how many of our students and writers of the younger generation that came after apprehend or take seriously those concepts and theories that informed the ideological departures and divergences stated above. How many of our literature and theatre students are informed about those varieties of commitments which lead writers to take positions that reflect development in the social economy and politics of the land? It would be a fascinating exercise to ask us to define Marxism, or its economic and ideological opposite, Capitalism. In the theatre classes, we study Brecht and his Alienation Effect, including his impact or influence on our dramatist, the subject of today’s talk. But are we aware that even the Masters from whom Osofisan and his generation of writers parted visional company also related to Brecht and are influenced by him? The fine conceptual and ideological lines of differences may have since been lost on us in our classroom and theatres today as the two generations of writers have written plays, prose-fiction and poetry whose radical and commitment dispositions have mesehed/or mergd somewhat. Well, this is the subject of future enquiry. Obasi (2012) reports that theoretical basis is often synonymous to” the opportunity to explore the distinctions between the theatrical and dramatic activity and to appreciate the give-and-take inherent link between non-dramatic theatrical activity and dramatic theatrical activity”. Adeseke (2014) quotes Akinyemi and Falola’s (2009) opinion on the personality of Osofisan’s dramatic representations, from the standpoint that: Osofisan’s plays are geared towards the emancipation of the oppressed, the common man, the underdogs, and the opinion that Nigerian can be a haven for all, if there is good leadership. His dramatic radical oeuvres, spanning more than three decades, have provided an ambit for making comments on the Nigerian society, using the Yoruba worldview and cultural milieu as a springboard. (p. 29) As is evident, and in spite of claims made for him otherwise, Osofisan continues, trough his craft and rhetoric, to be a deployer of leftist theory of dialectical materialism which as defined by Clapp cited in Obasi (2012) is “a theory used in the explanation of Marxist ideas.” He explains that “it is a science of the general laws of motion and development of nature, human society and thought which was and remains a revolutionary philosophy that constantly challenges capitalism in every sphere and substituting science for dreams and prejudice”. I would iterate that the core/nucleus of Marxism is unequivocally on the imperativeness of social change which of course is a product of a concise engagement of the aesthetics of revolution; revolutionary aesthetics. The basic dilemma that confronts playwrights like Osofisan is how to create a theatre that will form part of the socio-historical crisis in Nigeria as well as ‘transcend the banality of everyday experience’. Osofisan is deeply aware of this dilemma facing a dramatist who is committed to protecting a socialist viewpoint of art as well as giving an aesthetically valid art and most of the experiments that he has engaged his theatre laboratory with have been concerned with striking the appropriate equipoise between aesthetic balance and political correctness. He expresses the enormity if the task in an interview with this writer nearly four decades ago thus; For those who want a certain profundity in their art, a lot of the things we do will be very disappointing, because you can’t really get to the depths of experience. And I suppose that this is why one is still working and writing... that one should get what will be very social relevant and at the same time have some depth. Obasi (2012) also submits that “for anyone seeking to change the world in a socialist direction, the ideals of Marxism are critical, and are indispensable tools and weapons to assist the working class in its struggle to change society”. This socialist belief in collectivism, as opposed to the ‘protagonist ego’ of bourgeois art, is evident in the recruitment of slaves and rank and file for social revolution by the enlightened few such as Leje and Sontri n Osofisan’s The Chattering and the Song, and as Prof Biodun Jeyifo (2006) has recounted, is a dialogic ferment in The Oriki for a Grasshopper Ugwu (2011) reports that: The development of revolutionary consciousness during this theatrical period was signalled by the appearance of writers whose works were rooted in the Marxist revolutionary ideology. The proponents of this theatre inclination are Femi Osofisan, Bode Sowande, Kole Omotoso, Tunde Fatunde and Tess Onwueme. Plays of the revolutionary bent are: Femi Osofisan’s A RestlessRun of Locusts (1975), The Chattering and the Song (1976), Who is Afraid of Solarin (1982), Once Upon Four Robbers (1980), Morountodun (1982), No More the Wasted Breed (1982)… Sola Fosudo (2012) affirms dysfunctional governance and leadership failure as an engaging themes in Osofisan’s theatre when he maintains that, In all, there is a general consensus by the critics of Osofisan that he creates through his writing the awareness for responsible leadership in society, the consequences of misplaced priorities in decision-making, and the results of societal vices such as corruption, non-accountability and despotism. These themes are clearly portrayed in plays such as Once Upon Four Robbers, Who is Afraid of Solarinand Many Colours Make The Thunder King (117-118). As you may be aware, the older generation did not take quite kindly to such a brewing ‘subversion or rebellion’ and they, especially Wole Soyinka, said so in the ferment of debates that ensued in the mid-1970s. In a paper which he read at a Conference organised by the ‘Ibadan-Ife group’, of which Osofisan is a critical member, Wole Soyinka angrily cautioned those he dubbed ‘Chronologues’ and ‘ideologues’ of the end of his ‘patience’ with radicals who, he said, ‘ignore evidence of a permanent dimension of a writer’s life and art in order to sound suitably and fashionably political’. Here he states his suspicion and disputation of an ideological posture of art. This was an age of ideas and vibrant discourse, which we can only relish with nostalgia in this theory-dry landscape. In any case, Osofisan is not about to back out from this creatively fertilizing fount, which Soyinka remains for him and his generation. We must read Osofisan’s “Essays in Dialogue with Wole Soyinka” in Insidious Treasons and Beyond” (2016) to confirm the irrepressibility of his subversive spirit towrd his mentor: It is sufficient that Soyinka, like all profound thinkers, is capable …to provide an insight that is at once illuminating and provoking—in the sense of stirring you into active response, whether the response be of fury or despair, of consternation or ecstasy. So, Osofisan continues to Soyinka and ‘write back’(because, strangely,) the moments when I disagree with him are the very moments when I respect him most…when I discover that I owe him the fullest gratitude’. And this reading and reading and recreating (writing back) is one of the many fascinating paths that Osofisan, the great eclectician treads. He does it with J.P. Clark Bekederemo, with who he has found, it seems to me, a seductive alliance even after creating Another Raft from The Raft, until he has finally created the most authoritative Biography of Clark “A Voyage’ on which I have been made an accomplice! How did the generation of Osofisan present this ‘difference’ in aesthetic and theatrical terms? If the philosophy is pointed, topical and politically pungent, and not metaphysical and ahistorical, how does it ramify on stage and in the dramatic texts? Briefly, in order to make theatre shape people’s awareness and furnish society with the right change perspective, Osofisan consciously moved away, in his plays from the sophistication of the linguistic apparatus deployed by his predecessors, especially Soyinka and Clark, which he confessed, impeded audience understanding of and involvement in his theatre. A theatre that will conscientize must neither be obscure nor dense. As Osofisan has grasped quite early in his theatre career, a theatre that will speak for and with the target audience must deploy ‘language that is immediately accessible’ because, as he said, ‘if I’m in the theatre, I want the theatre which he students, the workers and the porters can relate to and take something out of.’ But I must clarify that it is not an embracement of sheer surface experience, or being simplistic % which is different from being simple. His plays, right from the earlier ones, recognise the need to balance social relevance with valid aesthetics. Another theatre technique of his popular theatre is the practice of stage democracy. The alternative theatre must generate an attitude of questioning and debate. It must throw challenges at history on the part of the audiences and the masses. There is the essence of promoting a robust audience participation in this democratisation process. As we find in his play, Once Upon Four Robbers, most notably but not in isolation, the audience is involved in problem resolution % especially as regards the kind of judgement that the audience makes. There is an ‘opinion pool’, of a kind, to determine the play’s conclusion. As a text, the play suggests alternative ending(s), depending on the tenor of response to each performance. There is also the engagement of multiple role-playing in this committed theatre. Now, this is generally, simplistically, referred to as borrowing from Brecht, hook line and sinker. There is this element in Brecht’s Epic theatre, to be sure. In fact, Soyinka has earlier deployed this quite a lot in his play, especially in Madman and Specialist. But we must note that it is also a derivation from the indigenous, Yoruba performance and oral narrative tradition. In examining Osofisan’s use of this dramatic technique of multiple role-playing, which he has, in fact, established in as early a play as The Chattering and the Song (1976) and formalised into a ‘a play-within-play’, we must not lose sight of the impact of the story-telling format and vision on his dramaturgy and ideology-we have developed this further in our fabulist-fabulous theory, exemplifying Osofisan’s theatre. Form The Chattering where the technique of riddles transmute into a framework of political indoctrination, to Once Upon Four Robbers where story-telling, via the raconteur narrator Alfa, lays the foundation of his total theatre aesthetics, to the boon plays % Esu and the Vagabond Minstrels, Twingle- Twangle, Many Colours % Osofisan has firmly rooted his theatre on the idiom of the rustic floral of the Yoruba performance tradition and sharpened it with the knife of global theatrical currencies that range from Brecht to Gogol. Uji (2014) renders a discourse on the Main Themathologic Preoccupation of Femi Osofisan’s Radical Drama which is woven around the revolution and its revolutionary romanticism in Osofisan’s radical dramaturgy with a focus on The Chattering and the Song, Morountodun, No More the Wasted Breed and Red is the Freedom Road. Uji submits that there is a revolutionary belligerency staged by farmers against a coercive State apparatus, where the State is projected as being exploitative, dehumanising, and corrupt, in Morountodun. In the case of No More Wasted Breed, he is of the opinion that the plot of the play “hinges on a revolutionary conflict constructed on the traditional purification ritual in the society”. Also on The Chattering and the Song, he explains that the conflict/revolution of the Farmer’s Movement in the play pre-empts a change in the polity. Lastly, a revolutionary conflict for the purpose of freedom was raised in Red is the Road to Freedom. Uji (2014) goes on to explain that “the theme of revolution as opposed to resignation to fate, is tied to what is termed, in Marxist parlance, revolutionary romanticism”. This he says is ultimately based on social awareness and articulated struggle. On another dimension of thought, Adedina, Adinku and Bolaji (2013) also undertook a research on and an analysis of Osofisan’s theatre with their central focus being on the women in Osofisan’s plays. They are of the opinion that Osofisan projects the women in his works as leaders who possess innate qualities and abilities to lead in society. They found that “to Osofisan, women are not as a weaker sex as misconstrued by their male counterparts, but as a force to be reckoned with in all spheres of life”. They submit that being successful in politics, education, or becoming a figure to reckon with in any society is not dependent on sex They base their assertion on the roles and characters of Iyabo (Restless Run of Locusts), Altine (Altine’s Wrath) Tegonni (Tegonni… an African Antigone), Titubi (Morountodun), Ibidun (Red is the Road to Freedom), and Alhaja (Fires Burn and Die Hard) Permit me to now draw from texts and statements which provide the essential trend and the nature of his engage theatre and art, and then focus on his earliest plays, which provide a road map to his consistent and enduring theatre of illumination, enlightenment of and commitment, to a path to the social regeneration for the preys of our earth % the ordinary, deprived people of our society. As I began to assert, Osofisan is a key pioneer of committed theatre in Nigeria. There is a sense in which he can be said to have tested the creative waters before other members of his generation, having written his early plays during and shortly after the traumatic years of Nigerian Civil War. The play, A Restless Runs of Locusts, was premiered here in Ibadan in 1969, while the play, Oduduwa Don’t Go! was written and produced a year earlier, 1968 at the tender age of 22. [caption id="attachment_52171" align="alignright" width="360"] Femi Osofisan[/caption] From A Restless Run of Locusts, he has written from a materialist perspective, having discovered that mere reformist programmes will not salvage society from the trap of an obtuse and crude capitalist economy, and he advocates social revolution as the remedy to the country’s social incoherence which led to the Civil War. A Restless Run was particularistic with respect to the socio-political decadence and crisis, manifest in dysfunctional leadership, thuggery and election irregularities, all of which precipitated the political upheaval that inevitably produced the war. The Chattering, on the other hand, is a re-creation of an aspect of the history of Oyo to depict a vision of an on-going process of change and confrontation with the historical forces of oppression and predation. A Restless Runs reveals a clear evidence of the social compulsion that characterises his later plays. It treats the issue of party politics and the dehumanising effect of the rat-race for power and material wealth, rather than a genuine commitment and compassion for the citizens, on the part of politicians. Chief Kuti symbolises the old politicians who are amoral enough to murder their political opponents in order to win or rig elections. Three decades after this play was written, and on our political landscape, it is de ja vu! Think of the murderous nature of our politics today % the murder of Chief Bola Ige, Harry Marshall, Chief Rewane, Williams, Daramola, Olorinnipa, Kudirat Abiola, and the more recent ones and it would appear as if this play was written yesterday. And the violence-torn politics still dominates our partisan democracy. Yet, the play represents a broad outline of what Osofisan will come to do in his later and more subtle plays. It is still preoccupied with the moral ideal of heroism. Sanya, the protagonist of the play, violates his oath with his party in order to maintain a clear conscience, and he goes on to pay the mortal penalty, so that the future generation will inherit a purer and cleaner society. This new generation of the future is symbolised by the pregnancy of Iyabo, his girlfriend. Witness the assertive dialogue between two. Sanya: Together, Iyabo, we can heal the wounds. With a little tenderness, we can start anew. Iyabo: From ashes, from anguish of love forsaken? Sanya: From life, from the fresh bud, springing in your womb. From the flower that blossoms there from. In this play, we come into contact with the seed of rebellion and its literature in which the dramatist proposes that change and social transformation are possible only through revolt against the culture of reaction and gerontocracy. Sanya ejects the message from the Oba, which canvases the peace of the graveyard. He defines the notion of the continuity of out-mode institutions. He stresses the need for the dislodgement of the old order by the new generation, which he represents. This is the tenor and bent which also inform the revolutionary prediction made emphatically in The Chattering by Latoye who rebels against the tyranny of Alaafin Abiodun, whose reign ensures that “the elephant and nothing remains for the elephant”. Even in his lighter and satirical plays, where politics seems a far cry, a commitment to equity, social justice and a humanised polity is writ large. Osofisan employs, in a dialectical and progressive fashion, the medium of total theatre , a concept which was aptly described by Professor Adedeji as an ‘ensemble where the conscious and the unconscious, the real and the unreal, poetry, song and dance, intermingle with elements of traditional theatre both sacred and secular’. Osofisan maintains an objective distance from the elements of myth, folk-tale, magic, music, dance and poetry so as to achieve a dialectal treatment of them, using them to convey his appropriation of classical material and of Shakespearean plays described by Professor Yuill as ‘cultural vandalism’. We have further advanced on this format in our more rigorous theatre theorizing Fabulous Aesthetics We are talking here, neither mainly of fables (stories about mythical and legendary beings told with moralistic end)) nor fabu (as in humour-packed anecdotes). Seeds of both preponderate Osofisan’s theatre, as we all know. Just as much as his stories are full of uncomfortable conviviality, technique of laughter, which makes his audiences laugh and wince at the same time. Ritual and fabulous metaphors of liberation In other words, a materialist reading is possible of a theatre which employs ritual as metaphor and as dramaturgy, if not done covertly (in a ‘hidden’ form) as Soyinka is alleged to have done. Most contemporary African theatre practitioners of whatever bent—from the Agemo-cult inspired ritual theatre of Soyinka, the Ozidi Saga of J.P. Bekederemo-Clark, Sutherland and the Anansegoro, to the fabulous boon folktales of Osofisan, our own Agurumo myth – are fascinated with the deployment of ancestral forms of myth and ritual for visional mediation in the social predicaments of Africa. As I have argued in the case of Soyinka, not in any isolated, exclusivist manner, there is an inextricable link between a socio-spiritual and a revolutionary quest for liberation through the medium of ritual. We cannot therefore totally mint an aesthetic format for the theatre of Africa, no matter the level of our commitment to social change without exploring the ethos of ritual. As already established by the masters, (Soyinka, Clark, Rotime, and so on) ritual is a very compelling medium through which a dramatist can elicit a strong response from his audience. This is because, both ritual and theatre share the dynamic attribute of being essentially communal performances. As a social intercourse, ritual is inseparable from theatre. It has a revolutionary potential which can be integrated to the revolutionary ethos of the theatre.. Ritual is thus not just a vehicle of communication, but what is communicated. Soyinka (1975:79) asserts that drama emerges from the recombining essence of ritualism. He argues in his essay titled ‘Drama and the Revolutionary Ideal’, Soyinka argues that revolution (or liberation) is ritualistic in nature, and since theatre is the most ‘revolutionary art form known to man’ (being performance and audience), ritual and myth should be integrated to the revolutionary potential of play. He asserts that ‘Ritual contains its own stringent dialectic: it is not merely a visual decorative framework… And in seeking the revolutionary dynamic of theatre today, trying to move away from what you might consider has become the bourgeois form we may say that perhaps the goal at which we are all aiming is that point where the cementing communal roots of theatre are made one with the liberating direction of the present…the motivation away from the bourgeois death of theatre form is towards the communal cementing factor which recovers a revolutionary dynamic theatre’. Fabulous Theatre The second phase of the positive ritual affirmative consciousness is in the radical theatre of the generation of practitioners of African theatre after the first main generation of theatre practitioners and dramatists, which include a long list among whom are the Sutherland, Soyinka, Clark, Aidoo, Ngugi, de Graft, Mengitsu Lemma, Tesfaye Gessesse, Ebrahim Hussein, Serumaga, Um Kalthuoum, Ahmed Bakathir, Reda and Aly AMahmoudda, Athol Fugard et al,. I have seized on the experimentation in stage-craft and radical ideology inhering the theatre of dramatists who reconstructed indigenous oral narrative performance models with influences from the revolutionary dramaturgies of Piscator and Brecht, with distinctive self-re-invention. I have again seized on the experiment of radical Nigerian performance aestheticians typified in Femi Osofisan’s theatre, which I have configured first as fabulist aesthetics but re-adjusted with the collaboration with my younger colleague, Abubakar Abdullahi in 2006 as fabulous asthetics. Space will again obstruct an elaborate narration. The debate over the extent of ideological and aesthetic dependence of radical African playwrights on established European cannons and models, as I mentioned above briefly, refuses to abate. In rather uncritical circles, and as I have stated earlier, there is a wholesale attribution of radical Nigerian dramaturgical aesthetics to Brechtian epic. It is indisputable that there are correspondences and coincidences in the Brechtian canons and the African folk performance in the areas of audience participation, style of acting and the use of music and songs. Yet, the critical question of chronology – of which theatrical style precedes the other – remains indeterminate. This fundamental question prompts a fresher look at Osofisan’s dramaturgical experiment in his resolve to pioneer a ‘new way’ (Awoniyi 1993:73), which we refer to in this discourse as ‘fabulous theatre’. This recourse to Osofisan’s experiment is only a case study and not an exclusive aesthetic evolvement. The concept is borne out of the realization that a hybrid product is necessarily different from any of its genealogies. But some critics of Osofisan’s dramaturgical patterns align him with the Brechtian epic theatre (Awodiya 1995; Amuta 1989; Gbileeka 1997) while others apply the ‘folklorist’ parameters (Ukala 2001). It is obvious that some aspects of Osofisan’s style (and those of other radical African dramatists) agree with materialist precepts, but these also coincide with African folk performative aesthetics. Therefore, Osofisan’s approach could be said to be a fusion of African thought-structures and foreign forms. This observation is partly made by Olaniyan where he states that Osofisan’s theatre is ‘characterized by deft appropriation and reinterpretation of indigenous performance forms, a fine-tuned materialist revision of history and a consummate dramaturgic sophisticated openness that takes us a few steps beyond Bertolt Brecht’ (1999: 74). The choice of the ‘fabulous’ notion in describing Osofisan’s experiment is informed by his combinations of absurd situations, total theatre and myth/legend. Basic Concepts ‘The created world’, states Sha’aban Robert, ‘repeats itself within the nations of human being in order to show their common origin and their great unity’(Mapanje and White 1983:1). In spite of this close association in human origins and descent, certain peculiar features abound in the superstructure of every human community. While the end may to create a world where peace and justice reign, the means will vary because of obvious contextual differences in the superstructures. The Brechtian dramaturgy is stimulated by Erwin Piscator’s new perception of the theatre as an objective political laboratory, which he describes as epic. As a participant in Piscator’s experiment with new theatrical devices, Brecht was part of the early attempts to evolve ‘a (new) drama, which could be used for public “discussion” of political and social issues’ Brecht’s inclination toward poetry makes language his major focus. All the same, Brecht owes his politico-theatrical tutelage to Piscator. Osofisan creates a link between the socio-political functions of the African performers – court poets, griots and bards – on the one hand, and modern dramaturgies, on the other, to envision dialectical reforms in modern Africa. This, to him, is expedient because in Africa the debate between pure aestheticism and socio-political commitment is largely mute. ‘Such is the force of history in our environment that those of us who come into the shrine of Art, either acolytes or worshippers, enter into an already predetermined space. The dominant and seductive tradition is of an art fully entrenched within the survival rituals of the community, consciously and ideologically catalytic. Whereas, in the west, politics is theatre, in Africa theatre is politics.’ (Osofisan 2001:87). Consequently, while Brecht, in line with Piscator’s precept, subverts theatrical antecedents (theatre as imitation, or impersonation and empathy-driven) and replaces them with epic theatre, Osofisan links the political functions of traditional folk performance with modern theatrical forms to fashion out a new dramaturgy aimed at socio-political reforms in modern Africa. This new approach by Osofisan is what we have consciously and deliberately elected to christen fabulous theatre. By fabulous, we do not simply refer to the art of constructing astonishing tables. We also establish the coinage of theatrical artistry from a creative interrogation of the connecting nexus of the empyrean with the terrestrial – the recurring metaphor and presence of mythical and legendary figures in the mundane life of the human society, from which new visions are etched as basis for socio-economic and political codes in contemporary society. There are closely related elements in the dramaturgies of these playwrights that suggest a great influence or even a suspicion of an outright adoption of the dramaturgical approach of the former by the latter. However, through a subliminal investigation, the distinctions between the two dramaturgies become obvious, in spite of the general tendency to link Osofisan with the Brechtian epic theatre. To start with, Brecht’s epic theatre of revolutionary change subverts Aristotle’s empathic concept of literature (Needle and Thompson 1981: 187). However, Osofisan’s theatrical precept advocates changes that are pedestal on a desire to provide an alternative to war and bloodshed, tenancies found among the ruling class and engendered by first generation Nigeria playwrights. He particularly opposes Soyinka’s adoption of Ogun’s philosophy of war and opts for Orunmila’s wisdom and justice (Obafemi 1981 and Awodiya 1993: 67-70). Essentially, while Brecht advocates change through subversion of the past, Osofisan champions a change through a synthesis of the past revolutionary ideals and modern dialectics, since as he aptly avers, ‘no nation can grow after all, which abandons its roots’: Osofisan (2001: 159). defines his theatre as praxis and post-Negritude; Unlike Negritude, post-Negritude does not… believe in, or promote, a wilful mystification of the African past, the blanket exorticisation of which people like Senghor were often guilty of … But post-Negritude does not reject the past either, it only demands a critical attitude to the exhumation of our heritage that will not just present it as a static, nostalgic monument, but rather, as a dynamic process, hybrid and sometimes, even self-contradicting (Osofisan 2001:172). [caption id="attachment_52173" align="alignright" width="612"] Olu Obafemi[/caption] It is this attempt at hybridism that necessitates this new effort. Fabulous Theatre Osofisan’s source of inspiration is Orunmila’s ( the Yoruba god of wisdom and foreknowledge) principle of justice and wisdom, which is founded on Africa’s concept of retributive justice as panacea to social insecurity. The playwright explores historical antecedents and mytho-metaphysical beliefs of his people to propound a theory of struggle against oppression and dehumanization. Fabulous theatre bases its groupings on attitudes towards social relations, justice, freedom and collective responsibility, which are considered pre-requisites to equity, peace and tranquillity. It is not concerned with class interests alone; its focus is to reform the entire society through collaborative efforts, in order to eradicate all forms of oppressions and injustices culminating from disorientation and wrong value judgement. It adopts Africa’s traditional story telling patterns to distinguish the world of fiction from the world of reality through the association of the empyrean and the terrestrial. Meanings are drawn by analogy through a replication of human activities in the animal or spirit world (fabulous world). Fabulous theatre tests the audience’s intellectual ability through riddles, proverbs, witty expressions and questions, in order to relate the world of fiction to the world of reality. It also adapts widespread tales and history, popular songs and cultural values that provoke audience participation as in traditional performance. It appropriates the style of Africa’s disguised world of the animals and personification of the empyrean to give the necessary impetus for analogy between theatrical actions and the reality. Fabulous theatre borrows the folktale’s style of multiple roles: the narrator leads/expatiates the roles, thereby de-emphasizing the characters and accentuating the encoded actions. It amply adopts the traditional concept of death (in a struggle) as a process in societal rebirth. We find that the theatre aligns with Africa’s pragmatic approach to the interaction between the empyrean and the terrestrial in which man is the initiator and regulator and can challenge all forces, including the supernatural. It re-analyses existing history to emphasize past revolutionary tendencies; collectivism, communal survival, humanism and heroism, and de-emphasizes the individuation of success. It approaches myth dialectically with exclusive aim of de-mythologizing (non-progressive myths) and mythologizing (providing alternative versions) in order to re-awaken tendencies that culminate into heroism in the past to suit present dispensation. Osofisan tackles the problem of audience participation in his dramaturgy by categorizing his audience into what we describe as ‘integral’ and ‘integrated’ audiences. The integral audience forms a corporate part of the play, while the integrated audience is the theatre audience, which is also sporadically drawn into the performance. These are aimed at changing the audience’s aloofness, which is an inhibiting feature of the modern theatre. For example, in the prologue to Osofisan’s Many ColoursMake the Thunder-King, the song-leader, drummer, Women, elder and voices form an integral part of the play, (as audience to Igunnu, the master story-teller). They partake in the opening of the narrative by approving of Igunnu as a narrator and consent to the choice of Sango’s adventures as a story. Song leader: Igunnu, it is because of your scintillating tales that each year, after harvest, we embellish street and shrine, clear the debris from home and market, and wear our finest clothing. Drummer: It is because of your stories, so rich in wisdom and laughter, that children abandon school, women their stalls, and men their tasks on the farm, to throng the square. Song leader: Why should a man even think of marrying a river? Igunnu: Suppose he does, my people? What step must he take next?... The answer is simple: If a man dares and marries a river, then he must also bring in a forest as her co-wife. (12). Songs, Music and Dance in Many Colours make the Thunder-King Songs are core to performance in most African traditional settings. Hardly can a performance subsist (be it ritual or mundane) without its being embellished with songs music and dance. Obafemi (1986: 14) reiterates that no traditional performance can be conceived outside poetry (songs) and folktales, on the one hand, and music and dance on the other hand. It could be added that of all verbal arts (folktales, proverbs, riddles, incantations etc.), song is the commonest. It features frequently in and outside performance because it is easily accessible. Events are recorded and are easily recalled through a song. Its brevity and musically make references to it and inferences from it easy. Thus songs, in a performance, are not about entertainment only. They encode, and decode the messages therein. As a theatrical medium in modern time, Ogundeji (2003:23) observes that songs can form sub-structures to acting. In fabulous theatre, there is a resourceful use of songs, music and dance as tropes to meaning, in manners that make them pre-emptive, proactive and interactive. The two categories that are relevant to Many Colours are largely the use of songs, music and dance to pre-empt actions or events in the story and those that proactively advance the plot. Many colours opens with song, music and dance to welcome a mask as part of annual communion with the ancestral spirit, Igunnu. The drumming, singing and dancing before an expectant mammoth crowd, which consist of the old and the young, pre-empts a big event crucial to the existence of the community. Also, the appearance of a mask, the applause and the celebration, which greet the appearance, suggest positive reactions and fulfilment of a desire (that motivated a confluence of colourfully dressed youths and the aged to throng the market centre on a day other than the market day). The celebration equally suggests a long awaited reunion, from which much is expected. The song goes thus: Welcome, welcome! Welcome, we greet you! Do as you (only can) do! Strut as you (only can) strut! Jump as you (only can) jump! (10). From the content of the song, the visit is a recurring one and it has usually brought desired things, which the crowd converges for. If the expected thing is from an ancestral spirit, it is obvious then that it should be something of common interest to both the living and the visiting ancestors. Also, since the ancestors are considered the representatives of the community in the spirit land, it must be good news that accompanies the dancing mask; news that will benefit and advance the communal course. This opening equally pre-empts the mythical base of the story enacted in the play. Theatre and Democracy It has been said, time and again, especially by materialist thinkers, that unless African literary drama and theatre show an acute concern with urgent contemporary issues by interrogating the popular economic and political aspirations of the masses-urban and rural our drama and theatre, as a vital arm of the cultural superstructure of the economy, it stands the risks of consigning itself into permanent irrelevance. Our theatre, in this democratic transition, needs to be positively interventionist and critical of the State. As we all theatre practitioners and thinkers know, no other cultural activity has such power of engagement, of arrest, of captivation, of mobilization and conscientization as the theatre. Our theatre therefore, in this moment of national emergency, threats of national distintegration, balkanization arising from Boko Haram, renewed violent militancy in the colour of Avengers, vandalization of pipelines, violent killing and assaults by herdsmen, new Biafran calls for secession should begin again to take the lead in the search for an alternative, differentiated national/continental sense-making and identity. It must bear the burden of healing and recuperation. Osofisan’s creative metaphors cannot be more apt and expedient in the nature, form and competence of the theatre that can lead that transformation process. The questions he continues to ask through his many fascinating artistic, theatrical paths include; will our theatre express itself in these new social realities that we have painted? It is expedient to identify the task that we have set before our theatre especially our committed theatres, for it is naive to expect all theatres in a bourgeois social economy to engage and enlist in the task of envisioning and reconstructing an alternative social and democratic order. Besides, the basic function of entertainment, of pleasure and thrill, must still be fulfilled in the theatre, if it expects any audience at all. It is in this regard that all the options proposed by our leading dramatists and Osofisan and his generation require critical evaluation as we adopt them for: 1. Re-examining the pervasive sense of loss and self- worth in our polity. 2. Participating in the healing process of cultural and identity reassertion. 3. Revaluing and reinventing our societies in the context of contemporary post and neo-colonial realities which endanger our democratic struggle for equity, justice and a humane social environment. Let us then stop here, having made the point about how the seeds of committed theatre of the radical streak was sown by Osofisan and his generation, building on, and departing from, the solid foundations laid for them by their predecessors, in order that those of you coming behind can inherit a legacy of critical difference and be fertilised by it this troubling juncture of our social becoming. It is thus irresistible for me to end this rather incoherent piece with a summative quotation from the Tribute I have mentioned before, which was written in sane and calmer season of the mind, to rest my case: Osofisan’s life and works reveal the Herculean business of the artist, who is the arrow-head of sensitivity, compassion and the collective memory; to elucidate and paint the canvass of social pain as well as teach a visionary path towards communal healing and rebirth. From the passionate anger and impatience of his early works such as A Restless Run of Locusts (1969) which denounces, with the fiery outburst, the political elite which thrived on the betrayal, political thuggery and violence, which led to the fratricidal carnage that was raging at the time, to the profound materialist dialectics of Morountodun (1983) % a play I will always cuddle, as it offers a name to my first and only child of that name, even to those plays which rattle the empyrean (fable and mythical) world to reconstruct new tales for the contemporary world, such as Many colours Make the Thunder-King (1997) and Twingle-Twangle A- Twining Tale (1995), Osofisan has consistently enlisted his art in the service of the down-trodden and alienated masses. Dialectics % the art of a consistent inquiry after truth, through (literary) discourse % is the creative weapon of this ‘fabulous’ aesthete and ‘alchemist of cognition’ % either in the darkness and half-light of the stage or through the rhythmic verse of performed poetry. The ardent message of this committed art is the urgent need for the ‘wretched of the earth’ % the mere pawns in the political elite’s predatory game of ‘hide and seek’ % to liberate his/her consciousness, in readiness for the imminent and inexorable struggle for regeneration and social rebirth. As George Thompson explicates the predicaments of a creative writer as he who is “the voice of his fellow man” and he whose cry is their cry, which he can only utter. This he says is what gives depth to the plight of the people, such that if the creative writer is “to speak for them he must suffer with them, rejoice with them, work with them, fight with them”. Without this, whatever the writer says is taken as an abstraction, and will therefore lack significance. The Osofisan of our days is a creative mind who has taken upon himself to burden of all of us at one point or the other, he has solicited for us and agitated for our people, and he truly is a man of many paths and a voice of many of us who may appear to be voiceless. Osofisan as Cultural Ambassador Unaknowledged, mainly of course, because if you asked them, our governments, right from the beginning, never sent or appointed our men of culture to be their image makers outside of our authors. So if they have, as many of them have done—Hubert Ogunde and his troupes across West Africa, Duro Ladipo, with the help, guide and support of that cultural boundary-smasher, Ulli Beier, has played the role of our cultural Ambassador in Germany. And of course since the left fifties, as a student and fresh graduate till he won the Nobel Prize for Literature, the first one by Blackman, Wole Soyinka has carried the image of Nigeria across the world even at moments when the notion was at s most abjured and repugnant during the Abacha Gulag days. Ditto, Achebe and the very many humanists and writers of Nigerian origin have elevated the name and stature of Nigerians abroad when the politicians have recked ad rubbished it—Professors Echeruo, Irele, Obiechina, the late Owomoyela and Nwoga, Egudu, Emenyonu, Jeyifo, Osundare, Ojaide and their many successors—Adesanmi, Otiono, Garuba, Habila, Adichie, Adesanmi, Ifowodo, and so—have carried their Nigerian identities on their foreheads as they make a living abroad and building Nigeria exile literary culture for the nation there. Femi Osofisan’s role as a trans-cultural Ambassador is both unique and inimitable. In the last three decades, he has traversed the world stage, almost like the modern Alarinjo, with his plays, poems and essays. He has directed, acted and taught in several countries and universities of the world; in the United States he has been on the acting and performance spaces at Evanston in Northwestern, Indiana’s Bloomington, Emory in Atlanta, Cornell at Ithaca, Iowa, Philadelphia. His plays, my of the more than fifty of them published, went up on stage at the Guthrie theatre in Minneapolis, Madison, DePau, of Indiana, Stanford, and NYU, the Chipping Norton, and Tricycle In the United Kingdom where he has played and/or talked in Leeds, Edinburgh, and Southampton. In the Caribbean he has mounted the stage in Trinida, in Sri Lanka, Sierra-Leone, Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda, and South Africa. In Canada at York. in Ghana’s Legon as well accrediting theatre courses (along with me) in all Ghanaian Universities. Now, in the past five years, he has been spending a minimum of three months each in China and Germany> In China, he has been teaching, researching, developing curriculum, and opening minds to African modern theatre. With his primal soul-mate, Biodun Jeyifo, he had been asked to start a course in African theatre and drama at the Peking University in China to the delight and enthusiasm of Chinese students—helping to develop postgraduate programmes and getting some Nigerian academic to do sabbatical there. He has been engaged across the country in conferences ‘talking about the developments in African literature,’ arranging translations with publishers , including doing adaptations f Cao Yu’s Thunderstorm (‘All for Catherine’) to be publicly staged soon. Modestly, as usual, he told me a few days ago, ‘I have increased Nigeria’s profile in the country (China)through our courses and through the students’ In Germany, the pathway has been equally fascinating. First, he was as Fellow (for twelve months, split-able to four months every year) at the International Research Centre at the Freie University in Berlin founded to investigate ‘Interweaving Performance Cultures (the equivalent of intercultural and multicultural performances, in sync with his now famous ‘international adaptations and the search for truly African modern theatre.’ He has recently been promoted to the Board of the Centre, which is available, with good stipend to do one’s work, write one’s plays, poems and so on, attend regular semiers and workshops, visit productions and exhibitions. This is where he has written his recent scripts’ and laundering the image of Nigeria, largely uninvited and unnoticed by yhe Nigeria government which awarded him the National Order of Merit! Now, at Seventy, at the Miiddle of the Season of Autumn, it has been fascinating pathways for one of Africa’s most prolific and important writer—playwright, poet, novelist, translator, inter-textual aesthete, a radical artist and activist intellectual who has published One Hundred works, comprising a)fifty-one plays, b) Seven critical studies, Four volumes of poetry, c) Five novels, One published Biography, d) three translated works. e) Seven Monographs, f) Eight Edited Books, g) Eighteen Essays in Books, and h) Thirteen Essays in Journals. If it were in the mundane world of power it would been a rousing boom of 100 cracks of Seventy Gun Salutes! But for the oracle of words, and the Alchemist of Cognition, Femi Osofisan, let a thousand flowers bloom and seventy songs fill the stage . Happy Birthday, Okinba Lunko, Elereko! Professor Olu Obafemi delivered this lecture, entitled “Traumas and Curative Metaphors: The Many Fascinating Paths of Osofisan’s Journey” to mark Profesor Femi Osofisan’s 70th birthday