i always enjoy watching theater in lagos because nigerians have a natural flair for drama.

in honor of wole soyinka's 77th birthday, renegade theater presents the fifth annual season of wole soyinka at terra kulture. i braved a torrential downpour to see the strong breed a couple of sundays ago, and next sunday the troupe will be performing camwood on the leaves. the cast did not disappoint--altho, for some reason, i found the helpless, scapegoated characters of ifada and the schoolgirl more compelling than the main ones. maybe that has something to do with my psychology.

festival director/producer wole oguntokun announced that he will be participating in the world shakespeare festival in london next year, an event leading up to the 2012 olympics featuring 38 plays in 38 languages. he plans to adapt the winter's tale into a yoruba drama complete with sango and ogun.

it's great to see wole recognized on a global stage, both for his own sake and for nigeria. he's an immensely talented individual. the show sounds like a can't miss--of course, you would have to speak yoruba to enjoy it! --AL.

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A conversation with Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka was the highlight of the Garden City Literary Festival this year. He was billed in conversation with Nobel laureate J.M.G. Le Clezio, but the latter took ill and was unable to attend as planned, delivering a videotaped message that was broadcast at a press conference early yesterday.

Because the conversation was geared toward children, Soyinka began by reading a passage from Ake, a memoir of his early childhood, and taking questions from the reluctant, though very bright, group of children in attendance. He is a man fully self actualized, able to articulate his peculiar life as a boy reared in the village who went on to dominate the world literary stage. He talked about a range of things: the Yoruba books he read as a child; the games he played; how he wanted to be a pilot until he realized how much math was involved; his love of new media/technology, and how it can enhance and extend a love of literature/old media; and how he celebrated his last birthday in a zero-gravity chamber.

I am in awe of Prof Soyinka mostly for his enlightenment. There were a couple of perplexing questions from audience members who sought to confirm or deny his Christianity/belief in one Supreme God, as if to validate their appreciation for his work or find a reason to jettison him to the legion of gentiles polluting the world. Though Prof Soyinka could have dismissed them, he took the time to educate them on the multiple paths (Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam) to Godhead (as he called it), in a response that traversed Allah to Ogun, the Vedas to the Quran, and culminated in a stern rebuke of all those who kill and divide in the name of religion.

I appreciate not only the vastness of his spiritual universe, but also his patience and benevolence to share that universe with less enlightened others, encouraging them to critically analyze religious texts, their faith and motivation. I wasn't expecting him to cover that much ground, but it was a deep, rich, and fulfilling experience.

Looking forward to seeing Chinua Achebe at next year's festival. --AL.

I really wish I had made it to the event last night, but my writers' workshop ran overtime. I didn't get home till midnight coming from Bklyn back to the Bronx. Either I am a very dedicated writer or I am a fool. I can't figure out which one and I'm sure none of you would tell me the truth. Eish. I wouldn't have had the courage to speak to Wole Soyinka anyways.

Below is an excerpt from his memoir that deals with the passing of his late great cousin. You can read the entirety of the excerpt here. As I stare at Opera Wonyosi on my bookshelf, an old copy I picked up at Left Bank bookstore, I am left wanting for a Fela play by Soyinka. I wonder what he thought of the show?

I realize that I must have sounded angry and somewhat bitter in my blog yesterday. It's just that I work at a theater company for a rich white male producer who trades in stories of black and brown people, while seeking as much distance as possible from them (ie, fame and celebrity). Every day I face the same frustration, thoughts about the means of production and how we can tell our own stories.

Sometimes I think of epic stories I'd like to tell and shrink away at the thought of trying to capture so much, of appropriating, in a certain way, experiences or histories I didn't live through. At times like these, I secretly wish for a heavy dose of rich white male entitlement. Used sparingly, I imagine it can be employed for enormous good. --AL.

Update: So it appears that Soyinka slipped out before the reception and even missed the cast singing happy birthday for him and bringing out a cake. He wanted the show to be about Fela and not him, or some such. Ah well, guess I didn't miss anything after all! ;)

"The news came on my portable radio and it sounded so strange, a floating contradiction that was at once detached from, yet infused with the world from which I had myself just earned a lover’s rebuff. My young cousin, the abàmì èdá1 that the world knew as Fela, was dead. He had not yet attained his sixtieth year.

A naked torso over spangled pants, over which a saxophone or microphone would oscillate on stage, receiving guests or journalists in underpants while running down a tune from his head, in the open courtyard at rehearsals or in any space where he held court – all constituted the trademark of his unyielding non-conformism.

Fela loved to buck the system. His music, to many, was both salvation and echo of their anguish, frustrations and suppressed aggression. The black race was the beginning and end of knowledge and wisdom, his life mission, to effect a mental and physical liberation of the race."

-- From You Must Set Forth at Dawn, by Wole Soyinka

NollywoodNYC is planning a group outing to see Fela! on Broadway (Tuesday, July 27th, 2010 at 7pm), at which Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka will be in attendance. After the show, they will be hosting a reception in honor of Soyinka next door at Serafina (224 West 49th Street, NYC 10019).

This would be right up my alley if not for my writing workshop tonight and the fact that I've seen the show twice already. I've been meaning to congratulate Bill T. Jones, Sahr Ngaujah and the rest of the Fela! crew for the 11 Tony noms and one win. I have my reservations about the show, which I've been loathe to get into on here, but maybe I will write that blog someday.

In a Times article about his father's legacy, Femi said, "I'm protesting for [Fela!] to come to Lagos, so if I see it now, I will lose that fight." Frankly, I don't think the show could play in Lagos. The story is a thinly-veiled attempt to educate Americans about a largely unknown and controversial man. Most Nigerians would say, Tell me something I don't know already. Unless I'm the only one with a thing against docudramas.

You could call it a renaissance of afrobeat with the U.S. finally discovering his music. But I've had enough of American portrayals of Africa and Africans. I have a problem with the white man who bought Fela's story and hired Bill T. Jones and cast a show absent any Nigerians. I also have a problem with the white man who wrote it ("hey, guys, i learned all i could about this really cool musician and wrote a show about it!"). It never ceases to amaze me how appropriation never goes out of fashion. And I think to myself, Damn, the Egypt 80 are still performing, and they're not in it?

I'm not gonna dig in to Bill T. Jones. He was hired to choreograph the dances and he did his job well (the man's gotta eat, right?). But I just wish that it had come together differently because there will never be another Fela! on Broadway. The story, as far as the West is concerned, has been told.

Thankfully (a glimmer of hope on the horizon?), Chiwetel Ejiofor is starring in a biopic directed by Steve McQueen, with the help of Naija-Brit novelist/playwright Biyi Bandele. Perhaps history CAN be re-written? --AL.

If you call yourself an African writer--and some don't, like Petina Gappah--you are expected to be an expert on Chinua Achebe. Things Fall Apart is largely the only "African" book widely read by non-Africans (though I'm sure Oprah's plug for Uwem Akpan's Say You're One of Them puts it close in the running).

I found this out all too late, having arrived at my cottage in the woods at Hedgebrook without my copy of Things Fall Apart. I had long been disenchanted with old African male writers, and had largely stopped reading their work or paying any attention to what they said.

They seem to talk and talk and write and write and, in my opinion, have not said anything new in twenty years. They are always saying what Africa is and is not; what good writing is and is not; what colonialism was and was not; what leaders are good and are not.

It is an old boys network that is as impervious to innovation and new thought as most African governments--and as intractable to the continent as poverty and malaria. (I am talking to you, Mr. Achebe. And to you, Wole Soyinka. And...well, perhaps I am only really talking to the two of you.)

Some days I admire the elders' wisdom, their gray hair, the irreverent way their spines refuse to bend with age. And other days I feel as though I am breaking under the weight of these old men. I wonder how mine and other voices can be heard, like a shrill cry, above theirs.

I am so hungry for new, younger voices. We are all still arriving.

Until then, we are left to study the elders, to quote them, nodding in agreement when someone says one or the other is the greatest African writer of all time--at the risk of appearing arrogant, unstudied or naive. Perhaps I am all of those things.

In the end, I find myself keeping up appearances. Found a wonderful PEN tribute gathering a group of writers paying their respects on the 50th anniversary of Things Fall Apart. I cannot say a word against this novel. It is brilliant and beautiful.

It is also middle-aged, and I find myself waiting for the next Achebe.