Dance, Improvisations Enliven Drama at MUSON Festival 2022

Yinka  Olatunbosun

One of the most difficult tasks for any theatre director is to recreate a frequently performed play with a tinge of freshness. Julius Obende took on the challenge headlong with this year’s edition of the Chevron Festival Drama featuring Wole Soyinka’s 1987 comedy, Childe Internationale. Performed at the Agip Hall, MUSON Centre, Onikan, Lagos, the play revives the theme of culture clash through a family-united by blood, divided by values. The conflict between western and African values had been a major preoccupation of several of Soyinka’s works including the tragic play ‘Death and the King’s Horseman.’

First staged in 1964, the plot of Childe Internationale revolves around a politician who receives the shock of his life when his daughter returns from London with baggage- a different cultural mindset. Peppered by her mother, she proclaims an elevated point of view as against her father’s African world-view. Further heightened by her romance with a westernised fellow, the conflict of the drama was punctuated with dance embellishments and improvised music.

To deepen the context of the play, the director introduced a few lines from contemporary culture, dance and a popular street anthem, ‘Zazoo Zeh’ to an audience largely drawn from well-heeled neighbourhoods. Starring Tunji Sotimirin in the lead role, the use of language to delineate characters was prominent throughout the play as its overarching element of humour.

Infusing dance into the play was fluid as it helped to introduce a character with a hint at his background. The scene changes were fast-paced and the set was the only understated element of the production. For a wealthy family like the politician’s, the set could use more details in luxury with the unframed pictures on the wall, the inexpensive upholstery and the bare floor.

Still, the play holds more relevance today as it serves as a social commentary on the long-term consequences of western education on African values in this era of mass student migration from Nigeria to higher institutions in UK, Europe, America, North America, Asia and Australia.

The play director and founder, AI Productions, Julius Obende blamed the trend on government’s negligence of the educational sector while fielding questions from the media about the play production.

“To think that even in the play and in real life, their children never attend universities here but rather go abroad, all these are what they still use as campaign manifestos. They make cheap promises and that’s where it ends. In the play, we get to see the consequences of these gross irresponsibility,’’ he added.