Soyinka’s New Play as a Guerrilla Intervention

Yinka Olatunbosun

Preparing the audience for the visually arresting guerrilla musical, titled The Wheels of Justice, was the whole of the one and a half hour virtual encounter with Professor Wole Soyinka, which was largely muted for the audience in the rear of the auditorium. The auditorium, which is the Agip Hall of the MUSON Centre, Onikan Lagos hosted an audience that converged to commemorate the 70th anniversary of Pyrates’ Confraternity, who had the privilege of watching the new play written by the esteemed Nobel Laureate and directed by Tunde Awosanmi.

Starting with the narrator technique, the biographical drama captures the humanistic framework upon which Pyrates’ Confraternity was founded at the University of Ibadan where Soyinka was an undergraduate student. Through the plot development, the misconstrued role of Soyinka as a catalyst for campus cultism was carefully demystified. Without the knowledge of history, many have blamed Soyinka for the ruthless phenomenon in many campuses. Whereas the play demonstrates how Pyrates’ Confraternity was formed as a response to corruption, oppressive regimes, elitist structures and abuse of human rights.

In the directorial interpretation of the play, the entire Confraternity is portrayed as a guerrilla force in disguise using activism in the form of sieges, rallies, charity causes, lecture series, town hall meetings, street kids’ project and gyrating sessions.

The Wheels of Justice is yet another brilliant interplay of sarcasm and satire by the playwright to address socio-political as well as cultural issues in our contemporary society. Although the drama is set in colonial Nigeria, a parallel is seen in the subject matters raised then and now in the polity.

Awosanmi, in his directorial note observed that the author has not only created Pyrates as characters and inserted them into the plot of the drama but has clarified the major strategy of the Pyrates protest.

With a set design executed by a leading visual artist, Olu Ajayi who also doubled as the event’s moderator, the performance was a renaissance of sorts in its technical interpretation. Instead of using the usual digital backdrop adopted by most musical productions, the one-tier stage design was a convenient multi-scenic production that gave the audience a befitting spectacle. The constant ant-like motion of the Pyrates on stage through the stairs and downstage is illustrative of their action against injustice of the time.

One interesting tool used by the playwright in this piece is accessible language. Unlike his other ritual plays like Death and the King’s Horseman, The Bacchae of Euripedes, The Strong Breed and The Road, the simple language alongside emphatic delivery of lines in The Wheels of Justice is reflective of the temperament of those peculiar characters in a university environment.

However, a major challenge with this stage design is the constraint of replicating this visual dynamics in an actual guerrilla theatre performance. Instead of replicating this, a rare degree of ingenuity would be used to excite the audience. 

Aside from the few anti-climatic lengths of the songs infused with the drama, the performance conveyed the youthful vigour and the spirit of brotherhood permeating the Pyrates. The auditorium echoed with the sound of drums as a handful of the audience sang along to some of the songs.

In consonance with its obvious thematic preoccupation, The Wheels of Justice is a dramatic exhibition of comradeship, the kind required to ward off oppression and build a great nation.