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A restless run of locusts
51 pages, Unknown Binding
Published January 1, 1975
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About the author
Femi Osofisan
47 books90 followersFemi Osofisan studied in Ibadan, Dakar and Paris and taught theatre and comparative literature at the University of Ibadan for 34 years, a post from which he recently retired.
Osofisan’s professional experience is manifold—he is an award-winning poet, writer, actor, company director, journalist and scholar. But it is as playwright that he established his reputation, having written and produced over fifty plays, roughly half of which have been published.
Among these are a series of plays which speak of Osofisan’s long-standing interest in reinterpreting European works in the context of African—specifically, Yoruba—traditions and customs. He approaches his continuous search for a viable modern written theatre that would still be authentically African not only in terms of shared thematic concerns but, more importantly, with a view to form and technique.
He has worked on several canonical texts—including Shakespeare, Chekov, Gogol, Brecht, Feydeau, Frisch, and Sophocles—and discussed in his essays the consequences of this interweaving of cultures aimed at producing a new synthesis. What comes out of the commingling of Soyinka and Brecht or Grotowski, Clark and Ogunde with Barrault, Rotimi with Mnouchekine and so on, particularly against the backdrop of our traditional performance aesthetics? How can all these elements be pressed into the service of a ‘committed theatre’ in the age of globalized neo-colonialism and increasingly globalized terrorism on the one hand and of ‘Nollywood’ and proliferating Pentecostal movements on the other?
Osofisan’s professional experience is manifold—he is an award-winning poet, writer, actor, company director, journalist and scholar. But it is as playwright that he established his reputation, having written and produced over fifty plays, roughly half of which have been published.
Among these are a series of plays which speak of Osofisan’s long-standing interest in reinterpreting European works in the context of African—specifically, Yoruba—traditions and customs. He approaches his continuous search for a viable modern written theatre that would still be authentically African not only in terms of shared thematic concerns but, more importantly, with a view to form and technique.
He has worked on several canonical texts—including Shakespeare, Chekov, Gogol, Brecht, Feydeau, Frisch, and Sophocles—and discussed in his essays the consequences of this interweaving of cultures aimed at producing a new synthesis. What comes out of the commingling of Soyinka and Brecht or Grotowski, Clark and Ogunde with Barrault, Rotimi with Mnouchekine and so on, particularly against the backdrop of our traditional performance aesthetics? How can all these elements be pressed into the service of a ‘committed theatre’ in the age of globalized neo-colonialism and increasingly globalized terrorism on the one hand and of ‘Nollywood’ and proliferating Pentecostal movements on the other?
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