Some leading playwrights have advocated the building of cottage theatres in all local government areas in the country. This is part of the recommendations of the maiden Conference of Playwrights held at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife, Osun State, on Saturday.
Convoked by renowned dramatist, Prof. Femi Osofisan, and hosted by the Institute of African Studies of OAU, the conference attracted writers and other dramatists from different parts of the country, and was aim at bringing the genres to the central position it used to occupy.
In the past, drama competed favourably with prose and poetry, with playwrights such as Wole Soyinka, Osofisan, J. P. Clark, Ola Rotimi and Zulu Sofola holding the stage spell-bound. But as the decades rolled by, recession became the lot of the theatre, although it can be said that it is the genre that really gave Africa the first Nobel laureate, based on what many consider as the first calling of Prof. Wole Soyinka. It was in the spirit of regeneration that Osofisan convoked the conference.
A statement from the organisers indicates that the confab identified the crises and challenges confronting playwriting and playwrights. These include the crises of relevance, visibility, fragmentation of community, funding; language, censorship and tyranny in both the military and post-military eras. It also identified the survival strategies of writers, mass illiteracy and the absence of a vibrant reading culture as also part of the problems.
According to the writers, having neighbourhood theatres will encourage grassroots participation or patronage. They believe that local government councils will also benefit from building the cinemas as they would also provide platforms for exchange of information. In the communiqué issued at the end of the conference, however, they also challenged practitioners to make their plays relevant to the needs of the society.
Other issues raised bordered on the need for the formation of a national community or organisation of playwrights, establishment of retreats or centres where tools for play writing and play production are readily available and the need for writers to break away from ‘Greaco-Roman’ models and create authentic African paradigms.