THEATER GOING CULTURE: an evolution in deep waters

By Loni Prophet Spak

Theater going grows and becomes part of you; a way of life, routinely set up-actively-to deflower stress and strengthen will power. Theater going literally means the situation where a man, woman or a whole family set aside a certain budget to serve the purpose of going to see live performances, periodically.

Evolution of theater going in Nigeria, by extension, Africa, will be likened to the proverbial abiku, who dies and wakes continually, agonizing under the heavy arms and whims of unavailable space to let out the heat. In the past, story time gathered every neighbour’s child together every night which came to a cultural observance across tribes and languages serving as source of imparting knowledge, passing instructions and building positive living attitude in the children. Minstrels and clowns are the major attendants to Kings’ and Queens’ pleasures. As time went by, these griots began to travel, delivering messages of hope, entertaining folks and increasing followership.

Unlike in other climes, evolution of theater going in the formal perspective started far back as man began to be aware and come to the consciousness of the need to entertain and be entertained. Honest to goodness, it had been evolving and transforming, helping to advance the course of development and the sustenance of values and ideals which, now and then, rest on the shoulder of the theater and its practitioners to provide.

In Nigeria, theatrical evolution will be traced to pre and post-independence era with the emergence of the travelling theater troupes visiting small and big cities, season in season out serving hot dishes of live theater performances. Dr. Hubert Ogunde, Duro Ladipo, Kola Ogungbe, Baba Sala & the Awada Kerikeri were among many travelling troupes that inspired the first generation of theater goers in the western part of Nigeria landscape. That was not and never enough as times gone by.

The generation never had the support and the good time to grow, nurture and develop theater to motivate formidable clans of theater goers. Everywhere they go, they had to set up their trades in the open air or in rare cases, palaces of kings or in zero-star hotels. FESTAC ’77 and the building of the gigantic National Theater in Lagos, instinctively created a new set of theater goers that cut across classes and ages. Private theater groups emerged around the time to widen the evolution sphere but along the line, television came and introduced television drama. Pathetically, the movie, the cinema came on board, the oil boom and the subsequent insecurity jointly dwindled the evolution and killed momentum.

The quick attempt to recall theater going and revive its cultural, social and political essences are far more an essential battle that must be waged against the fast growing negligence and contempt facing it. The huge budget on insecurity alone; (the products of lack of provision for popular education through the theater, arguably) can be halved to meet the urgent need to improve theater going for the benefit of humanity.

We can do a rethink. We can set new standards, a new evolution can be built up through conscious efforts at supporting the sustenance of the theater with funding, guaranteed security, and also inculcate theater going habit in students in high schools and colleges. High time a synergy of experts in theater related practices is formed with the goals of introducing and establishing cottage theater industries in Nigeria. In Europe, Britain and America, theater cottages and salons are evenly spread around cities and interiors. In the city of Sweden alone, there are well over a thousand theater cottages and salons serving the purpose of providing political, social and economic awareness on programmes of government and sensitization of the populace on all aspects of life.

Quite apparent, if this course is charted determinedly by all concerned, in no time we would have raised an unequal evolution of theater goers, large enough to influence positive change across board.