By Damiete Braide and Kareem Islamiyat
As a way of boosting books/plays on solo drama in the country, playwright and actor, Associate Professor, Greg Mbajiorgu recently unveiled his book entitled The Power of One: Anthology of Nigerian Solo Plays at Association of Voice Over Artistes (AVOA) office, 1 Okanlawon Ajayi Street, off Masha, Surulere, Lagos.
Guests present at the unveiling included eminent culture journalist and playwright Ben Tomoloju, who wrote a 24-page introduction to the anthology; Nollywood actor, Segun Arinze and former President, AVOA, Ehi Omakhuale.
Mbajiorgu, who teaches at the Department of Theatre and Film Studies, University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN), is a force to be reckoned with on solo performances in Nigeria and Africa.
Mbajiorgu has performed his famous The Prime Minister’s Son over 500 times in different locations within and outside Nigeria and co-edited 50 Years of Solo Performing Art in Nigerian Theatre: 1966-2016 with Professor Amanze Akpuda.
In his introduction, Mbajiorgu said, “I consider it a rare privilege to be the progenitor and leading advocate or apostle of an act that preceded my entry into the theatre. Solo Performance as a performance started in this country on the contemporary stage at the University of Ibadan. with Peter Okotie directing Summer Beckett’s acts without acts, without words, and our own Wale Ogunyemi acting as a solo performer with a lot of background supporters in 1966.
“But Providence put it on me that things that were supposed to act to displace me during youth service at Calabar forced me into what you call a pineapple orchard where I was alone as a theatre person.
“So I was displaced from being the president of the NYC drama club, which I started at the orientation camp and was also played out at the cultural centre where I was posted because a woman rejected me even before I got there. But youth service created another opportunity for me to try to imitate what I had seen Funsho Alabi and Tunji Sotimiri do.”
Mbajiorgu disclosed “I used Tunji Sotimirin’s photograph on the cover page, because “he was the first to Nigerianise solo drama as performance. He also improvised ‘Molue’ and started Nigerian improvise-centric solo drama. If Sotimirin had written a script as far back as when he did, a lot of PhD work would have been written on it. This is a Nigerian project. It’s a movement and not about me.”
On his part, Ben Tomoloju said: “On what is called the minimalist approach to creativity, some people say less is more. And, indeed, when we experimented we found that yes, you don’t have to waste resources to blow things out of proportion to be able to give account of your capacity in theater, in the creative arts.
“Indeed, you can take the minimalist approach and get the maximalist results, It’s not just what solo play is about. The struggles of theater artists in Nigeria are consolidated also on the solo artists. Not like the stand-up comedian, but it is something that will encourage the stand-up comedians to enhance their scope of operation on stage. But then, this is a very, very rigorous business and rigor is a very strong part of intellectualism.
“You are going to play the role of maybe 10 people on stage and the formula that is being invented into it by Greg Mbajiorgu and his likes is that you feel every character through one actor. The actor switches roles within the very shortest possible, you know, transitional face. He’s a motor mechanic now, narrating as a motor mechanic. And then he’s also going to be the woman who is selling food as the mechanic. As a man, he’s going to play a woman. He’s also likely to play the apprentice mechanic and he may just go on to play the customer. So you find some global view of an essence in an individual.
“So we feel that we could, we should encourage this more so as there’s a winning vehicle as there’s a winning human agency to galvanize efforts and make it possible.
The 420-page book, The Power of One: An Anthology of Nigerian Solo Plays, comprises 16 works, namely: The Prime Minister’s Son by Mbajiorgu, The Gadfly by Ahmed Yerima, Esther’s Last Wish by Benedict Binebai, Colours of Madness by Ikechukwu Asika, My Marriage to a Nymphomaniac by Ndubuisi Nwokedi, Akpos Adesi’s Whose Daughter Am I?, Kerena’s Cross by Benedict Binebai, Kosisochukwu Okoye’s All that Glitters, Beauty of Ashes by Greg Mbajiorgu and Nneka Alio, Dead and Gone by Ezinne Ezepue, and Rudolph Kansese’s Tears and Regrets. Others are Benedict Binebai’s My Life in the Burning Creeks, Chidozie Chukwubuike’s Cry of the Wasted, Akpos Adesi’s The Absence of Presence, and Tunji Sotimirin’s Molue.