Femi Osofisan@75… friends, associates roll out programme

POET, dramatist, essayist and culture scholar, Babafemi Osofisan is 75 on Wednesday, June 16.

To mark the date and celebrate the emeritus Professor of Drama, whose students and mentees are located in several continents, the Femi Osofisan Society (FOS) has slated a lot of activities for the day.

The society is inviting the public to a streaming of the celebrant’s A Nightingale for Dr. Du Bois on Wednesday 16 June at 2.00pm (UTC+1).

To attend the celebration, kindly click on the link on the Poster below, stated Dr. Sola Adeyemi, coordinator of the programme.

“This is a one-camera recording of the world premiere stage performance of the play, produced by the Department of Theatre, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, USA. Directed by Segun Ojewuyi, Nightingale was written by Femi Osofisan, and examines the parallels between American and African struggles against racial oppression. It was produced at the McLeod Theater of the University between 23 – 25 February 2017,” stated Dr Adeyemi, a former student of Osofisan, who is himself a theatre scholar and practitioner based in the United Kingdom.

He continued, “A Nightingale for Dr. Du Bois focuses on two weeks in the life of author and civil activist W.E.B. DuBois in Ghana between 1961 and his death in August 1963. In writing the play, Femi Osofisan explores the philosophy behind the Encyclopaedia Africana, Du Bois’ major project on the creation of a new encyclopaedia of the African diaspora, and that relationship to the founding principles of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which Du Bois had collaborated in founding in 1909.

“This streaming is part of a day-long series of activities dedicated to Professor Femi Osofisan on 16 June 2021. There will be an hour of tributes at 5.00pm, to which you are also invited.

“Other plays scheduled for streaming include Osofisan’s The Discombobulation of a Rookie Patriot: A Stage Adaptation of Chinua Achebe’s Man of the People (2013) at 12 noon, and Nkrumah Ni, Africa Ni (1995) at 6.00pm.

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PROFILE

REVERED as one of the leading dramatists in Africa, Osofisan is a Theatre Director, Actor, Critic, Poet, Novelist, Editor and Newspaper Columnist, and Emeritus Professor of Drama, University of Ibadan. He has written and produced more than 60 plays, five volumes of poetry, four novels and several collections of essays. His plays have been performed in many countries, where he has also held teaching or research fellowships, including Japan, Sri Lanka, Ghana, Lesotho, China, USA, Canada, UK, France, South Africa; his plays are among the most produced in Nigeria.

He has won several other awards, including 1st Western Nigeria Broadcasting Service [WNBS] Prize for Independence Anniversary Essay, the first Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) Literature award in 1983 for Morountodun and Other Plays and later for Drama with Yungba-Yungba and the Dance Contest in 1993. Minted Coins, a collection of poetry written under the pseudonym Okinba Launko, won the ANA Poetry Prize and the Regional Commonwealth Poetry Award for First Collection in 1987. In 2000, he was short-listed for the prestigious Neustadt Prize in the USA.

He was also the President of ANA (1988-1990) and PEN, Nigeria (2004-2010), and one time General Manager and Chief Executive of the National Theatre, Lagos, Nigeria. He is a founding member and Literary Editor of the first Editorial Board of The Guardian, Lagos (1983-84); Founder and Artistic Director, Kakaun Sela Kompani (1979) and CentreSTAGE-Africa [the Centre for Studies in Theatre and Alternative Genres of Expression in Africa, a non-governmental trusteeship organisation]; and Founder and Editor of Opon Ifa, a poetry chap-book (1974), which later became Opon Ifa Review, a quarterly journal of the arts, primarily for creative writing.

He has been honoured with Officier de l’Ordre Nationale de Mérite, Rép. de France (1999);Nigerian National Order of Merit in the Humanities [NNOM] (2004); Fonlon-Nichols Prize for Literature and the Struggle for Human Rights (2006); and Fellow, Nigerian Academy of the Arts [FNAL] (2006). Osofisan was also a Drama Consultant to the Second World Festival of Black and African Arts and Culture (Festac ’77), the Cultural Olympiad, 1996 Olympic Games, Atlanta, and Movement for Mass Mobilization, Social and Economic Recovery (MAMSER), Abuja, Nigeria (1989).

*Source: https://www.ui.edu.ng/osofisanfemi