INTERVIEW WITH FRED AGBEYEGBE
(Interview by ANOTE AJELUOROU published in The Guardian
on occasion of Fred Agbeyegbe’s 76th birthday in 2011)
YOU ACTUALLY STUDIED LAW BUT YOUR INVOLVEMENT
IN THE THEATRE TENDS TO HAVE OVER–SHADOWED THAT WHAT INFORMED THE DIRECTION, OR
CO- DIRECTIONS, IN FACT?
Within
the Nigerian context, my fame, as it is, may have come from theatre because
that is the place you easily get public applause. But I don’t think I have been
any less a lawyer in the sense that I have practised law without any break in
terms of number of years, I’ve been in more legal situations than I’ve been in
theatrical projects. That might be difficult to believe. But, of course, one, I
mean the theatre, is more attractive of popular acclaim than the other.
The other is done within the sacrosanct walls of a court. I was brought
up as a lawyer not to advertise, I think I’ve stepped within those
bounds. A good number of people perhaps don’t know that I read Law.
They are more likely to describe me first as a writer or a journalist, which
I’m not, although I write, I think you need a number of attributes to be called
a journalist. In spite of my having had columns in the papers, I still
don’t regard myself as a journalist.
YOU WRITING CAREER IS ADJUDGED
IMPRESSIVE. HOW DID IT COME INTO YOU? IT WASN’T HAPPENSTANCE, WAS
IT?
It
can’t be called happenstance because of the length of my life; I’ve been
involved in it. But it has been the joy of my life; I’ve gone after it
deliberately. But one can trace its origin to youthful exuberance,
especially in those days when upbringing dictates that you must show
commitment, usefulness.
Even as
young persons, you must be a role model; and I think it’s the absence of
consistent role modeling on the part of today’s leaders that has brought
Nigeria to where it is today. When I was young, it was almost compulsory to
show that you have God-given gifts, that you have talents and you’re prepared
to use them for the benefit of society. We were made to write a play, which I
did at the age of 14. A welfare lady, who was in charge of my area in Warri, my
hometown, set us to it. She was very creative, and she wanted us to be
creative as well. She encouraged us to do things; to be proactive and to
be ready to be useful members of society, as it were. The belief was not
anything less at the time that the youths of today are the leaders of
tomorrow. Today, they say it more flippantly than they said it then; but
it means a lot and we imbibed it. So, I wrote a play at 14; it wasn’t
happenstance. It was an annual activity for youth club.
COULD THAT BE THE PLAY, THE KING MUST DANCE
NAKED?
The one
I wrote at 14 was not published. But it attracted its own level of
interest, which it generated all over the place. We were British subjects
at the time and subject matter was to do, funnily enough, with what effectively
was the burial ground of the English royal family – Westminister Abbey. I
got there eventually at my adult age; but at the time, I knew nothing about it
other than what I saw on an almanac on the wall. Subsequent plays before The
King Must Dance Naked were many: The Reincarnation Lovers,
which was broadcast on the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), The
Will, Competition Forever – all came before it. The King
Must Dance Naked was my debutant play in Nigeria, and because of the
time and what was happening in the theatre world, it gave it some impetus in
that for some of those who were here before I got back from the U.K, theatre
was dead. There was this big edifice, the National Theatre, in which next
to nothing was happening. I remember, in fact, Dr. Ola Balogun was incensed at
the then director of the National Theatre for participating in the plays of Ajo
Productions, Jide Ogungbade and my humble self at the time following the
success of The King Must Dance Naked.
INCENSED, TO WHAT EFFECT?
He
actually wrote an article on it, his review of the play. But he didn’t
confine it to the play, saying the play was fantastic play, that it was good
for English theatre and drama; but he went on a barrage against the National
Theatre director – I can’t remember his name now – saying all he used the
theatre for was for American films; that he didn’t give theatre practitioners
opportunity to use the place to do the sort of thing that Ajo Productions and
Fred Agbeyegbe had just done. How dare he come to participate in the
glory of something that was good for the theatre. It was really incredible. But
that was the trend of the comment at the time, actually. That was why everybody
believed that Ajo Productions, The King Must Dance Naked and Fred
Agbeyegbe, the three of them, all came to enliven the National Theatre.
And thereafter, we never looked back until many years ago when the Federal
Government tried to sell it off.
THERE WAS THE AJO PRODUCTIONS PLAY SERIES THAT
SPANNED MANY YEARS. HOW DID YOU SUSTAIN THE FESTIVAL FOR SO LONG?
It was
sheer madness (laughs)… I remember Prof. Femi Osofisan came to one of our
events in Abuja, when the head of Department of Theatre Arts, Ibadan, came to
review my book, a play, Woe unto Death at the National University
Commission Conference Centre, and we put up the play as well.
Coincidenally, Osofisan was in town; so he came to see the play. It was
the beginning of my escapade in trying to make Abuja not to be a weekend ghost
town. It was where they do their business, do their politics, but by
Thursday everybody is rushing out. That is why I call it madness.
But I
said that wasn’t good enough. This is meant to be the capital of Nigeria
with all the diplomatic community, who find themselves left alone in someone
else’s town or capital every weekend. And, since they seem to understand and
enjoy theatre more than the average Nigerian, we thought that we could get
something like that going, that it would interest them; that it would bring
about some change and make Abuja more lively.
BUDISO APPEARS TO BE THE MOST POLITICAL OF YOUR
PLAYS; AND THEN IT WAS WRITTEN AND PERFORMED DURING THE MILITARY ERA. HOW DID
YOU MANAGE TO GET AWAY WITH IT?
Again,
this was before 1986, when the legal profession was 100 years old in Nigeria.
So the NBA commissioned me to write a play as part of the celebration or
commemoration of 100 years of legal practice in Nigeria. And I came up with a
play called BUDISO. BU stands for Buhari; DI stands for Idiagbon,
and SO stands for Sowemimo. And again, coincidentally, when put literally
together in Yoruba, ‘budiso’ means ‘grab your arse’ That’s why in the play,
when you hear ‘Budiso’ people grab their arse. It depicts the unacceptability
of the mangling of laws by the courts, albeit under the military regime.
BUDISO is a farce but it reflects an era in the Nigeria bench/bar
relationship.
IN SPEAKING TO SOME OF THOSE WHO ACTED IN YOUR
PLAYS, ALLUSION WAS MADE TO A STRONG OF SENSE OF ITSEKIRI HISTORY IN THEM. WAS
THAT A CONSCIOUS UNDERTAKING?
Well,
that’s part of what’s going on in this country. I was an Itsekiri man before I
became a Nigerian. In fact, I was naturally an Itsekiri man; I became a
Nigerian by accident. And after seeing the way it has gone, I regretted being a
Nigerian, detests being a Nigerian, because of what I have been put through.
But that bit about being Itsekiri, I didn’t have a choice; that’s how the good
lord made me and put me in Itsekiri land. So, my custom, my traditions, my
comings and goings, the things that I knew as I grew up, the first language I
spoke in my life is Itsekiri.
Then
you have this imposition. Here I am; the construction of the country I belong
to says, in effect, there are four languages as lingua franca: English, but you
can use Igbo, Hausa, and Yoruba. None of those four languages is my language.
Although
it has been said, and I believe it is so, that my plays are universally
applicable, either in their nuances or in the ways of life. I can only better
relate to those things in life when I want to put them across to other people
the best way I understand them. So, in the plays, the names are largely
Itsekiri names; the costumes; the traditions are largely Itsekiri traditions.
For
instance, in a scene where a king dies and another is going to be put on the
throne, I can’t put what they do in Sokoto or Owerri; it’s what they do in
Warri, what they do in Itsekiri land. Where I come from featured.
As I
always say, if Moses wrote the bible in Warri, Itsekiri, Urhobo or Ijaw will be
in it but he did not (laughs). The bible carries the language of the person who
put it down.
Everything
after that is interpretation but those interpretation are linguistic interpretations.
You could not interpret Galili by writing Liverpool there; so Galili is Galili
and it remains so in the bible, Jordan is Jordan as it is written down even
when you and I read it in the English language. So, that is what Itsekiri
traditions, history and language are doing in my plays.