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UNILORIN don reveals how theatre art can contribute to national devt.

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A university lecturer and Professor in the Department of Performing Art, University of Ilorin, Abdulrasheed Abiodun Adeoye, has harped on the importance of theatre as a catalyst for social and economic development of the nation.

He also disclosed that the love given to culture should be transferred to theatre stressing that, “theatre is the critical conveyor and the life of our culture and its universality cannot be overemphasised, thus, no nation should joke with the theatre or its time-honoured.”

ROYAL NEWS reports that the varsity don stated this on Thursday while delivering the 186th Inaugural lecture of the University titled: “Poetics of Legislation and De-legislation on play directing”.

Performing artists, according to Professor Adeoye, “are  philosophers of revolution and reality, the makers of ingenious artistic and creative works. There is need for armed militias, indiscriminate killing through the clash between herders and farmers, the Boko Haram insurgency, corruption, maladministration, unemployment and anti-democratic tendencies to be theatricalised within the organic space of actionable theatre.

“Actionable Theatre  is a time-bound theatre which uses important anti-human or posthuman manifestations as thematic concerms in our Postcolonial age.

“It is a purpose-driven director’s theatre of social dialogue,  cultural intervention and political orientation in which the performing artists are expected to seize the momentum of current local, national and international issues for the artistic cereation, direction and production of performances (scripted or improvisational), which can be based on various theatre
Platforms and styles.

“Post-human issues of sales and harvesting of human organs by organ harvesters, the retun of the second slave trade through the selling and auction of Nigerian men and women in ltaly, Mali and Libya for prostitution and hard labour, evils and dangers of illegal migration, child labour, the activities of ritualists and their penchant for the use of human parts, gangsterism through peer influence, drug addiction through what can be called “tramadolisation”, “codinelisation and others within the interface of Health Humanities cannot be overemphasised.

At the well attended inaugural lecture,  Professor Abdulrasheed Adeoye further stressed that, “The Production of counter-culture and Federal plays from the international theatre market should be promoted in a multicultural society such as Nigeria, it is important for us to learn a little from the culture’s, religions, politics, institutions and so on, of other co-citizens other than our own.

“Certainly, it is not a crime for a Department of Performing or Theatre Arts to produce plays from the ethic region that housed it, However, a dangerous trend is emerging whereby performing or Theatre Arts Departments are producing plays mainly from their ethnic backgrounds, nothing else.”

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