Femi Osofisan at 80

By Adebayo Obajemu

The quartet of Babafemi Adeyemi Osofisan, Fela Sowande, Zulu Sofola and Ola Rotimi are notable, exemplary representatives of the theatre generation that succeeded the active era of Wole Soyinka, Clark Bekederimo (J.P. Clark)

Of the quartet only Osofisan survives, the rest three have since joined the pantheon of the ancestors oozing muses into the nostrils of the young dramatists of the contemporary time.

So last week, the last man standing of the second wave of theatre tradition in the country turned 80. Sometime, he writes under the pseudonym Okinba Launko, but  Osofisan has distinguished himself not only through the profundity and merit of his writing,-which most time critiques the foibles and failings of the society and its leaders – but importantly on account of his immense output of writing – drama, poetry and prose.

For a writer born on June 16, 1946, he’s  a powerful, perceptive witness to much of Nigeria’s convoluted history, the constitutional development, the crises of the 1960s, the military interregnum, the Biafra pogrom, the ethnic nationalities question, the fears of the minorities , and finally the current gradual descent into failed state.

All this has reflected more powerfully in his critiques, acerbic, sardonic and bitting – of all this dysfunction, which, in all honesty is a betrayal of the promise shown at independence in 1960.

A frequent theme that his drama explores is the conflict between good and evil. Osofisan  is  of a  didactic cast of mind whose works seek to correct his decadent society. He has written poetry under the pseudonym Okinba Launko.

Background

Osofisan was born in the village of Erunwon, Ogun State,  to Ebenezer Olatokunbo Osofisan, a school teacher, lay reader and church organist, and Phoebe Olufunke Osofisan, a schoolteacher. His last name, Ọ̀sọ́fisan, signifies that his paternal ancestors were artists and artisans, who worshipped the god of beauty and ornaments, Ọ̀ṣọ́. Osofisan attended primary school at Ife and secondary school at Government College, Ibadan.

He then attended the University of Ibadan (1966–69), majoring in French and as part of his degree course studying at the University of Dakar for a year, and going on to do post-graduate studies at the Sorbonne, Paris. He subsequently held faculty positions at the University of Ibadan, where he retired as full professor in 2011. He is currently a Distinguished Professor of Theatre Arts, Kwara State University, Nigeria.

Osofisan is Vice President (West Africa) of the Pan African Writers’ Association.

In 2016, he became the first African to be awarded the prestigious Thalia Prize by the International Association of Theatre Critics, the induction ceremony taking place on 27 September.

Writing Laurels

Osofisan has written and produced more than 60 plays.He has also written four prose works: Ma’ami, Abigail, Pirates of Hurt and Cordelia, first produced in newspaper columns, in The Daily Times and then The Guardian. His prose work, Ma’ami, was adapted into a film in 2011. Several of Osofisan’s plays are adaptations of works by other writers: Women of Owu from Euripides’ The Trojan Women; Who’s Afraid of Solarin? from Nikolai Gogol’s The Government Inspector; No More the Wasted Breed from Wole Soyinka’s The Strong Breed; Another Raft from J. P. Clark’s The Raft; Tegonni: An African Antigone from Sophocles′ Antigone, and others.

Osofisan in his works also emphasizes gender: his representation of women as objects, objects of social division, due to shifting customs and long-lived traditions, and also as instruments for sexual exploitation; and his portrayal of women as subjects, individuals capable of cognition, endowed with consciousness and will, and capable of making decisions and effecting actions. His inspiration is based on his hometown and his society.

In 2013, drawing inspiration from Cao Yu’s Thunderstorm and juxtaposing its narrative with contemporary events in his homeland, Osofisan wrote the play All for Catherine, which concerns class struggle, neocolonialism in China’s activities in Africa and the anti-Chinese sentiment growing among Africans.

Among his notable works are Kolera Kolej,(1975)

The Chattering and the Song, (1977),

Morountodun and Other Plays, (1982).