Just for the Fun of It is a portrait of the artist as builder; a portrait of how a playwright and theatre director and manager works
By Kunle Ajibade
In an interview he had with Paris Review in 2005, Salman Rushdie, one of the most gifted writers of our time, and one of the most hugely successful and respected, talked about the discussion he had with his father, shortly after his graduation from Cambridge University. Anis Rushdie, who, in his own right, was a Cambridge University-educated lawyer, asked his only son what he wanted to do for a living. He had encouraged Salman to study Economics but the young man had refused. When Rushdie told him calmly that he wanted to write novels, a cry burst out of his father: What will I tell my friends? By that time his friends’ less intelligent sons were pulling down big bucks in serious, respectable corporate jobs. It would be a loss of face for him, he thought, to have his first child and only son ending up as a penniless writer. Every loving father and mother would agree with me that the desperation was quite understandable because the old man had sent Rushdie to some of the most expensive and, arguably, some of the best schools – Cathedral and John Connon School in Mumbai, India, Rugby and University of Cambridge in the UK. For a long time after that discussion, father and son had a difficult relationship. But, as Salman Rushdie recalled in that interview, his father lived long enough to see that his son’s choice was not a stupid one after all.
I was reminded of this Rushdie story last week as I read Bode Sowande’s Just for the Fun of It: An Anecdotal History of Odu Themes published by the Ibadan based BookBuilders. For, on account of his choice of a creative writing career, Bode and his father also vehemently disagreed. The quarrel between father and son did not last long though because the old man bought into his son’s dream in the end and as an accountant offered him some business tips. These tips would be useful in the days ahead. Like every indomitable dreamer, however, Bode Sowande has never allowed himself to be constrained by the cold calculations of every serious accountant. As a young man, he simply imagined a world of freedom in which he could argue unimpeded, struggle energetically along with others and impact positively on the real world around him.
The importance of every carefully crafted autobiography that we all read lies in its richness which feeds our desires to mould and continually mould the complexity of our beings. We derive pleasures reading biographies and autobiographies because we find in them the past we thought we have lost. To read about struggles, about those who have fought and won or lost as they pursued their dreams is to learn how to perform creditably on a slippery stage called life. Some of the time, these books are a reflection of our image. We are either terrified or gratified by their exploration of personal vicissitudes. Just for the Fun of It is a portrait of the artist as builder; a portrait of how a playwright and theatre director and manager works; it is a profile of the commercialisation of an idea; a portrait of the artist as patriot; it is a portrait of the force of history and the prominent role of the writer in its numerous trajectories; it is also, by and large, a portrait of the writer as crusader for equity, fair-play and human rights. At every turn of his creative writing career, Bode Sowande was up against some problems which challenged him to work harder and wrestled with possibilities which expanded his horizon. The results are the modest successes and failures which this book records. And from which we can learn one or two lessons as individuals and as a nation of people who have been, and are still, very badly led. In one of his illuminating moments, Salman Rushdie, once explained to another interviewer that we tell ourselves stories in order to understand ourselves as human beings because without understanding no improvement is possible. We tell ourselves stories, he went further, in order to regenerate our lives because without regeneration no growth is ever going to be possible.
When Bode Sowande told me on the phone that he had chosen Just for the Fun of It as the title of his book, I was naturally expecting a breezy book that would make me laugh, a manuscript - for that was what I read - that would relieve me of the tragedies for which our country has become so notorious. But as I read through, it was not fun at all to be reminded of Ted Kayode Adams, a law student at the University of Lagos who was apparently murdered. It was not fun to be reminded of all the years of military tyrannies because many of us still carry the scars of their wounds. It was not fun to read about the death of nineteen performing artists including Sanmi Ogunjobi, a very close friend of Bode Sowande, as the bus conveying them from Kaduna, where they had gone for a national arts festival crashed into a stationary trailer. I derived no fun in reading in this book the account of how Bode Sowande lost two of his sons- Toyin and Tomi- within a space of three months in 1989. The author’s frenetic awareness campaigns and the crusade for a cure of the Sickle Cell Disease, SCD, were not done just for the fun of it. It was no fun reading about how the police shot to death Kunle Adepeju, another student leader. It was no fun reading about the contributions of Bola Ige to the dream of Bode Sowande because as we read about his interventions, we remembered that Ige, the lover of the arts who was then the attorney General of the Federation, was assassinated in his own bedroom under the regime of a man whom he always described as his friend. We remember now that this is one gruesome death from which some political opportunists have benefited, and are still benefiting. It was no fun reading about the author’s divorce from his first wife. It was no fun reading about the shabby treatment of his uncle Fela Sowande at the University of Ibadan.
It was no fun reading about his clash with Wole Soyinka at a time in the media. The exchange of hot memos between him and Femi Osofisan when the two of them were in the Department of Theatre Arts, University of Ibadan was a very serious matter. The author’s criticism of the terrible state of our hospitals is not done just for the fun of it. The memoirist’s note of the killing in Lalupon, of Aguiyi-Ironsi the head of state and Adekunle Fajuyi the governor of the Western region by some Northern soldiers is not just for the fun of it. The hanging of Ken Saro-Wiwa which the author mentions in passing reminds us of a tragic era in which many people in this country suffered from the consequences of our rulers’ arrogant power and the criminal silences of the ruled. The author’s refusal to throw a big party at his wedding was not just for the fun of it. The author’s take on the stupendous waste that was FESTAC 77 is not just for the fun of it. His ruminations, as fragmented as they are, on the divergences between popular and academic theatres compel a careful reading and a careful response. The author is not kidding with his tribute to the versatility of Yinka Craig who died recently. His quarrel in this book with both Segun Ojewuyi, now a brilliant professor in the US and Richard Mofe-Damijo, a talented Nigerian actor, who now works for the Delta State’s governor as a special adviser, raises a serious matter of dramaturgical praxis. The fact that President Olusegun Obasanjo did not dignify one of Bode Sowande’s proposals to stage an awareness play about sickle cell with a reply is not funny. His suggestion that the National Theatre be destroyed to give way for an eco-friendly structure is not just for the fun of it. The author’s appearance before a panel probing a students’ riot did not happen just for the fun of it. His refraction- not reflection- of M.K.O. Abiola in a play written by Kunle Adebajo was not simply for the fun of it. Above all, as we read the hints of the marvellous achievements of Obafemi Awolowo, we were not amused, we were simply outraged to see many area fathers and brigands who now control our country’s political power. We hear now of provocative phrases. No more of actions and words that will bring out the best in us. Our politicians now put us in a permanent state of terror.
Against this weight of evidence I have catalogued, I do not think the title of this book is appropriate. This is not a book about mountain climbing; it is not a book about games and such like. There is something skimpy, if not slapdash, about Bode Sowande’s prose. You will notice that Saburi Biobaku, Mahatma Gandhi and Frantz Fanon are wrongly spelt here. The seriousness of his purpose is not however trivialised by the lightness of his style. I have a major problem with his chapterisation which makes his narrative thread very loose. It is a frustrating narrative structure which I consider beneath the status of a writer of so many years standing. Where are the hints of the literary tradition which the author ought to have claimed, appropriated or reinvented? In the world of this book, stories just fly around us without being earthed properly or used very imaginatively. Our writers must stop writing as if they live in a closed provincial world. Where are those words, phrases, sentences and stimulating passages that the late Italo Calvino, one of Italy’s finest writers, described as ‘clarifying intelligence’? Where are the tempered ironies that would make you say, yes, this writer has got it? Where is the subtle appreciation of the beauty of the landscapes which the writer has known? Where is the mining of materials that always makes the art of story telling a magical feat? Where is one artistic depth over which the writer exercises maximum control? The style that Sowande adapts in writing this book is not capable of giving us a full picture of a life of artistic productivity which, obviously, is the intention of the author. But without sounding ponderous, Sowande is saying to us that this country does not know how to make the best use of his creative people. And I am not talking of creative people in the arts alone. For example, all the significant recognitions that Sowande has got over the years have come largely from France, Italy, Britain and America.
Yet, Bode Sowande as a creative writer has come a long way. Because of his excellent results at the Government College, Ibadan, GCI, his father wanted him to read medicine, but he was more enamoured of the arts at GCI. He was encouraged every inch of the way by the white principal, Derek Bullock. In his final year at Government College Ibadan, his first ever written play titled Whose Victory? won the T.M. Aluko prize. That was in the mid sixties. After secondary school, before he was admitted into the University of Ife to study French, which he said he studied just for the fun of it, Bode Sowande had a rewarding apprenticeship in Wole Soyinka’s Orisun Theatre. Dapo Adelugba, a brilliant and dedicated thespian, was then directing that theatre because Wole Soyinka had been sent to Kaduna prison by the regime of General Yakubu Gowon for opposing the Nigerian Civil War. Adelugba took Sowande as a younger brother – his library was like a second home to him.
By the time he resumed in Ife, he knew he wanted to be an artist. He was already familiar with the demands of the theatre craft and the basic skills of creative writing. All his first years, he had managed to shape the world of his imagination. It was no surprise, therefore, that his star began to shine in no time as an artist. He was not only a very brilliant student in class, he wrote for King Cobra magazine which he later edited. He was also a notable actor in Ola Rotimi’s Oriolokun Players. Indeed, in 1968, Bode Sowande acted in the premier production of one of Ola Rotimi’s most successful plays, The Gods Are Not to Blame as Baba Fakunle. The same year, during the first University of Ife Festival of the Arts, he won the prize for ‘best creative writing.’ As it would be expected of a dreamer who had become his dream, Bode Sowande spent all of the five pounds, the prize money, on books ranging from Aristotle, through Nietzsche to Albert Camus, Frantz Fanon, Samnuel Beckett, and Jean-Paul Satre. He read widely outside of the class syllabus. Our young man, who was an active member of the Scripture Union at the Government College, Ibadan, lost his Christianity temporarily. He oscillated between animism and existentialism. Bertrand Russell’s History of Western Philosophy became his bible. Some of the ideological constructs and mutations which he gained from his concentrated readings at this period, and the objective realities of the political turmoil in his country, would later energise his creative writings. For instance, The Night Before, one of his plays, was inspired by the murder of Kunle Adepeju at the University of Ibadan campus on January 15, 1971.
Upon graduation from Ife, Bode Sowande got a regular job as a teacher in Abeokuta Grammar School. One day he just decided to resign, telling himself that all he wanted was a theatre company. His father had to prevail upon him to take up another teaching job at Adekile Goodwill Grammar School in Ibadan where Mrs Adekile, the proprietress and the principal, Mr. T.A. Oni, encouraged Sowande to pursue his Odu Themes project. With his personal savings of 90 pounds he started Odu Themes in 1971. The company was formally launched in February 1972. The idea of odu he got from ifa, the Yoruba devining corpus which is full of wisdom. To do his first major show, The Night Before, he had to obtain a loan of 200 pounds from Cooperative Bank, Dugbe, Ibadan, with the help of his father. Much of the money was spent wisely on advertisement. The production sold out. A theatre company was born.
Between 1972 and now, Odu Themes has not only produced many stage and television plays, it has also managed to produce award winning professionals who are doing well in their various callings. I understand that some of them are in this audience. As you know, artists are extremely difficult people to manage. We must pay tribute to these players who rejected the ethos of Kabiyesi drama and embraced a mix-bag of avant-garde and Marxian aesthetics. Even when Bode Sowande was on his Ph. D programme in Sheffield, he kept writing scripts for Odu Themes. The dedication and discipline of artistes like Moyo Ogundipe, Duro Oni, Yomi Ogunmefun, Dayo Adekunle, Gbolahan Olalemi, Lola Akintunde, Kayode Ayoola, Felix Okolo, Dayo Martins, Remi Ilori, Segun Adesina, Emmanuel Oga, Yemi Ogunyemi, Gladys Odigie, Motunde Jeyifo, Bisoye, Festus Babatunde and Dominic Joseph are very cental to the story of Odu Themes. With no funding from the Federal Government of Nigeria, it was tough to survive as Odu Themes made do with supports it got from its Nigerian patrons like Tony Munis, Funso Lawal, Bayo Akinnola, the former first ladies of Lagos and Oyo States, Remi Tinubu and Saratu Adesina; Biodun Shobanjo, Yemi Ogunbiyi, Charles and Lois Epstein, Tayo Aderinokun, Guaranty Trust Bank, Stanbic IBTC Bank, Standard Breweries Nig Ltd, UNESCO, the Ford Foundation, the British Council, BBC, French Cultural Centre and the Italian Embassy. In 1987 Bode Sowande won the Association of Nigerian Author’s prize for his play Flamingo. He won the same prize in 1989 for Tornadoes Full of Dreams.
Between 1977 and 1990 when Bode Sowande was a teacher in the department of theatre Arts of the University of Ibadan, it was easier for him to spread the gospel of Odu Themes among his students, many of whom he used for his productions. Because of the critical realism of his plays, he and his players were quite popular on the campus. Any theatre company that did plays in condemnation of dictatorship, the irresponsibility and incompetence of leadership and plays in celebration of icons like Fela Anikulapo-Kuti and Tai Solarin, was bound to be regarded as a people’s theatre. Odu Themes deepened this popularity when it brought Fela to the University of Ibadan in 1978 for a lecture. Fela as a mega brand was indirectly selling Odu Themes, a putative brand, which later moved out of the campus to a rented apartment called Odu Themes Meridien, after a curious fire incident in the department of Theatre Arts which, according to Sowande, some enemies of Odu Themes wanted to use to rubbish it. We should celebrate the resilience of some of these compatriots in the face of intimidating odds.
Lastly, it seems to me that Odu Themes has not become a mega brand because it has not been run properly as a business entity. We should blame Bode Sowande partly for this because he refused to bring in genuine investors who expressed interest in the past to be part-owners of Odu Themes. How profoundly moving this occasion would have been for us all if the hall we’re using now is an Odu Themes playhouse, with two other ones in Lagos and Abuja? I say this in the light of the success stories of the Muson Center and Terra Kulture in Lagos. Our writers hardly write about their growth and development as artists. This book, in that sense, is a praiseworthy one.
– A Review of Bode Sowande’s Just for the fun of it: An Anecdotal History of Odu Themes read to the audience at the NUT House in Abeokuta on 28 November, 2008 during the public presentation of the book.
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