It was in the year 2003, towards the end of October that as an undergraduate student at the University of Ibadan, I decided to produce and direct Wole Soyinka’s The Beatification of Area Boy. I was not a directing student, but every undergraduate in the department of theatre arts at that time had the liberty to venture into any area of the creative arts that caught his or her interest. To a very large extent, I believed that I was ripe for such a task because I have always been a firm believer in learning both the theory and practice of the theatrical and dramatic arts. This issue of marrying theory and practice was very significant because it was my understanding of the two, as inspired by that veteran scholar, Professor Dapo Adelugba, that challenged me to want to stage Soyinka’s Beatification of Area Boy.

Casting

One of the many challenges I had for the casting was in the use of greenhorns and a crop of newly admitted students into the department. When I found myself in this precarious situation I knew and recall telling myself that I was in for my most difficult task ever. For I did not want to stage Soyinka just for the fun of it; rather, I wanted to prove to other students, especially those that specialized in directing, that you could tackle any of Soyinka’s plays without fright.

Up till that time not one of my colleagues dared put up any major Soyinka play. They would give the usual clichés as an excuse. You would hear all sorts of discouraging remarks powerful enough to put you off the domain of Soyinka’s plays. The best you would have observed from the boldest of these directing students would perhaps be plays like Lion and the Jewel, Child Internationale or Trials of Brother Jero; that is, the simpler plays that pose no serious challenge. Even of these plays, I saw only a few productions in the three years I spent as an undergraduate.

For my production, I had to make use of fresh students who had never encountered Wole Soyinka’s work in all their life, except perhaps at secondary school level, where at best, they had read his poem, Telephone Conversation. Some of these students who found his style and language too complex backed out disappointingly.