Ifeoma
Fafunwa was fourteen years old when she first fell in love with theatre. That
was when the future creator and director of Hear Word! Naija Woman Talk True,
which opens next week as part of Edinburgh International Festival’s You Are
Here strand, was at secondary school in Nigeria. It might have been the same
institution where her mother taught, but it was another teacher who opened her
eyes to the possibilities of performing.
“There
was an Irish priest who put on Jesus Christ Superstar and Joseph and the
Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat,” says Fafunwa today. “He did things like Ipi
Tombi, and I just thought, wow. From then on, theatre was something I always
wanted to do, but I didn’t have the courage, because I was expected to do other
things. I got into architecture because it was the closest thing to art.”
By
the time she was sixteen, Fafunwa had moved to New York, and it was here she
had her next theatrical epiphany by way of radical American writer Ntozake
Shange’s debut play, for coloured girls who have committed suicide/when the
rainbow is enuf. Shange’s play was a mixture of monologue, dance and music she
defined as a ‘choreopoem’, and which focused on seven women who have been
oppressed in a racist and sexist society.
“I
loved how brave it was,” says Fafunwa. “It was the first real theatre I saw
when I moved to America, and it made me love it. It t was commenting on
patriarchy in the African American community in a really bold way, and it was
putting people down who needed to be put down.”
If
Shange’s play introduced Fafunwa to a theatrical aesthetic a long way from the
school musicals back in Nigeria, it was another thirty years before she acted on
it. This came about after she saw a production of The Vagina Monologues, Eve
Ensler’s globally acclaimed evocation of the female experience, which similarly
used monologue and direct address to entertain while saying something serious.
Today,
Fafunwa is the artistic head of of iOpenEye, a theatre company which has shaken
up the Nigerian arts scene with Hear Word!, which brings together ten of
Nigeria’s best-known actresses in a taboo-busting mash-up of female solidarity
borne out of a volatile patriarchal country.
“I
wanted to do something that was entertaining,” Fafunwa says. “I wanted it to be
funny, and I wanted men to be able to feel comfortable watching it, and to have
fun. I didn’t want it to be this big angst-ridden feminist statement. It starts
very light, with women gossiping at the water fountain about who’s getting
married and who has kids, and it’s a lot of fun. Then it goes into more serious
issues, about rape, and sex trafficking, and the play becomes more intense.
“What
we end up with is a piece that talks a lot about women as gate-keepers as much
as victims, and how women are complicit in some of the awful things that are
going on in Nigeria, and that became something very powerful.”
With
a lack of theatrical infrastructure in Nigeria in terms of venues and funding,
it was left to Fafunwa to get Hear Word! onstage herself. In the last five
years, however, Fafunwa says the audience for plays in Nigeria has grown. This
may be largely down to Hear Word!, which was a success from the moment it
opened.
“By
the third week we had a line outside the theatre every night,” she says. “Since
then, some people have seen it up to as many as nine times, and it’s become a
cult.”
Hear
Word! ran for a year in Nigeria, and in 2016, was picked up by two visiting
performers from Harvard University. They brought it to America, presenting it
at a small university theatre, where it was spotted by American Repertory
Theater, who subsequently came on board with what is now an international hit.
Outside
of this, Fafunwa produced work at the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad, as well as
being seen at LIFT, London’s festival of new theatre and at Tate Modern. There
are other projects pending, although a project on the LGBTQ community is
unlikely to be performed in Nigeria, where homophobia is rife.
In
the meantime, the power of Hear Word! prevails.
“I
can only say I believe it works,” Fafunwa says of her play’s success, “and
that’s just because of the audience’s response. People have come up and said
they’ve started a different kind of relationship with their daughter or
whatever, and for people to come and see it again and again five or seven times
suggests something transformative is going on, and that people are really
experiencing something.”
The
fact as well that the play is travelling outside Nigeria changes how African
women are being perceived by the rest of the world.
“The
play is dealing with some very difficult things,” says Fafunwa, “and it shows
how women can be gate-keepers of the patriarchy. They are putting the wood
inside the fire. They’re the ones giving up their daughters for sex trafficking
rings. They’re the ones circumcising their daughters.
“I
wanted to show how women are part of this. To put ten strong Nigerian women
onstage who aren’t hiding anything, but who are saying this is a problem we
have, and we’re going to deal with it, that’s a very strong image.”
Hear
Word! Naija Woman Talk True, Edinburgh International Festival @ The Lyceum,
August 19, 22, 23, 8pm-9.15pm; August 24, 25, 4pm-5.15pm.
The Herald, August 17th 2019
ends
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