Behold King of Stage Play, Wole Oguntokun

 

Oguntokun

Though Wole Oguntokun did not study Theatre Arts in school, he has over the years become an authority in stage and film production.

The theatre administrator tells what The Waiting Room is all about: “It is a play which deals with the meaning of life and death. Four strangers who don’t know each other met at a difficult situation,”

He adds: “I tried to suspend everything including religion to show people the meaning of life and death.”

From his personal conviction, he believed that “the idea of using guns in that play showed that when people have an unfinished business, the people the deal displeases always have to conclude it elsewhere. So the question is “is there any other destination to finish an unfinished business? That was actually the idea,” he said.

He sojourned into play production in 1998, and produced a drama Who is Afraid of Wole Soyinka? which was played in MUSON Centre in that same year.

Oguntokun initiated Theatre@Terra with the management of Terrakulture. He directed Rage of the Pentecost August 2002, The Other Side in November 2002 and The Inheritors in December 2003 among others which were hosted at The MUSON Centre.

Others are:  For Coloured Girls who have Considered Suicide, a play written by Ntozake Shange. He has also directed some renowned plays like The Lion and the Jewel, The Inheritors, The Gods are not to Blame, The Other Side, The Sound and The Fury, King Emene, Death and the King’s Horseman,  Sizwe Bansi is Dead and An Ordinary Legacy (2012), among others.

He studied Bachelor of Laws from the Obafemi University and has been called to the Nigeria Bar. He also holds Master’s of Law and Master’s degree in Humanitarian and Refugee Studies (MHRS) from the University of Lagos. The Chief Executive of Jason Media and Renegade Theatre is a member of the Governing Council of the [Committee for Relevant Art] (CORA), a foremost Arts and Culture Advocacy Group in Nigeria.

Popularly called Laspapi by his friends, he was the only one from West Africa that participated in culture Olympians in London last year, a festival, where Shakespeare plays were produced by different countries. The performance of William Shakespeare’s ‘The Winter’s Tale’ at the Globe Theatre, London, alongside many other theatre troupes from many parts of the world was part of activities marking Shakespeare’s birthday and the 2012 London Olympics.