Monday, 17 February 2014

Dept in Nigerian Turkish Nile University holds Festival in honour of solo dramatist Greg Mbajiorgu



The Department of English Language and Literature of the Nigerian Turkish Nile University (NTNU), Abuja, Nigeria, will in May this year, host an international Solo Dramatic Festival in honour of a great solo dramatist, Greg Mbajiorgu.
Tagged: Celebrating 48 Years of Solo Performing Art in Nigeria and the 20th Anniversary Edition of Africa’s First Published Mono Drama: The Prime Minister’s Son, arrival to the festival is scheduled to be on Ma 6, while the colloquium and other activities will begin on May 7 and ends on the same day. Departure date is 8th of May.
A statement made available to Daily Newswatch revealed that Nigeria’s foremost mono dramatist, Mbajiorgu, is currently on sabbatical in the school.
The Maverick mono dramatist and theatre scholar is an avant-garde of solo performance art in Africa and a multiple award-winning dramatist.
According to the statement, he is historically acclaimed to be the first African to publish a mono dramatic text and also the first Nigerian dramatist to win the prestigious first prize for Arts and Humanities Research at the National Universities Research and Development Fair (NURESDEF), a biannual inter-universities competitive event organized by the National Universities Commission (NUC).
“His seminal one-actor play The Prime Minister’s Son, written, improvised and published 20 years ago, did a nation-wide tour from 1991 to 2002 and remains, till date, the only African well written and published solo play available in our research institutes and university libraries,” the statement revealed.
The statement highlighted the programme of this festival which lines up the following activities:  Keynote lectures from experts in solo performance, solo performance colloquium: orality, solo performance, spoken word, standup comedy and contemporary African drama.
Others include: Lunch break, performance by national and international soloists, reading interpretation of selected solo performance texts by NTNU students of English Language and Literature, official public presentation of the 20th Anniversary Edition of The Prime Minister’s Son, interactive session between the celebrant, other guest soloists and the Nigerian Media, presentation of NTNU maiden anthology of solo plays and award dinner/command performance of The Prime Minister’s Son by artistes from the National Council of Arts and Culture.
They are calling scholars home and abroad to submit their abstract and papers on the theme: “48 years of solo drama on the Nigerian stage: from improvisation to the printed text.”
“Abstracts and papers up to 500 words for individual papers are to be sent to the email address: j.ile@ntnu.edu.ng or ndimuo@hotmail.com by March 15, 2014. Scholars can also send abstracts and papers on the following sub themes:  
1.      Orature and Contemporary African Drama
2.       Aesthetics of the Spoken Word
3.      Performance and Solo Drama
4.      Stand-up Comedy and Solo Performance Aesthetics
5.      Solo performance, Spoken word performance and Performance studies
6.      Entrepreneurship in theatre studies; the Example of the Solo performer.
7.      Audience in a One-man Show
8.      The Solo performers Approaches to Theatre and Production Management
9.      Theatre management and the burgeoning art of Solo performance
10.  The Playwrights in a Solo dramatic context
11.  Directing a One-man Show: The Challenge of Conventional Play Directors.
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