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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