Between illusion and reality in the post-pandemic experience: Theatricalities of Esu and the Vagabond Minstrels on stage

Abstract

This paper draws a critical analysis of the performance of Esu and the Vagabond Minstrels in post-pandemic experience. This is a play written by Femi Osofisan and directed by Adeyemi Oresanya, performed on the stage of the Pit-Theatre. It actually brings reflections of the undying past effects of corruption, oppression and social dysfunction from the military era to the new democratic dispensation in Nigeria to define compassion in order to revitalize humanity in post-pandemic. I argue that the fusion of illusionary reality of theatre in the nature of performance intertextuality is to evince the nature of man and how the myth of Esu implants the kernel of compassion in characters through dialogue—using songs and dances for aesthetic realization and sustainability. Besides, it examines indices of creative visions in the melting pot and departures between the playwright and the director in the nature of performance intertextuality. This researched paper is recommended for both students, teachers and practitioners of Performing/Theatre Arts to find importance of technological innovation in theatrical production as engendered in the COVID-19 experience.

Keywords:

• theatricalities
• post-pandemic
• illusion
• reality
• performance-intertextuality

1. Introduction

The focus of this paper is to do a critical analysis of the performance of the theatricalities of Esu and the Vagabond Minstrels by examining dialectical relationship between illusion and reality of a play production in the post-pandemic experience. Play production has been part of the convocation at Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago-Iwoye, Nigeria and the production of Esu and the Vagabond Minstrels was the 30th Convocation Play-Performance at the Pit-Theatre, Department of Performing Arts. Unarguably, this ceremony ought to be the 31st, but for the effect of the global phenomenon of the COVID-19 pandemic which warranted the merging of both 2020/2021 and 2021/2022 convocation celebrations, hence this was tagged the 30th Convocation Play-Performance. The choice of the play finds its reason not only in the essence of histrionic-architecture of the annual ritual that summons the audience from the base of the University community to the top principal management staff as a pass-time. It actually brings reflections of the undying past effects of corruption, oppression and social dysfunction from the military era to the new democratic dispensation in Nigeria to define compassion in order to revitalize humanity in neoliberal capitalist society. Therefore, the global manifestation of the COVID-19 has brought with it some innovative experiences and challenges to this year performance in order to enliven live theatre. In doing this, I find it appropriate to root the Osofisan’s dramaturgy in the authorial ideology of Brecht’s epic theatre which is invariably found in the materialist’s perception. The traditional Pit-Theatre, irrespective of its deficient structures, could comfortably have capacity for three-hundred members of its audience, but the management of the University has placed high premium on technological drives as demanded of a twenty-first century University community in a most exigent situation of the global pandemic phenomenon. A partially restricted audience of about one-hundred and fifty gazers was allowed as the physical audience with strict observance of some health-protocols, while there was an innovative provision made for live-streaming of the performance, and the YouTube streaming was prioritized. However, most people (both the practitioners and theatre goers) still feel, beyond the imposed stricture and the structure of the new innovation of technology, but for direct physical human interactions. This is corresponding to what Ilinca Todorut says “most of us still feel the need to relate to other people, to interact with humans, not just through the things and structures we create but directly, physically” (Todorut, 2022). The perspective of the performance was in line with the traditional ethos of the Yoruba travelling theatre of yore before the cinema culture, and later the Nollywood era in Nigeria, when the curtain would rise with an opening glee. This was done to welcome and intimate members of the audience with an air of assurance to enjoy the motif within the aplomb of the African community’s festive mood. The montage of the prelude was a concatenation of arts of dance, music and song.

The first was the “Fishermen Dance”, and the dance was colourful and perspicuous but was not congruent to the major political motif that ran through the performance as this review shall soon reveal. It was a chimera. It exhibited the zeal and joy the riverine people have in their occupational lives and the reverie of the interaction of human elements in the social-cultural ambiance with aquatic environment. The other performances to form the opening-glee were the Yoruba “Apala music” genre and “Afrobeats” of the Fela Anikulapo fame. In all of this, student dancers and singers exhibited their talents to the applause of the audience for reminding them of the nature of the convocation performance to the admiration of the colourful attendance by the University community and the guests. This offered a good taste in an evening of aesthetic theatricalities.

1.1. Technology for advancement of theatre and performance in the post-pandemic experience

Modern theatre in the Post-World War 1 witnessed the advent of technology which necessitated advancement of theatre and performance. This was noted in the use of technology influenced by Erwin Piscator in developing the epic theatre of Bertolt Brecht to “a kind of performance more responsive to the mechanized and accelerated routines of modern life” (Worthen, 1993, p. 515). In this, we are of the opinion that technology nourished his alienation technique for its revolutionary and diversity of his vision. Just as we are hopeful of influence of technology: Internet, social media, YouTube, Netflix and other platforms if they are duly employed to democratize cinema, theatre and performance in post-pandemic, so was Bertolt Brecht “got very excited about wireless of his time, the radio, seeing in it a technology that could help reach a wider public and activate it towards a communal practice” (Todorut, 2022) in the Post-World War 1. Particularly, Brecht devised radio projects to reach wider audience, such as “Flight of the Lindberghs”, in which radio listeners were expected to join in the singing of songs, or as collaborators, by uttering some lines together.

During the pandemic of the COVID-19, individuals, families and communities were greatly affected and people had experienced fear, anxiety and trauma which affected entertainment industry, particularly theatre and performance. Nose-masking, physical-distancing and other associated health protocols became the “new-reality” requirements and closure of cinema and theatre, not only affected economic ventures but acutely restricted public performances and rehearsals and other logistics—its social impact can never be underestimated as well. For instance, this writer had a first-hand experience during the pandemic experience that necessitated him to cancel rehearsals with his students for their final year practical project. In post-pandemic experience, “theatre today is attempting an assortment of survival techniques including incorporating the new norms into the performance, digitization, intimate theatre, black box theatre” (Rhattacharya, 2021, p. 217). The evolution of influence of technology on theatre and performance signals an anxiety to think if it would not spell doom for the traditional theatre and performing arts of live-shows in post-pandemic? Ilinca Todorut is of the mind in her essay “Free Performance: A Response to Metalab’s Futurestage Manifesto” that it is a fact that “technology will affect the tradition theatre in the dialectical relationship between the stage and the audience, and that the newest gadget will asserts its supremacy, but we must be weary of the capitalist profiteering” (Todorut, 2022).

This perception corresponds to the notion Horn posits that “the fact that it was anticipated one day that we would be having this conversation of whether the traditional motion picture theatres would survive in the face of the over-the-top industry, is something which none of us can deny” (Horn, 2020, p. 56). However, it is important to note that, in the production of Esu and the Vagabond Minstrels, it was evident in the audience that live theatre performance was impactful, diffusing and unmasking social illusion beyond the restriction the world was subjected to in the COVID-19 pandemic experience. People naturally in their emotional vitiation turn to art and culture, particularly, theatre as a social art, to cope—not just to pass time in but to feel more socially connected. At an individual level, theatre illuminates our inner lives, reaching to the inner recess of spirituality to enrich our emotional world (Mani, 2021, pp. 1–10).

Esu and the Vagabond Minstrels is the second of the magic-boon plays by Femi Osofisan, and the first is the Once Upon Four Robbers. Osofisan uses magic-boon to mean magic in the sense of a mask—an actuality covering a reality through the process of disillusionment. Magic is an illusion of reality. It is like a mirage; it does not exist. It is just a play that he wants the audience to enjoy and think about its import. The common theatrical appurtenance is the involvement of the audience with the dramatic action, especially, in the process of using cognitive reasoning to bring action to an end. Osofisan’s dramaturgy is ideologically rooted in the theatre of Brecht’s epic theatre as mentioned earlier. Reason, rather than purgation is methodical as enunciated within the prism of alienation technique. In the dramatic text, members of the audience are invited to vote on what to do with the guilty minstrels who do not show compassion to human sufferings. But in the performance text as designed by the director, he did not involve the audience but emphasized the importance of compassion than the greed without necessarily unmasking the illusion of bourgeois theatre as the playwright’s alienation technique suggests. What Osofisan in his ideological persuasion, does not want, “is that the spectators continue to leave their brains with their hats upon entering the theatre, as do bourgeois spectators” (Boal, 1979, p. 106). It is important to say that the actors, despite the challenging problems, performed to their best ability to beat the acoustic problem and architectural defects of the Pit-Theatre to entertain and relate with the audience. Some actor’s voice projection was hampered because they had no breast-microphone on, and the hanged microphones were not adequate to aid audibility for the overall enjoyment of the audience. Besides, pronunciation, diction, movements and role-interpretations were in most cases the reflections of the amateurish actor-student-trainees to show level of their synaptic responses as well as cognitive and physical ability in role-playing.

1.2. Of illusion and reality in the theatricalities of Esu and the Vagabond Minstrels

Brecht to unmask the illusion of drama for the essence of theatrical experience is to etch out reason for a dramatic action that is very illustrative in the post-pandemic experience. This diffused historical alienation is to purge the bourgeois drama of its emotional and empathetic tendencies to coerce the audience of their theatre experience. Brecht’s conception of alienation in his epic theatre opens a vista of sweeping innovative understanding and possibilities of stage crafts as theatre practitioners. Furthermore, “his dialectical interplay between theory and practice informs his assault on stage realism and on the bourgeois theatre through his rubrics of materialist’s perception” (Smith, 2020, p. 37). This experience does not necessarily change the tradition of the collective audience experience in live theatre, but it diffuses, through the aid of technology or social media to create by adding, but not removing, through accessibility and sustainability in the post-pandemic experience. Also, it ensures members of the audience in the theatre, and by and large in their individual comfort area from which they are viewing the live-streaming or the watching the performance on the YouTube to seek reason to survive in such endemic oppressive environment the vagabond minstrels found themselves, rather than being in the mire of purgation. Such a development will afford larger spectra of audience to watch live performances, both the old and the new, if it is well-developed than the pre-pandemic era. Just in a similar way, one can at leisure time desire to watch any film of his/her choice downloaded on the YouTube. In this technological innovation, especially in this period that live theatre has been hampered by economic crunch and insecurity in Nigeria, it is a welcome development to take the advantage of technology for theatre development in post-pandemic time. The playwright, Femi Osofisan, whose ideology is simulated in materialist understanding of society by inculcating his dramaturgy overtly in Bertolt Brecht’s verfremdungseffekt., finds reason in “democratizing” his dramatic action. Unfortunately, the director, Adeyemi Oresanya, did not consider the playwright’s ideological vision, but only as its end-product, for his “directorial concept and interpretation were informed by the natural conscience of man to be of good character and equally not greedy to inform human compassion” (Oresanya, 2022, p2) in intertextual diffusion. This estrangement effect in the dramatic text, from the exposition, is done to unmask illusion from the stark reality of the abject condition the minstrels find themselves to have considered doing a play for the audience at the end to be part of the value judgment the director considered so important.

In the text of the play, there are five minstrels, but in the performance text by the director, there were seven minstrels. Adeyemi’s interpretation was foregrounded in the nature of humanity and the necessity to live and let others live. In this experimentation, he chose to exemplify this through two characters—Omole (Daniel Fagbenro) and Epo Oyinbo—a metaphor for gasoline (Ololade Soluade). Omole was humane and considerate, while Epo Oyinbo was rash and intemperate. For these two characters, he created two other “external-characters”, one for each as the conscience to serve at any moment of need as a restrain or an inducer into what motive was expected. This experimentation was experienced in reality as the core of his directorial concept as he discussed with me in the interview, shortly after the production. In our view, the nature of man as he conceived it is what I called “psycho-ontological rendering”. This psycho-ontological rendering is defined as the psychical personality of man to reveal the inner reality and the nature of his/her transient being. It is otherwise regarded as conscience by the director. It plays out naturally in an individual when one is at the crossroads of indecision in order to plunge into the abyss of destiny, or what an individual regards as core natural responsibility on what motivates into action and inaction. Asking the director further, why he chose not to consider the playwright’s vision of materialist ideological perception in alienation technique? He responded by saying that he did not overtly jettison the playwright’s vision but deepened into it to serve as the core motivation from the writer’s concept of magic-boon of enterprising on mythical understanding of the apotheosis of retributive justice in Yoruba cosmology which Esu represents—this is found as the core of human compassion that as individuals we can find our own highest good in working for the good of all.

It is very important to note that all other characters faced harsh reality of life, and they were desperate to change their condition from lack of material necessities, hunger and pains of excruciating needs, and they, therefore, forgot the instruction given to them. It could be interpreted to view their precarious condition from how and what they had to suffer when their art was proscribed by the soldiers having staged the coup to overthrow the civilian government. The play, Esu and the Vagabond Minstrels, was published during the military era after the coup that overthrew the second republic democratic government in Nigeria. The playwright’s ideology evoked in the production, not just of moral but of social and economic necessities, for the entertainers became hardest hit in the conflict between the military brass and the civilian political elites. The vagabond minstrels had to move from village to village when they could not resolve to stay under the bridge or at the bar-beach; they found their way to Sepeteri—the mythical abode of Esu by the crossroads. The experience as depicted on stage, suffering under the harmer of the military incursion into the political climate, proscribing and banning all socio-political gatherings, consequently depriving the entertainers’ means of livelihood was very analogous to the effect of the restriction forced on entertainers in Nigeria and all over the world during the COVID-19 pandemic period. Just as the proscription of public entertainment was enacted by the coup-plotters, and it badly affected the minstrels and turned them to a band of vagabonds, so also was the period of the pandemic badly hit the practitioners in the entertainment industries because of restriction to congregate as Ilinca Todorut observes thus:

The live entertainment industries have some of the most badly

hit during restrictions to congregate, and none have been hit harder

than the independent contractors and freelancers, from performers

to technicians, that make up such high percentage of workers in

these industries (Todorut, 2022)

1.3. Theatre designs in theatrical illusion and reality

Theatre in Brechtian technique is said to be larger than life in its “illusionary methodology”. It establishes dialectical relationship between the stage and the audience to perceive the fundamental dramatic action through the process of reasoning, not just catharsis borne out of ignorance but of knowledge. Therefore, in this light, the collaborative nature of theatre production as a social art makes it a creative venture from pre-production to production and perhaps to post-production to unmask the illusion of reality for the essence of dramatic action.

It is a truism that the vision of the director must have a bearing to the vision of the playwright, so is the vision of other technical crew members as designers must generate their individual vision in concerted efforts with the vision of the director. Therefore, the reading and interpretation of the play by all—director, set designer, light designer and costume designer—are expected to have a common vision. This does not mean that each member of the crew would not have to display and internalize their individual skills to strengthen the common vision. But in a situation where there is an incongruous manifestation of onerous vision of a production, it mars the aesthetic purpose and thematic realization of such production. For instance, the costumes of the vagabond minstrels were a simple, decent and beautifully designed to be threadbare or bed-rag costume for them. But they have it in a beautiful mode of aso-ebi—this is common clothing materials, in this context, that is uniquely designed, common in texture and of colour in Africa amongst entertainers, especially iterant musicians in celebration. Whereas the costumes of other characters like Male Leper and Female Leper, the Old Man, the acolytes of Esu and the orchestra were literally beautiful and symbolically meaningful to the mood and thematic realization of the production. However, when I accosted the director and the costume designer, why there was vagary interpretations in the costume of the minstrels to what the playwright set out to achieve? It showed that they had asymmetric conception of the essence of “play mood” in Brechtian technique, while the vagabond minstrels were hunger stricken, homeless, deprived and poor in an unjust and hostile environment the new political hiatus subjected them to. Obviously, they could not afford to appear sparklingly decent! This wanton deprivation made them to consider the privilege gifted them through the efficacy of the magic-boon as a great opportunity to change their individual life for better, instead of helping others in dire needs, with an exception of Omele. He became a compassionate being, who cared not for material gain from rendering help to save other from precarious situation, the reason he became an outcast among his colleagues for helping a poor pregnant woman, who could not afford to offer him any forms of material benefit. And in the same manner, he helped the Male Leper and the Female Leper, by hugging them, such action on its own suggested love and kindness, to help cure their leprosy—in such an act he found gratification. And at the end, it appeared that all was a game of test of human compassion, as Esu was the eminent instigator of human condition, to know the vagaries of all human mankind. Therefore, the characters of the minstrels were to depict as the representatives of human beings on stage, to show if they were not as bad or worse than the political or military leaders in the state that made living difficult for citizens in a developing nation like Nigeria. The materialist poetics in thematic realization of Esu and the Vagabond Minstrels is not only that of interpreting the world but also of transforming it, through the kernel of human compassion, and making this world habitable. This reality establishes the artistic goal of the performance which is to depict, through art, of the moral behavior of man in society.

The impressionistic design of lights and set did not only give aesthetic value to the production but aided its understanding. The light and set designs were formed in style to capture the audience’s feeling in order to enable them experience the import of the locale, deep trauma of wants the vagabonds passed through in quotidian drudgery, and the essence of the special-effects on the psyches of both the actors and the audience was to experience the magic-boon. Its functionality brought to bear the meaning in dramaturgical enunciation that created the emblematic crossroads by the primordial abode of Esu, at Sepeteri. This junction offered two opportunities for the vagabonds: First, it offered them the opportunity of finding something to eat to quench the nagging hunger for survival, and a moment to sing and dance in their true professional callings, having been long deprived by the caustic political power, and two, to find recourse to call for action in order to know that the true essence of living is not by “the bread alone” but to live for others in the true spirit of compassion as the apotheosis of Esu enjoins. On the set design, at the locale of the Esu’s shrine, the impressionistic image of Esu was supposed to be granite, not a skull which could be misinterpreted as the essence of death—this does not represent Esu, the most active among the pantheons of Yoruba deities.

The theatre of Femi Osofisan has its root in the form of the African total theatre. In this form, the director’s creation of subtexts, choric rendition, music and dance take hierarchical influence in performance sequences to give over-all aesthetic realization. More so, within the context of the production, all these theatrical elements did not only serve to entertain but to give therapeutic and healing functions. This afforded the minstrels the opportunity for social change in their lives through the efficacy of the magic-boon bestowed by Esu priest. The power was tested by each of them and it worked, only that like all the political leaders used opportunity of their position of leadership to fan the ember of self-delusion for abuse of power, so the minstrels conditioned their minds to take the given advantage to ensure that they would never return to poverty. Words from Epo-Oyinbo speak the mind of all, except Omele’s as she says thus:

The important thing is- because I hate beating about the bush- the

important thing is what we have reduced suffering for ourselves!

No more hunger and no more wandering for us! Finished, the vagabond

life. We’ve planted our feet down firmly in fortune.

These statements give the notion about the mind of man in general to seek for appropriation of any opportunity to self beyond any ideological sense of classism, elitism or racism; it is the nature of man to consider self above other. In this wise, it is noted that Femi Osofisan “boldly reverses received moral judgement in a drama that prompts the audience into fresh and apt re-evaluation of its society” (Awodiya, 2010, p. 51). However, consequently, other minstrels apart from Omele who were found wanting have to face the consequence of the enormity of their action. To their dismay, they discovered that the “beneficiaries” of the magic-boon from them were the acolytes or messengers of the priest of Esu. It was discovered at the end that Male Leper and Female Leper were no other persons than anthropomorphic deities—Orunmila and Yemoja. Omole became eventually a symbol of human compassion that humanity needs to make the world go round.

As moral ethics suggest, an action could be good or bad and in turn becomes a seed of action planted to become a fruitful tree; the one you plant is the one you reap. This philosophy is evident in Omole’s song that goes thus:

Remember tomorrow

For evil will sprout,

And like seedlings grow,

Your deed will come

2. Conclusion

This analytic review has examined the performance of Esu and the Vagabond Minstrels in dialectical relationship between illusion and reality of a play production which informed inter-textual examination. In this instance, it unmasked the fusion of illusionary reality of theatre in the nature of performance intertextuality to evince the nature of man and how the myth of Esu implanted the kernel of compassion in characters through dialogues—using songs and dances for aesthetic realization and sustainability. In the post-pandemic experience, technological innovation is noted to be relevant for the advancement of theatre arts, not only to sustain productions but to create accessibility for the audience without the traditional live theatre stage. However, despite the advantages of live-streaming and YouTube streaming as modern technological innovations to give “relevance, accessibility, sustainability, decolonization, and equity, (sic) cannot actually be limited to technological factors, especially ‘in all the fields pertaining to basic human needs” (Todorut, 2022). But as the conceived notion of the intertextual realization of the production suggests, compassion is the kernel for the advancement of humanity.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Yemi Atanda

Yemi Atanda is a playwright, director and poet. He is the author of Dialectics of Revolution in the Postcolonial Drama of Obafemi & Yerima: Towards the Theory of Revalorization (Scholar’s Press, 2014). He is a co-editor (Femi Osofisan & Abiola Fasoranti) of The Time is Out of Joint: Playwriting in a Time of Global Incoherence (Mosuro Publishers, 2016). There are several articles published in both local and international learned journals to his credit. He has keen interest in play production, and as a director, he is evolving a style that he calls mathematical symbolism. Atanda teaches at Department of Performing Arts, Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago-Iwoye, Nigeria.