Exploring Theatre, Nigerian Culture, and the Catholic Church at a Seminary Festival

This conversation explores the connections between the Nigerian theatre, its culture, and the Catholic church in Nigeria through the All Saints Seminary Festival of Arts and Culture. Held every four years at the All Saints Major Seminary, Uhiele, Edo State, Nigeria, the festival brings together all the seminaries of the Catholic church of Nigeria to perform theatre rooted in the culture of the various ethnic groups in Nigeria. Israel Wekpe, who is a lecturer at the Department of Theatre Arts, University of Benin, Benin City, is a consulting director to the All Saints Seminary, Uhiele. Eseovwe Emakunu teaches at the Department of Creative Arts, Dennis Osadebey University, Asaba and he is the founder of Shanty Theatre.

Eseovwe Emakunu: Could you situate for us the context of this festival and its significance in Nigerian theatre practice?

Israel Wekpe: This festival highlights the convergence between theatre and religion and the place of the Catholic Church. It's also about the infusion of culture into religious practice, the infusion our culture as reflected in the plays, and gender bending.

It’s an all-male seminary, and female roles were part of the play process. So, you can imagine young men who have decided to be priests playing both male and female roles. It brings to the fore some of the issues that we probably do not see in mainstream theatre, especially since it is a Catholic seminary hosting a theatre festival and projecting local Nigerian culture. I have never seen its like in Nigerian theatre. It is one of the ways the Catholic Church is contributing to the development of theatre.

Yes, the Catholic Church has been part and parcel of theatre development in the world with the Jesuit dramas in the sixteenth century. But this is unique. The festival engaged professionals and academics as consultants.

The theme of the festival was “our faith, our culture, and our hope.” Every seminary at the festival wrote a play that reflected the theme. They all had thirty minutes each to present their play.

The plays were not acted on a traditional theatre stage. They are not so used to acting or speaking on the stage, but we worked on this to get them going, and while not perfect, their performance was okay.

They were used to using a stage curtain for scene changes, but I introduced to them the use of lights for both illumination and functionality. When they had used in the previous festivals, it was just to flood the stage. Then, the hall they performed in was massive, so we hung microphones around the stage to amplify their voices.

It’s like a tripod, which stands on three legs to hold something: The church is there, and culture is there, and then the theatre—all working together to produce the festival.

Eseovwe: I am fascinated by the gender bending. Can you illustrate this phenomenon as it relates to character development in the festival?

Israel: The play that the All Saints Major Seminary, Uhiele, presented was written by Paul, one of the seminarians. There were three major female roles in the play. One that made the performance a success was how the seminarians were invested in learning and putting on a good show. One of them taking female roles got himself a false butt just to make his buttocks look like a woman's. Another, who played the wife of one of the chiefs, made over himself to look big-breasted like a woman. It was interesting to me and kind of uncomfortable too.

I enjoyed working with them because they were bold and intentional. It was a learning curve for me. I had to make them realize, “You are playing a woman's role before an audience. The audience is going to be surprised, and the reception might be awkward.” Interestingly, they were not bothered about that.

It would delight you to know that they also internally have exchanged performances between festivals. One seminary can go to another seminary to do a play, and they always have female roles.

I know some persons might begin to think about the Elizabethan theatre or Greek theatre where men played all the roles. No, no, no. Africa and indeed Nigeriave had our own idea of gender bending. In fact, our local festivals, some of them have female masks, even if they're male characters. So, what’s actually the difference, really? We’ve been doing this, and these guys just taught me another way of looking at it.

Eseovwe: Can you explain the festival as an exploration of the church, theatre, and culture?

Israel: It’s like a tripod, which stands on three legs to hold something: The church is there, and culture is there, and then the theatre—all working together to produce the festival.

The church embraces theatre to pursue its narrative, its idea—to evangelize. In doing that, all these major seminaries brought the culture of the area where they are located. The guys who came from Jos, for instance, did a Berom play from Plateau. The guys who came from Abuja approached it from the Gwari culture. Those from Ibadan came with a Yoruba play. The guys in Ekpoma did a Bini play. The ones from Akwa Ibom brought an Ibibio play. The ones from Abia brought an Arochukwu kind of performance.

So this is very, very interesting. It’s the church, the culture, and theatre. They come together as one strand.

They started using our languages and other cultural tropes. So that's the whole idea of inculturation, in which religion engages with local culture.

Eseovwe: Do you think that the church has played key roles in the development of Nigerian theatre, particularly when you look at the Nigerian theatre history with Hubert Ogunde starting up from the church?

Israel: We cannot run away from the fact that Hubert Ogunde, Kola Ogomola—they all were in the church. Of course, they expanded to sort of indigenize their art outside of the church because the church was basically European at that point. These guys left the church. They started using our languages and other cultural tropes. So that's the whole idea of inculturation, in which religion engages with local culture.

They started using local drums instead of European drums. They used instruments like the emolokun, the èdùn (talking drum), and kùse (tambourine). These are nuanced in the culture, and people can relate to it as it were.

Eseovwe: We can say that the church is a breeding ground for professional actors. Major Christian denominations in Nigeria have drama groups that perform for evangelical purposes. They use the theatre as a performance medium to reach out to the people so that they can relate to the message of the gospel easily.

Israel: This is very interesting. I never thought I was going to be a theatre teacher, but it was in the church that I started to act, and we wrote our own plays. It was that place that I found the platform to perform.

The Catholic Synod of 1994 changed the whole dynamics of the Catholic mission in Africa, advocating for the idea of inculturation. That’s what you are seeing now with these seminaries, propagating and evangelizing using their culture and using theatre.

Eseovwe: Let's go to the performance process itself. Can you describe the process of the rehearsal and play development?

Israel: One interesting thing I first observed is the strength of the seminarians’ creativity and the idea that they can write. Coming in as a professional, I had to say, “Okay, fine, you can, but remember we have thirty minutes to do this play.” Certain scenes were too short, so we needed to make them longer.

I taught them blocking and stage movement—that your lines must relate with how you move. So, they were learning all these technical parts of the theatre. I was learning from them also because they were the ones who were acting.

I made sure that they understood the theatre is very fluid. So, for example, while light is on the narrator on one side of the stage, there's action on the stage. We had different acting areas. They acted from the audience. It was very African, too—that storytelling technique.

We started working together for this festival in June last year and had about fifteen rehearsals. We changed things as time went on.

One thing we changed was they were singing in English. I said, “Can you not change these songs to local languages?” which they did. It was beautiful. That's to reflect the culture. So, they sang these songs, and they were dramatic songs rather than incidental songs. Even when action was not taking place on stage, they were singing and playing drums between scene changes. There was never a break.

When we were doing this, there was this anxiousness amongst them. They were like, “What's going to happen? What if this happens? How are we going to get out of it?” And of course, some persons missed lines, some overacted—these are some of the challenges that you face. But I kept telling them that if you make a mistake, make sure nobody else realizes, not even the audience.

We had a preview before the festival began. The whole community of the All Saints Major Seminary, Uhiele came to see the play, and we got very good feedback from them.

The thematic concerns have to do with culture, but from that religious point of view—that convergence of traditional society with modern society.

Eseovwe: Was there an actor training regime during rehearsals for the festival?

Israel: Of course. I'll tell you, anybody who plays the role of an Oba, which is a king in Benin, they like to say, “Oh, the Oba has this dignified presence” and all of that. But I made them realize that the presence comes from what the Oba wears: the coral beads and the beaded shirt. They are very heavy on his body. So I made the actor playing the Oba carry heavy weights throughout rehearsals so they could understand that.

There were also times where there were too many gestures from the actors, so I made them put their hands in their pockets. I wanted to hear voice and more voice. I made them understand that acting is also about oratory. So, speak—and speak distinctively, eloquently—but speak in such a manner that's unique to you.

There were exercises in this regard. We did localized tongue twisters from our own culture.

Eseovwe: How might we locate the dominant features of the festival, like the thematic thrust and the religious propagation?

Israel: This festival has shown us some of the things that we tend to take for granted: cultural preservation. I know that Nigerian playwrights will talk about the culture in their play, but these guys were performing it. It's the doing; it's the vocational.

The thematic concerns have to do with culture, but from that religious point of view—that convergence of traditional society with modern society. The groups from the eastern parts of Nigeria did plays about the Osu tradition in the east, for instance. Another group did a play on traditional marriage ceremony. One group did a play about burial and the stress that comes from burials in Nigeria. These performances directly addressed these different important aspects of life that the laity face daily.

At no point was the local tradition of the society demeaned. No, they just said, “This is another way of you looking at it, and let's embrace this.” So, we're not forcing you to be part of us. We're not saying that you are pagans; we're not saying that you are barbarians. But we are saying there's another way for you to look at this. And that's where we come back again to that tripod—the whole idea of theatre, culture, and the church—and how they can explore these avenues to ventilate their fears, their faith, and their thoughts about who God is.

Eseovwe: What's unique about this festival?

Israel: Okay, this festival is unique because: 1. It's a Catholic festival. 2. It’s a festival with an all-male cast, but the characters in the plays are male and female. So, there's this idea of gender bending that mainstream theatre to learn from. 3. It derives from a local culture where some of our masks are very representative of the female gender. 4. This festival aggregates the performance idioms of each participating seminary and the cultures that they come from. 5. The plays are originals written by the seminarians.

Eseovwe: You've talked about how there's an infusion of local culture, local dance, language, song, and drumming. It seems that it is a kind of total theatre and a little bit traditional. When we're talking about a religious festival, how is this acceptable? It looks a little bit religiously incongruous. It’s a festival of the Catholic Church in Nigeria, and they are very traditional in preserving the way they do their things. So, are we looking at the Nigerian Catholic Church being a little bit lax with their tradition?

Israel: I agree with you and also disagree.

Just to provide some light, I am Catholic. But that's not the reason they called me. (In some previous ones, they worked with theatre people who are not even Catholics.) In my parish, for instance, in Benin, most of the things that we do at masses are very, very local. That’s inculturation. So instead of carrying the censer, for instance, you carry a pot. Instead of using the chalice, sometimes you use a local cup made from the potters there. Instead of us singing hymns, we're singing local songs, using our own language.

It's the same thing in this festival. Can Africans not serve God in their own local way? That's what this festival is addressing with their performance. So, when you say it's religiously incongruous, you are looking at it from that Western prism. We can explore this further.

Eseovwe: I like the idea of also exploring it further. It's not finite. And of course, we'll be thinking about how to mainstream this kind of knowledge and not let it be confined to this festival. We can use it as a paradigm for other theatre festivals to use their local cultures to influence performances. I really like this conversation, and it’s really been interesting.