By Henry Akubuiro
As a reformer, the dramatist mirrors the society and imprints realistic social conditions enacted on stage in our minds to affect social reforms. Among the literary genres, drama is the most effective tool for mass mobilisation, compared to the distant intimacy of the novel or the esoterics of poetry. It enlightens and entertains at the same time thereby appealing to the sentiments of the audience directly. Through a dramatic performance, we improve our sense of aesthetics and ability to understand people and life situations better.
Ogbe Patrick Adaofuoyi first burst onto the Nigerian literary scene with Poems of Awakening (2007) and Cantankerous Passengers (2012). Mischievous Tradesmen and A Raging Epidemic, a play published by Paper worth Books Limited, Nigeria, is his third publication. The dominant humorous tone of the eleven-act play, depicting amusing incidents and communal triumph over adversity, distinguishes it as a work of comedy. But Adaofuoyi’s major preoccupation is not a surfeit of laughter. It addresses some fundamental issues, including the contradictions of life and death, materialism and its implications, and the vestiges of ignorance. The play also functions as an elixir for vague shibboleths.
A drama without vibrant characters is like a ballet without a seasoned ballerina. The ballerina’s springy and well coordinated dance steps, twirls and swings are central to telling the story or expressing an idea in a ballet. Adaofuoyi’s characters are relatable. They include mercantilist coffin makers, community and political leaders, commoners, a native doctor, among others. Mischievous Tradesmen and A Raging Epidemic depicts a society struggling to contain deaths caused by a strange disease and the indifferent coffin makers profiting from the plague. When traditional sacrifices fail, modern medicine comes to the rescue. It is a rude awakening that the Okurugbe society, where this work is set, has to learn after a long while.
The playwright uses the coffin symbolically as a box that heralds death and wealth at the same time. It provides life – sustenance for the coffin maker and his family – and the lowering of the box into the ground marks the end of life on earth for man and the keening of grieving hearts. Yet the coffin is indispensable to many societies. The playwright uses the greed of the coffin makers exploiting those who lost their loved ones to illustrate the flaws of modern capitalism and crass materialism. The coffin makers’ lack of empathy and their overriding ambition for profit maximisation signposts a threat to social cohesion and an indictment on morality.
The three coffin makers – Alloy, Alocious and Alphonsus – and Comrade Nicholas, a coffin seller, serve as the livewire of Adaofuoyi’s comedy. Their conversations and dealings with customers function as a bridge between the humdrum existence of a traumatised society and a justification for commerce amid the exigencies of passage. The play also revisits marriage and the perceived entitlements of a man in the union. The relationship between Alphonsus and his wife, Monica, offers a hint of what some African men expect from their wives: a wholesale reverence and a robotic kind of attention at all times.
When the play opens, Alphonsus waxes lyrical that his wife isn’t performing her domestic obligations like a serf, and chides her for that, which prompts the woman to read lack of love into his aggression. The husband also sees her responses as rudeness. Since he paid her dowry and married her, he doesn’t expect any kind of challenge from Monica. The wife taunts him that he is into an unprofitable business as a coffin maker – “Crafting out wooden coffins in a community where people die as septuagenarians and octogenarians”(p 4). Monica also reveals that her little trading business is actually the mainstay of the poor family. In Act 5, we, once again, see Alphonsus and his wife, Monica, trading words over inanities. Poverty is the root cause of this untenability.
The playwright, in the second act, introduced Chief Agama Orne Lohl of Okurugbe community and the Native Priest to discuss proprietary rites to herald an impending new year. The community leader emphasises that he is sitting on a throne that is guarded by the traditions of their forefathers. The Native Priest tables the request of a royal tortoise for the sacrifice, an usual request by the ancestors, to end the year in peace and usher another year with goodwill. The community leader is not totally open to sacrificing the royal tortoise, for: “The said tortoise in my palace is many years old. Its longevity of life is metaphoric of the length of years of occupants on the throne, which I currently occupy” (p 10). He would like something else to be sacrificed, which the Native Priest can’t oblige.
In Act 3, the tribe of coffin makers converge and the conversation reveals how they are detested by members of the public because of their trade. For them, they are providing essential services and do not elect to be killjoys. Comrade Nicholas, in his prayer to their invisible guardians and ancestors, reminds them that they are poor folks struggling to make a living through coffin making.
Lending his voice, Alphonsus says: “ We are not the ones that make due! We are only in the business and profession of providing unique services for dead people who are soon to be buried, and if and when we cannot sell our finished wooden products, we end up poor and without money” (p.15). Alocious adds: “…we, nevertheless, ask for prosperity to marry as a little, or at least to mingle with us a little. We realise that it is only when people die that we make money, but not minding this, we plead that you help us to make money, departed forefathers of our land” (p.15). Alphonsus restates that they are ordinary people trying to make a living through honest means, praying: “May our prosperity not make us disdainful or odious to our fellow kinsmen and women.”
Through clients like The Middle-Aged man, who came to buy a coffin to bury a dead relative, and The Old Man, who came to buy a coffin in anticipation of his own death, we see, first-hand, the mercantilism of the coffin makers with their outrageous offers. Comrade Nicholas even has the audacity to mock The Middle-Age Man: “Must you be stingy and tightfisted like this towards a departed close relative, eh? Stinginess is a vice which we, the living, must not exhibit towards relatives and loved ones who have passed on to the great beyond, not minding the fact that their living well-wishers may be experiencing a cash crunch.’ Eventually, The Old Man is given a less, elaborately crafted coffin he could afford. These exchanges show,
In our quest for materialism, we do not feel the pangs of the downtrodden (or the bereaved in this circumstance).
A breakout of an epidemic (a strange fever) in Okurugbe begins to claim lives in considerable numbers, midway into the play. This epidemic provides a platform for the coffin makers to become important in the scheme of things and, ultimately, rich. But the greatest thing it created is an unexpected solution. The agelong reliance on traditional sacrifices proves ineffective as a medical intervention by the government, represented by Senator Reuben Agbenu, brings the ravaging epidemic under control. As he says, “…contemporary therapy is at times the most appropriate treatment to any lingering, communal health crisis anywhere, at every point in time” (p 70).
Mischievous Tradesmen and A Raging Epidemic is an engaging read. It promises to be more exciting on stage. It is, however, expected that the playwright should produce another edition of the book to remedy its embarrassing, flawed packaging.