Follow Us on Google
Olamide Babatunde
All is now set for the 12th edition of Jos Festival of Theatre with the theme, “Building a New Generation for the Arts”, holding f May 7-11, 2019, in Jos. The festival is organised by Jos Repertory Theatre (JRT), in collaboration with United State Mission Nigeria, Plateau State Ministry of Information, Grand Cereals Limited, International Performer’s Aid Trust (IPAT), and Jos Business School.
According to the organisers, “Over the last decade, the Jos Festival of Theatre has become a nurturing ground for Nigerian artists to showcase their talents and creativity through Nigerian and international repertory.
The festival will feature riveting plays, as well as a variety of workshops for the artistic community, classes in acting, dance, and arts management which will hold during the day, while the performances will take place in the evenings.
The Jos Festival’s plays will present poignant messages concerning honour, family discord, politics, and the abuse of power over the week of performances. The workshops will include facilitators from Jos, Lagos and Abuja. The 2019 edition will showcase the directing skills of two female directors, Olajumoke Olatubosun and Kalbang Afsa-Walshak.
Among the plays that will feature this year include, an American classic, Arthur Miller’s All My Sons and novelist, playwright, Sefi Atta whose play Death Road will have its world premiere at the festival. The French contribution to the festival is Eugene Ionesco’s The Lesson, a comic-tragedy on a Professor who lures students into his studio and kills them with the assistance of his maid.
The Lesson will be performed in English by Nigerian artistes, to be directed by Olajumoke Olatubosun, while Arthur Miller’s All My Sons will be directed by Kalbang Afsa-Walshak. Sefi Atta’s Death Road, will be directed by Patrick-Jude Oteh, and Sunny Adahson will direct Jerry Alagbaoso’s Tony Wants to Marry. JRT will revive Zulu Sofola’s classic, Wedlock of the Gods under the Theatre Master’s programme of JRT.
Sefi Atta’s Death Road is a classic tale about recruitment and radicalisation within a once peaceful household whose livelihood is threatened from within by the first son of the family.
Arthur Miller’s All My Sons, which will headline the festival, is set in World War II, when a manufacturer of military hardware short changes the military by producing defective military parts for war planes with the attendant consequences of loss of lives of young fighter pilots.
A man is wrongly jailed for this crime while the perpetrator of the crime goes free, thinking that he was freed because he was ‘smart’. His family discovers the scam decades later and in his old age, his sins come to haunt him. It is a classic play about war, honour, pride and retribution. It is a true story about an actual event during World War II.
