The Endless Metaphor: Directors and the Plays of Ahmed Yerima
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Date
2007
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Uyo: Modern Business Press
Abstract
At the surface level, the plays of Ahmed Yerima appear very simple to direct. This is consequent upon its simplicity in language and plot development. However, from the sociological, cultural and artistic perspectives, Yerima's plays, if not properly and dexterously handled, may turn out to be directors' nightmare. This is because Yerima's plays are evidently powered and loaded with the best of Western and African aesthetics, saturated with multiplicity of idioms and full of scathing parables. From feminusan to socialism and Marxism, deconstruction to tragic canons, and from purely protest/propagandist manifesto to demythologization the plays of Yerima remain in the deep web of a shift in paradigm, frankly and critically creative although theatrically and dramaturgically unstable. This essay therefore, examines the contextual shift in 'isms', performance styles and dramaturgewal inventiveness that bury Yerima's plays in the game of an endless metaphor. Eight plays of Yerima, The Bishop and the Soul (1998), Thank you Lord (1998), Kaffir's Last Game (1998), The Trials of Oba Ovonramwen (1998), Attahiru (1999), The Sisters (2001), Dry Leaves on Ukan Tree (2001) and Yemoja (2002) will be our focus, and the analytical methodology will be adopted for this study. Some directorial problems, in relation to Yerima's plays, will be examined and directorial prospects identified in this work with the hope of educating and informing prospective directors in the drama and theatre of Yerima on how best his plays could be "tackled". It is recommended also, that these problems must never be underrated by directors in their interpretative roles of directing the plays of Yerima.
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Citation
Musa, R. A. (2007). The Endless Metaphor: Directors and the Plays of Ahmed Yerima. In U. Atakpo and S. E. Inegbe, (eds.), Making Images, Re-making Life: Art and Life in Ahmed Yerima, pp. 209-229. Uyo: Modern Business Press.