Morountodun by femi osofisan

Answer 1

MorountodunWelcome to Olashore International School's presentation of a play titled Morountodun written by Professor Femi Osofisan. I hope you enjoy the production as much as the children have enjoyed preparing for it.

Over the years, the school has prepared many successful productions but unfortunately these have not been showcased widely. Soon after I joined the school in October 2012, I had a conversation with the Chairman of the PTA about the possibility of the students performing the annual school play before a larger audience. He suggested that we sought the opportunity for the students of Olashore International School to showcase their talents in Lagos to parents and guests. I immediately agreed and worked with staff, members of the PTA and members of the Board of Governors to ensure, not only that our students performed in Lagos but that they are able to do so in an excellent auditorium such as we have here at the MUSON centre.

Drama and other performing arts play a vital role in the education offered at Olashore International School. Throughout its history, OIS has had a reputation for excellent academic performance and this continues today, with a 100% in WASSCE. However an Olashore education is about so much more than academic success. At Olashore International School, we believe in developing the full potential of each child through a balanced education of an international standard in a serene environment. In order to support performing arts, we have recently completed a classroom block dedicated to this area with a purpose built drama studio, music room and recording studio and we are currently upgrading the audio system in our main hall to ensure that dramatic and musical performances are supported by state -of- the- art technology.

I would also like to mention the next major event at Olashore which is the AISEN Sports Festival holding from 8th-10th of February. At Olashore, we encourage our students to participate in a wide range of sports and compete against other international schools throughout the year. The AISEN Sports Festival is an opportunity to welcome these schools to a sporting event at Olashore International School using our world class stadium. I would like to use this opportunity to invite parents to join us for the event and see your children compete.

Finally, I would like to thank all parents and guests for joining us this evening. I would particularly like to thank our special guests Professor Femi Osofisan for honouring us with his presence at our performance of his play and Joke Silva for joining us this evening and sharing her experience with our budding actors.

I hope you all enjoy the performance and I look forward to welcoming you again at future events. - Derek Smith, Principal and CEO, Olashore International School

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About the Playwright

Professor Babafemi Adeyemi Osofisan, popularly known as Femi Osofisan, or as Okinba Launko (his pen name), is a multi-talented creative artist and scholar of remarkable versatility and richness. A playwright, director, actor, poet, fiction writer, critic, translator, and newspaper columnist, he is also an administrator who served, some years ago, as the General Manager and Chief Executive of the National Theatre in Lagos.

Born in Erunwon, near Ijebu-Ode in 1946, (of an Idomila father) and educated at the famous Government College, Ibadan, Professor Osofisan had his higher education at the universities of Ibadan, Dakar in Senegal, and the Sorbonne in Paris, obtaining a PhD at the early age of 28. He began a teaching career at Ibadan, and retired mandatorily in the year 2011, after serving as full professor for 38 years.

Osofisan's flair for literature was revealed when, while still a student at GCI, he won the WNBS Independence Anniversary Essay Prize in 1965 and, a year later, the 1st T.M. Aluko Prize for Literature.

Within a decade of his doctorate degree, he produced plays such as A Restless Run of Locusts, The Chattering and the Song, Who's Afraid of Solarin, Once Upon Four Robbers, and Morountodun, which led to his rapid emergence as a writer-scholar of growing significance in both the domestic and international circles.

All this was just the beginning of a career that has now recorded a harvest of over fifty published titles for stage, television and radio. They include such popular plays as The Oriki of a Grasshopper, Birthdays are not for Dying, Farewell to a Cannibal Rage, Esu and the Vagabond Minstrels, Yungba Yungba and the Dance Contest, Another Raft, and several others.

In addition to these, Professor Osofisan's creative output also extends to poetry as well as prose fiction, both for young and adult readers. Many of these works have won the ANA (Association of Nigerian Authors) Prizes, and some have been serialised in newspapers.

Professor Osofisan is equally prolific in his scholarly output, where his works in literary criticism have won him respect among his professional colleagues in the academia. Some of the over forty essays which he has published in academic journals have now been collected and published in books both at home and abroad. He has also been the editor and co-editor of many journals, including Opon Ifa, Journal of African and Comparative Literature, Black Orpheus, and the Oxford-based The African Theatre Review which was, till recently, the only existing international journal on African drama.

Professor Osofisan has carried the nation's flag far beyond our nation's shores as he has taught at numerous institutions abroad and has also directed both his and other African plays in theatres in Asia, Europe, America and other African countries, with the most recent being the production of Soyinka's The Lion and the Jewel, which he co-directed with Joe Graves at the Peking University in China last November.

Osofisan's plays have been commissioned by important theatres such as the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis, the Emory Theatre in Atlanta, the Cornerstone Theatre in Los Angeles; the University College of Northampton, the Tricycle Theatre in London, the Lionel Wendt Theatre in Colombo, Sri Lanka, and the Chipping Norton Theatre in England. His play Nkrumah-ni, Africa-Ni! was part of the year long Kwame Nkrumah centenary celebration in Accra.

Osofisan has been honoured with many fellowships abroad, including a Fulbright to the famous International Writers Program in Iowa in 1987; a Fellowship with the Henri Clewes Foundation in La Napoule, France, in 1990; with the Japan Foundation in Tokyo in 1991; the Internationes in Frankfurt, Germany in 1992; and the Ragdale Foundation in Lake Forest, USA, in 1993. Since 2009, Osofisan has been a Fellow of the International Research Centre at the Freie University in Berlin.

Osofisan was Drama Consultant to the Cultural Olympiad at the Atlanta Olympic Games in 1996; he was on the final shortlist for the prestigious Neustadt Prize in North Carolina in 2000; and a year later, in 2003, Osofisan was appointed the Lee G. Hall Distinguished Playwright-in-Residence at the DePauw University in Indiana, USA. Earlier on, in 1999, Osofisan was conferred with a French national honour, and made an Officier de l'Ordre de Mérite Nationale de France. In 2006, he was conferred with the Fonlon-Nichols Prize for Literature and the Struggle for Human Rights; and that same year, he became a Fellow of the National Academy of the Arts.

Osofisan is married to Prof. Adenike Osofisan, a computer scientist, and they are blessed with four children. He is currently a Visiting Research Professor at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife.

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About the Play

The play Morountodun, which translated in English means 'I have found a sweet thing', is an interesting theatrical text written in 1983 by renowned Nigerian playwright, Prof. Femi Osofisan.

The play relives the ancient myth of Moremi, the queen of Ile-Ife, who during the civil war was said to have offered herself to be captured by the enemy (the Igbos) so as to infiltrate their camp and ascertain their secret in battle to ensure her people's (the Yoruba) victory in the war. This she succeeded in accomplishing hence ensuring her people's victory in the war.

Morountodun, set in the Western part of Nigeria, focuses on the Agbekoya uprising in which farmers who are thought to be docile rise to fight the government over the stiff taxes imposed on them.

The wealthy are referred to as the cause of this uprising and in a bid to put an end to the rumours, Titubi, a young and rich lady, decides to infiltrate the camp of the rebel farmers who are demanding their rights in order to find out the farmers' plan and bring their leader to the authorities. She sets off on this suicidal mission against her mother's wish. On this mission, Titubi discovers the trials which the peasants (poor farmers) face and also finds love as she falls in love with their leader. She becomes the catalyst that brings about the end of the war. Morountodun, is the new name given to her by her love.

BY CHIDIEBERE J. EZEMOYIH

NIGERIA [+23408066599730]