By Nwafor Sunday

When Second Thoughts arrives at Lambeth Fringe in London before continuing to Colchester Fringe, it will be another stop in a journey that has taken the Nigerian production through different cities, festivals and audiences.

For its director, Samuel Olusegun Oladele, the journey represents something larger: an opportunity to test an idea that increasingly defines his practice — that a story does not have to surrender where it comes from to be understood somewhere else.

Oladele is a Nigerian theatre director, actor and producer whose career spans more than two decades. In recent years, his work has become increasingly visible on international festival stages, particularly through his continuing collaboration with Instinct Pictures, where he serves as Artistic Director.

That collaboration has taken productions including Sour Grapes: The Musical, A Palm Tree in London and Second Thoughts from Lagos into theatre and fringe spaces in the United Kingdom and United States.

But Oladele’s relationship with theatre began long before Brighton, Philadelphia or Scarborough entered the picture.

More Than Putting on a Play

His practice has crossed directing, acting, producing, creative direction, community engagement, stage management and set construction.

Between 2013 and 2015, he served as Convener and Producer of LIVE-IN-THEATRE, creating and coordinating a platform for live theatrical performance and artistic engagement. It placed him not only in the rehearsal room, but on the organisational side of theatre — bringing practitioners and audiences together and contributing to sustained live performance activity.

That combination of artist and organiser has continued throughout his career.

For Oladele, theatre has never been only about what happens after the lights go down.

“I believe theatre is more than entertainment; it is a tool for development,” he says. “Whether in the public or private sector, it engages, educates, challenges perspectives, connects people, and inspires meaningful change.”

That philosophy is visible in the stories occupying his recent directing career.

Stories That Begin at Home

Sour Grapes: The Musical, A Palm Tree in London and Second Thoughts deal with different subjects, but each draws from recognisable human and social experiences.

They are also unmistakably Nigerian stories.

For Oladele, cultural specificity is not an obstacle to international audiences. It can be the bridge.

“And when our stories are told truthfully enough for people from somewhere else to recognise themselves in them,” he says, “theatre becomes truly international.”

Recent years have allowed him to test that conviction.

Working with Instinct Pictures, Sour Grapes: The Musical, which Oladele directed, moved from Lagos Fringe Festival in 2023 into the UK festival circuit in 2024, including Brighton Fringe and Wandsworth Arts Fringe.

A Palm Tree in London followed, reaching Brighton Fringe in 2025 before crossing the Atlantic for Philadelphia Fringe/Cannonball in the United States.

Each move raises a creative question: how does a director retain the humour, rhythm and cultural memory of Nigerian storytelling before an audience that may have no previous relationship with Nigeria?

The answer, for Oladele, appears not to be making the work less Nigerian, but finding the humanity within its cultural specificity.

Second Thoughts and the Road Ahead

That principle finds a particularly fitting vehicle in Second Thoughts.

At its centre is Clement Achebe, a successful Lagos professional who leaves home in search of what he believes will be a better life abroad. Through comedy and social commentary, the play explores migration, aspiration, identity and the distance between imagined greener pastures and lived reality.

The production has itself become something of a traveller.

After its Nigerian presentation and an appearance at the Bradford African Festival of Arts, Second Thoughts continued through the UK in 2026, including Brighton Fringe, the Rik Mayall Comedy Festival in Droitwich Spa and Scarborough Fringe.

Scarborough brought an unexpected challenge. When circumstances demanded an immediate response, Oladele stepped out of his directing role and into the production as a performer.

For someone whose career has crossed several areas of theatre-making, the moment captured something fundamental about his practice: adaptability and an understanding that theatre remains, above everything else, collaborative.

Now Second Thoughts continues its UK journey with forthcoming appearances at Lambeth Fringe in London and Colchester Fringe.

There is an intriguing symmetry in a Nigerian production exploring migration and expectations of life abroad encountering audiences in Britain. The geographical journey of the production has begun to echo the questions within the play itself.

Beyond the Director’s Chair

Oladele’s practice extends beyond the touring productions developed through his collaboration with Instinct Pictures.

In June 2026, he directed Dustbin Village for The REFLEXIONS at Daystar Christian Centre in Lagos.

In London, he worked in a different capacity on Dear Kaffy: Diary of a Single Woman in Lagos at the Shaw Theatre, serving as Stage Manager and Set Builder.

The contrast reveals a practitioner comfortable moving between artistic leadership and the practical mechanics of making theatre happen — directing performers, shaping interpretation, managing stages, constructing performance environments and collaborating with creative and technical teams.

His role as Artistic Director at Instinct Pictures brings those strands together: helping shape productions within a collaborative structure and contributing to the process of moving Nigerian work from development and rehearsal into different theatres, festivals and cultural contexts.

A Practice Still Moving

There is a temptation when telling the story of an artist working internationally to make geography the achievement.

Lagos. Brighton. London. Bradford. Scarborough. Droitwich Spa. Philadelphia. Colchester.

The list is impressive, but geography alone says relatively little about an artistic practice.

The more interesting story may be what happens to the work between those places.

How does a director retain the rhythm, humour and cultural memory of Nigerian storytelling when the person sitting in the third row has never been to Nigeria?

What should be explained?

What should remain unexplained?

And at what point does something deeply local reveal itself as something unexpectedly universal?

After more than two decades in theatre, these are increasingly the questions around Oladele’s work.

His journey from directing and producing in Nigeria, through initiatives such as LIVE-IN-THEATRE, to artistic leadership and international festival collaboration has not removed him from the theatre culture from which he emerged.

If anything, it appears to have made that relationship more important.

The objective is not simply to take Nigerian theatre abroad.

It is to allow the work to enter a room as itself and begin a conversation.

When Second Thoughts meets audiences again at Lambeth and Colchester Fringe, another version of that experiment will begin.

Different theatre.

Different audience.

Same story.

And somewhere between Lagos and the next curtain call, Oladele continues to explore just how far an authentically told story can travel.