BY NWAGBO NNEYELIKE
In our Thespian discourse today, Dr AbdulRasheed Abiodun Adeoye of the Department of  Performing Arts, University of Ilorin, Kwara State, discusses the role of a stage  director as a critical factor in the realisation of theatrical objectives .

The coinages for the de    scription of a theatre director in Thespian hierarchy are endless; the stage director has been described as follows : “the primary critic in the theatre who has become the twentieth century most important stage critic,’’ “a communicator of the highest order,’’ “the master of all arts of the theatre,’’ “God of the theatre who does not ask to be called God yet his role implies it.’’

With Ikhernefert, the first theatre director on stage who directed Egyptian Abydos Passion Play as Herodotus, the historian recorded, the director remains the brain behind the interpretation of the  script. Dr. AbdulRasheed Abiodun Adeoye, theatre director and scholar, University of Ilorin known for his simplification of Wole Soyinka’s hard core plays on stage told this reporter in an interview in Keffi, Nasarawa State, during the Society of Nigerian Theatre Arts (SONTA) Conference that all these put together makes directing a special art of the theatre among others; acting, technical theatre, lighting, costume, make-up, music, dance, dramatic theory and criticism.

With emphasis on Brecht and Soyinka he discussed his neo-alienation aesthetics and African Theatre approach. “The question is if you are directing, what production style are you using? In my own case, I have used severally, the Brechtian style. It is the Brechtian that I have re-interpreted into the neo-alienation aesthetics. It has twelve aesthetic possibilities which I validated with its main structure.

They include, the aesthetic of theme ,song of audience and players’ systematic fraternization, multiple role-playing aesthetics, the aesthetics of artistic deconstruction, the aesthetics of human props and demystification, the multiple narrators’ aesthetics, the aesthetics of de-technicalisation, on-the-stage make-up and costuming aesthetics, the aesthetics of complete instrumentation on stage, photoramic-caption’s aesthetics, the modern operatic aesthetics, trado-modern aesthetics and the critical recalling curtain call aesthetics.

Dr. Adeoye also said that  these aesthetics are conglomeration of the Western and African theatrical aesthetics.  They cannot be divorced from African colonial experience and language question.  Their main cannon is that actors will be on stage from the beginning of the production to the end. It is a theatre where there is no place to hide. It is an exposition of Brechtian style, the Brechtian alienation effect. You do not distance yourself. If you change your costume you do so in the glaring view of the audience.

If you make-up it is in the presence of the audience. It is a theatre where anybody can play any role. One person can play up to six roles. In his play, Smart Game, Dr. Adeoye tried the neo-alienation theatre.  Reading through this neo-alienation script, it presents new modern traditional dances into a holistic performance. Its narrative technique is where one person is allowed to play as many a diverse role as possible. The drummers are at the orchestra on stage entertaining. There is a beehive of African theatre festival theatre taking place on stage.  This neo-alienation theatre formed Dr. Adeoye’s doctoral thesis with the  title, Directing Wole Soyinka’s Comedy on Stage in 2007.

He was also worried that most directors are not concerned about the philosophy and theory behind their directorial styles. Attributing these lapses to why play directing is now failing he pointed out that “the major mistake people make is to think that anybody who has a script is director.  Directing, he said, is divided into two-the theoretical and practical frameworks. A lot of people these days tend to forget the theoretical framework.

If you have not succeeded in foregrounding yourself in theoretical aspect of directing your script at the level of practical realization will fail. Under theoretical framework, issues such as genre of the play-tragedy, comedy, and satire, burlesque-should be determined.  Issues of language, issues of plot structure, plot development, what type of plot? Why is it cyclical plot structure? Why is it episodic?

You have to determine all these. What is your production style? Are you working towards realism? Is it symbolism?  Are you going through the Brechtian style? I mean if you write a play, for instance Zulu Sofola’s Wedlock of the Gods, I may purely interpret it as a comedy if I want to take the root source at the level of intertextuality like William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. But if I take it to the African theatre it is a tragedy.

On African Theatre, he attributed it to Soyinka “The African Theatre is the Soyinka’s theatre, apology to nobody. I am a soyinkarian. He has come, he has seen and he has won the golden booth in 1986. So, why not Soyinka?

The truth is that people who criticize him come back to Soyinka. Those who drench themselves in Marxism, it is a question of being objective, Soyinka remains the name. Karl Marx theories are fallen off.  Also the Aristotelian theories are dropping. But what will not fail you is the Brechtian style, because the Brechtian style is pro-American, pro-European, pro-African, and pro-German. I call it a global theatre.