LIFE theatre can transport one from this world to the underworld and the hereafter. Life on stage can be magical in a manner that can be quite overwhelming. It is in its determination to put theatre back on the front burner of the Nigerian scheme of things that Chams Plc initiated the Chams Theatre Series last year with the production of the adaptation and translation of DO Fagunwa’s novel, Ogboju Ode Ninu Igbo Irunmale (Forest of a Thousand Daemons).

The two day festival that played out in the historic town of Badagary last week brought out into visual vivacity those arresting poetic lines of John Pepper Bederekemo Clark, which he wrote as follows in his beautiful poem, Olokun:

Mention the name CBAAC, an acronym for Centre for Black African Art and Civilization, what immediately comes to mind is FESTAC, another acronym for Festival of Arts and Culture.

Activities marking this year’s edition of the annual Muson Festival of Arts kicked off on Sunday October 25 at the Agip Recital Hall, Muson Centre with what can be described as an evening of jazz music. The featuring of the jazz evening was a re- introduction of one of the MUSON brands that was yanked off the list after its first initial outing in 2005.

The works and legacies of one of the greatest gifts to the Nigerian art community and one who devoted much of her time and energy to the preservation and propagation of Yoruba culture in the 20th century, Susan Wenger popularly known as Adunni Orisa shortly after her death, came alive again last week as a group of artists known as The New Sacred Art Movement, an artistic movements founded by the late culture priestess stormed Lagos from Osogbo for a unique exhibition tagged; A Legacy of Susan Wenger: An Exhibition of the Artists of the New Sacred Art Movement.