THE MANAGEMENT OF THEATRE FOR DEVELOPMENT IN NIGERIA: A STUDY OF SELECTED RIVERINE AREAS IN OJO LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA OF LAGOS STATE, NIGERIA
Komolafe, Ayodele Michael
Department of Theatre Arts and Music
Lagos State University, Ojo, Lagos
E-mail: ayokomolafetiata@yahoo.com
ABSTRACT
I am sure most of us working in the development sector know about “funders”, “consultant”, “client”, high anxiety and obsession with ‘deadlines” and “deliverable” ! So much that the “beneficiary” takes the backseat and the “process”, gets buried in the backyard! So when some whistle –blower shouts, where has all the money gone, we run helter-skelter, come up with magic wand, called EVOLUTION. (Emphasis mine) so we embark on a time bond, limited to 50 A4 pages, Time New Roman font size, 10 single lines spacing “deliverable” called Evolution Report! In which we disrobe the project deliverables layer by layer in order to put our finger on either that physical deformity, or muscular contour that we feel was solely responsible for winning or losing the race! Better, if we can gets hold of some community members (numbers) reinforcing our view point (Sharma, 2006:5). The problem militating the practice of theatre for development (TfD) both in the West and Africa, Nigeria specifically, dwell within the TfD paradigms adopted. The practitioners and scholars have said TfD needs no manage skills to take place. This position has severally presented TfD workshops as an ad-hoc thing. The submission by Sharma above vividly summarizes the methodology and objective of the practice. Which runs counter to development? It is the application of the effective management skills and its applicability that it can affect the people’s lives. The intention of this paper is to look at the various problems affecting the practice and proffering a management model that we have applied on three Riverine TfD workshops. The under this review are: Itegbesa, Irewe and Ojota. Our methodology shall be to selectively appraise TfD workshops and submissions by practitioners and scholars after itemizing some of the problems faced by the practice, present our own management model in relation to its application (success and failure) in the Riverine community identified. Part of the observations we made was that good application of management skills will positively impact on the people.