Femi Osofisan’s Medaye in Ibadan

by Olakunbi Olasope

Prof. Olakunbi Olasope of the Department of Classics, University of Ibadan, Nigeria works on the reception of Greek and Roman theatre in West African drama, and in particular, the work of Femi Osofisan. In the African takeover blogs 9, 10 and 11 she writes about the recent performances of Medaye by Femi Osofisan in Ibadan in May…

Some musings after several public readings

Medaye the latest play by the renowned playwright, Femi Osofisan, is making the rounds in the city of Ibadan in preformed public readings. Prof Osofisan and I have collaborated on many projects in the past. This adaptation is our latest collaboration, and it has taken over ten years to prepare this play. It can be called an adaptation of the Medea of Euripides, or indeed a ‘transfiguration’ of the Greek play effected by its being processed through a consciousness informed by Yoruba history and culture—although the playwright, consummate artist that he is, takes certain crucial liberties in his handling of both that history and culture.  Osofisan himself has described the play as a ‘re-reading’, and since it is in essence nothing but a stage piece intended for an open audience, the play has been subjected to these public readings in order to improve its content. So, the play is probably still going to change.

Image of Osofisan and the director, Tunde Awosanmi. Photo credit: Olakunbi Olasope

As I have noted elsewhere, Osofisan writes these adaptations to depict his unwavering attention to his own historical and cultural contexts, his ideological purposes and his philosophical predilections. Consequently, he has found the Greek classics to be the appropriate template for these re-workings. Although every dramatic play is a cultural product of the specific historical and socio-cultural environment within which it is produced, the potency and effectiveness of the Medea plot has inspired this version despite  differences in contexts, location and period, and it has provided an opportunity to investigate the character of the granddaughter of the Sun-God, Medea, but in this instance, Medaye, daughter of Oya, Goddess of the sea, not so much as every woman but as a particular woman with a specific understanding of her own situation, and thus reacting as an individual to the dramatic changes brought to bear on her status within her own family, if not her society. This is the nut that the playwright throws into the midst of the audience in these previews of the play. The play complies with the theatrical conventions of the time of its original production, and these have ensured its communicability with the audience it is designed for and beyond. In this sense, the play is inspired by cross-cultural syncretism. As with other such adaptations, the resonance of the Greek classic is evident to that knowing section of the audience, and this helps to make a case for the continued study of the discipline of classics at the University of Ibadan. It is no news that the discipline is under siege in different parts of the world.

Greek drama has continued to be relevant because of its ability to speak to a mutable world. In the play, Osofisan has once again re-defined our connections with ancient Greek culture, and with culture anywhere else in the world, by manipulating elements that provoke the audience to take positions as the drama unfolds.  The production of a classical play, therefore, in contemporary times denotes an act more than transferring the classical dramatic text from its original socio-cultural environment to another, contemporary, socio-cultural context. In following the practice of drawing on traditional mythology as a means of re-examining contemporary realities, Osofisan based the plot of his Medaye on Euripides’ Medea, which itself is based on a Greek myth of inordinate conjugal love. Medaye is a tragic play in which the eponymous character murdered her two brothers and her own children alongside her husband’s new bride in blind jealousy. But how blind is this jealousy?  In the play, we go beyond seeing, participating, and experiencing the tragedy of the character of Medaye and her obsession with her husband, Atipo, which leads to the obliteration of the lives of those whom she holds dear. We are called on to critically comment on her motivations vis-à-vis the motivations of the other protagonists whose actions lead Medaye to her own decisions. For these dastardly acts, she has been both acclaimed and criticised. Osofisan, again, unsettles his audience as he is wont to do in this play. Osofisan’s drama concerns the position and treatment of women and outsiders in Yoruba culture. Medaye, the foreigner, female, sorceress, and murderer of her own children, is the archetypal transgressive outsider. She crushes Atipo through his sons—tragic betrayal, revenge, infanticide are crucial to the play.

Click on blog 10 to continue to the time and setting of Medaye.

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