Abstract
This interview explores some notable London productions of Rotimi Babatunde, such as Feast, and his adaptation of Lola Shoneyin’s The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives. Babatunde’s experience at the Royal Court, his ‘translation’ on stage of the Yoruba culture and world view, the reception of audiences and critics of his contribution to Feast, and the Nigerian sources of his writing are also discussed. The interview also examines the relations between the Nigerian and UK stage.
Rotimi Babatunde, writer and playwright. rot_icarus@yahoo.co.uk.
This interview was conducted in November 2015 at the staff club of University of Ibadan, Nigeria. The interview followed the framework of Rotimi Babatunde’s personal connections with the London stage, with a focus on the playwright’s contribution to the Feast, a play tracing the spread of the Yoruba belief system and culture from its home in Nigeria to other parts of the world [note of the interviewer]. The interview was then finalised in August 2017.
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- 1.
Feast (Young Vic, 2012) is a theatrical exploration of the magnificent, cross-continental Yoruba culture, which was co-produced by the Young Vic and the Royal Court. In this play, each of the five writers—Nigerian Rotimi Babatunde, American Tanya Barfield, Cuban Yunior García Aguilera, Brazilian Marcos Barbosa, and Gbolahan Obisesan (who moved to the UK from Nigeria in 1990)—is responsible for the segments set in their own country [not of the interviewer].
- 2.
A staged reading of Feast was produced later at the Martin E. Segal Center, New York on 12 December 2016 [note of the interviewer].
- 3.
A workshop presentation of the play was produced on Saturday 19 December 2015 at the Theatre Royal Stratford East in London. The full production of the adaption is scheduled to open in June 2018 at the Arcola Theatre in London [note of the interviewer].
- 4.
The play was produced twice in London—in December 2015 at Theatre Royal Stratford East, and in June–July 2018 at Arcola Theatre. To see a detailed review of the later production in London: https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2018/jun/14/the-secret-lives-of-baba-segis-wives-review-arcola-london (Date of access June 30, 2018) [editor’s note].
- 5.
See Femi Osofisan, ‘Is Theatre Dying in Africa?’, in Susan Arndt and Katrin Berndt, eds., Words and Worlds: African Writing, Theatre and Society, Trenton, N.J., Africa World Press, 2007, 19–30. The piece was conceived as a keynote address to the annual conference of the African Literature Association of the USA holding in Wisconsin Madison, 14–18 April 2004 [note of the interviewer].
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Cheng, Y. (2018). Interview with Rotimi Babatunde. In: Morosetti, T. (eds) Africa on the Contemporary London Stage. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94508-8_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94508-8_12
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