To Segun Adefila: Crown Troupe of Africa at 20

BY JAMES YEKU

Dear Segun, Your Crown Troupe of Africa furnishes an avant-garde space that is yet unsurpassed in the recent history of Nigerian performance traditions. I first encountered Crown Troupe on stage at Iganmu, some miles from the Lagos suburbs where I grew up in Orile. The social commitment of the group’s performances was unmistakably pungent as the cast, inside the barely lit hall of a fading National Art Theatre’s edifice, jiggled bodies to the lyrics and drums that re-narrated the precarity of the Nigerian condition. Theirs was a masterly performance sublime in its artistry and potent in its message. Exodus, the title of the performance that night, was as riveting as you were in your mesmeric delivery of powerful lines. Your creative mishmash of dance, music, and dialogue, rooted in Africa’s indigenous theatre traditions, signified you to me as a radical artist and director with a very huge promise.

I have since beheld that promissory signature come alive in various performances from Bariga to the University of Ibadan’s iconic theatre stage, and to Freedom Park, where you continue to shock audiences with your experimentalist styles.

Exodus delivered a persuasive message on how economic austerity facilitate an outward movement of the country’s best minds. But then, there appeared to have been a more important movement that fascinated the audience during the performance: the stage movements of young comrades, of performative bodies daring to speak truth to power in the tradition of the Gẹ̀lẹ̀dẹ́. Anyone with some knowledge of Nigerian theatre traditions might have immediately recalled the satirical impulses of the Tivs’ Kwag-hir. Yours has been a craft doggedly nurtured and honed during these two decades of dedication and you have only just begun, with an ever-increasing certainty of your passion for the arts.

What sets the Crown Troupe project apart from other similar performance groups is an intellectual radicalism that you are always willing to bring to your theatre and this has paved way for creative engagements with the work of other dramaturges, and mentors such as Professor Soyinka, the late Bode Osanyin, and Tunde Kelani. It is this same sense of intellectualism that you brought to bare in seminars and conversations at the Institute of African Studies when, together with Biodun Bello and Abiodun Ogidan, you joined the MA program in Performance Studies. There were times in Ibadan we discussed art and politics over Bodija’s Amala and Gbegiri, and at other times we had the privilege of catching the he first glimpses of some of your performances. I still recall the Ibadan rehearsal of Aiyedun, the multimedia work on climate change you did to document the impact of global warming on an economically disadvantaged community in one of Lagos’s coastal areas.

Having had such moments of opportune conversations with you, I can tell that your deference to your own indigenous performance forms, for instance, and not any sheepish imitation of Western theatrical styles catalyzes and sustains the creative intensities, which affirm Crown Troupe as a quintessential theatre group in Nigeria.  Watching you and the troupe tell stories through poetry and dance, I can tell that the essence of your works over the years has been an awareness of Yoruba spirituality avowed by your loyalty to the masquerade festivals you grew up seeing in Omu Aran. You have thus rightly positioned Crown Troupe to continue in the same Alarinjo tradition that mobilises mask aesthetics for performances and storytelling.  Segun, you deserve every success you and your crew at Crown Troupe have achieved, for your determination to curate the dreams of the ancestors in beautiful improvisations and inventive performances. What you and your friend started in 2016 has evolved into a pleasant coven of theatre militants, where crazy Bariga bohemians find refuge.

Whether it is Wole Soyinka’s Alapata Apata, or Joy Isi Bewaji’s Eko Dialogue you are adapting for performances, your works have remained classic in their articulation of your unique skills as playwright, scriptwriter, director, and musician. I just wanted to take some time out to thank you for being committed to your craft and for inspiring a bunch of lads to aspire to and pursue a life of meaning and impact. I hope I eventually find time to write that journal article I have always wanted to write on your works someday.  Meanwhile, this is to you. Cheers to the chief masquerade, as Crown Troupe celebrates 20 years on stage.

James Yeku

James Yeku is a doctoral student in English at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada. He is writing his dissertation on politics and performative identities in Nigerian social media texts.