UNIVERSITY OF IBADAN

DEPARTMENT OF THEATRE ARTS

50^TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATIONS

1^ST GEOFFREY AXWORTHY LECTURE

FRIDAY, 08 MARCH, 2013: 11.00 a.m.

TRENCHARD HALL, UNIVERSITY OF IBADAN

PROGRAMME

Master of Ceremonies: Dr Matthew M. Umukoro

1. National Anthem

2. University Anthem

3. Introduction of Guests

4. Chairman’s Opening Remarks – the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Isaac Folorunso Adewole

5. Address by the Guest of Honour – His Excellency, Senator Isiaka Abiola Ajimobi, Executive Governor of Oyo State

6. Profile of Professor Geoffrey Axworthy – Professor Ahmed Yerima, Dean of Arts, Redeemer’s University, Ogun State

7. Citation of the Guest Lecturer, Professor Wole Soyinka – Professor Duro Oni, DVC (Management Services), University of Lagos

8. THE LECTURE (The Ritual Pursuit) – Nobel Laureate Professor Wole Soyinka

9. Musical Interlude the University Choir conducted by Tolu Owoaje

10. Chairman’s Closing Remarks

11. Announcements – by Ag. HOD, Dr Chukwuma Okoye

12. Vote of Thanks – by the Dean of Arts, Professor Remi Raji-Oyelade

13. University Anthem

14. National Anthem

GEOFFREY AXWORTHY

Geoffrey Axworthy was born in Plymouth on August 10, 1928. He attended Exeter College, Oxford, where he read English. While at Exeter he realized the importance of Drama, and its relationship to education. He believed that theatre could be used as a tool for the sensitization of children and youths. This influenced his decision to leave the shores of Great Britain to explore other ways of effectively using theatre as a tool for education. In 1951, he took up a teaching job at the University of Baghdad, and later came to Nigeria in the early 1950’s to take up a teaching appointment in the Department of English, University College, Ibadan, from where he was deployed as the first Director of the School of Drama in 1962. Axworthy, who was an accomplished stage director, administrator, and teacher, is best remembered for bringing two of Wole Soyinka’s early plays to Nigeria from London in 1959; i.e. The Swamp Dwellers and The Lion and The Jewel, and also for the Artiste-in-Residence Programme of Kola Ogunmola in 1962, which led to the historic production of Amos Tutuola's novel, The Palmwine Drinkard. He returned to England in 1967 where he took up the job of Director, Sherman Theatre, University College, Cardiff, Wales, and he remained there until retirement. He died on Thursday, April 16, 1992, at the age of 64.

PROFESSOR WOLE SOYINKA

Professor Wole Soyinka, 1986 winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, was admitted to the University College, Ibadan, in 1952. He left Ibadan for the University of Leeds, United Kingdom, in 1954 after his Intermediate B.A. programme and graduated in 1957 with a Second Class Upper Division. He became the first African Head of the Department of Theatre Arts, University of Ibadan, then School of Drama, in 1967. He was arrested and detained the same year by the military regime of General Yakubu Gowon for organizing the Third Force, which sought to mediate in the Nigerian Civil War. Upon his release, after spending twenty-seven months in detention without trial, he returned, in 1970, to the headship of the Department, which had just been upgraded from the School of Drama. After a spell, he went on voluntary exile till 1975 when he was appointed Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Ife.

Once described as one of “the most engaging individuals of our time” and the “most globally influential African writer”, Wole Soyinka has remained a consistent cultural and human rights activist since the 1970s. The highly prolific playwright, novelist, poet, essayist, autobiographer, and university teacher now spends his time giving lectures in all the continents of the world. Today’s lecture, entitled “The Ritual Pursuit”, is the first Geoffrey Axworthy Lecture, being given in his honour.

ABOUT THE DEPARTMENT

The Department of Theatre Arts, which turned 50 this academic session, was founded as the School of Drama in the 1962/63 Session, and had its first intake of thirty students in October, 1963, after Kola Ogunmola’s fruitful six-month attachment which culminated in the historic production of Amos Tutuola’s The Palm-Wine Drinkard in April, 1963. The founding Director of the School of Drama was Geoffrey Axworthy, with Martin Banham as Deputy Director, both of them expatriate teachers deployed from the English Department. The first batch of staff included Ebun Odutola (now Professor [Mrs] Ebun Clark), a graduate of Rose Bruford School of Drama, Bill Brown (a Harvard-trained technical director), Demas Nwoko (a Paris-trained theatre designer), Peggy Harper (an accomplished dance scholar), Joel Adedeji (also trained at Rose Bruford) and Dapo Adelugba (from the University of California, Los Angeles), who joined in 1967. In October, 1970, the School of Drama was upgraded to a Department, with Wole Soyinka as the first African Head. As the oldest Department of Theatre Arts in Africa, it has produced hundreds of Diploma, First degree and Postgraduate degree holders who constitute the dominant staff in all other Theatre Arts/Dramatic/Performing/Creative Arts Departments throughout Nigeria.