SOCIETY OF YOUNG NIGERIAN WRITERS
Presents
PROFESSOR OLA ROTIMI INTER-SECONDARY SCHOOL ON-SPOT PLAYWRITING COMPETITION/LECTURE
(Grooming and nurturing students with playwriting talents after the Late Professor Ola Rotimi)
THEME: Development in Nigeria Playwriting, thirteen years after the demise of Prof. Ola Rotimi
As part of SYNW vision of celebrating both the living and dead Nigerian Writers, the Society is happy to announce its on-spot playwriting competition and lecture nailed on the foremost modern Nigerian Playwright Late Prof. Ola Rotimi.
Are you a principal of a school in any of the southwestern states of Nigeria
Who can boast of any young talented playwright in your school?
Or a student who is talented or gifted in the art of playwriting?
Then here is an opportunity for you to enter for our – Prof. Ola Rotimi Inter-Secondary School on-spot playwriting competition.
NOTE: The programme will also feature lecture, readings from Prof. Ola Rotimi’s works and exhibition of postals designed on Prof. Ola Rotimi’s life and works
TO PARTICIPATE:
Please text the name of your school, state, name of students you are nominating, age, class, (Art, Science or Commercial) location, phone number and where you heard about the playwriting competition to 08072673852 or 08183195486
RULES OF THE COMPETITION
- Two entrants per school who must have read at least two works of the Late Prof. Ola Rotimi e.g. The Gods are not to blame, If, Man Talk, Woman Talk, Tororo, Tororo, rooo etc.
- Entrants are to appear to the venue of the competition two hours before the programme
- Entrants are to come to the venue of the competition empty handed as the Society will provide writing materials for the competition.
- Schools are to send the profile(s) of their participating students to the Society two weeks before the programme.
- Registration is free. Individual Participant shall receive Certificate of Participation .Also Certificate of Achievement, Prize Certificates for Outstanding students and schools.
Date: To be announced very soon
ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT
Ola Rotimi, by name of Emmanuel Gladstone Olawale Rotimi (born April 13, 1938, Sapele, Nigeria—died August 18, 2000, Ile-Ife), Nigerian scholar, playwright, and director. Rotimi was born to an Ijaw mother and a Yoruba father, and cultural diversity was a frequent theme in his work. Educated in Nigeria in Port Harcourt and Lagos, he traveled to the United States in 1959 to study at Boston University. After receiving a B.A. in fine arts in 1963, he attended the Yale School of Drama (M.A., 1966), concentrating on playwrighting. Upon returning to Nigeria in the 1960s, he taught at the Universities of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University) and Port Harcourt. Owing, in part, to political conditions in Nigeria, Rotimi spent much of the 1990s living in the Caribbean and the United States, where he taught at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota. In 2000 he returned to Ile-Ife, joining the faculty of Obafemi Awolowo University.
Rotimi often examined Nigeria’s history and ethnic traditions in his works. His first plays To Stir the God of Iron (produced 1963) and Our Husband Has Gone Mad Again (produced 1966; published 1977) were staged at the drama schools of Boston University and Yale, respectively. His later dramas include The Gods Are Not to Blame (produced 1968; published 1971), a retelling of the Oedipus myth in imagistic blank verse; Kurunmi and the Prodigal (produced 1969; published as Kurunmi, 1971), written for the second Ife Festival of Arts; Ovonramwen Nogbaisi (produced 1971; published 1974), about the last ruler of the Benin empire; and Holding Talks (1979). Later plays, such as If: A Tragedy of the Ruled (1983) and Hopes of the Living Dead (1988), premiered at the University of Port Harcourt. The radio play Everyone His/Her Own Problem was broadcast in 1987. His book African Dramatic Literature: To Be or to Become? was published in 1991.
For Enquiry, sponsorship and comments
– contact Wole Adedoyin
08072673852 or 08183195486
or societyofyoungnigerianwriters@gmail.com
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