Renowned historical playwright, Professor Ahmed Yerima said the weirdest and most interesting things drives him to about historical characters.
With over four historical plays to his name, including Aremo, Ame Oboni, Attahiru, The Trials of Oba Ovamwerem, Emir Sanusi the theatre critic and director, said each was inspired by the actions of these great men and his desire to understand them.
With Ame Oboni, the playwright was restless to discover what drives an Oba, the giver of life and death, to commit suicide; with the Trials of Oba Ovamwerem, he was irked by what could have driven a King to kill hundreds of his subject who could have helped him win the war with the encroaching Whiteman. And in this latest production, Emir Sanusi, he was scandalized by the royalty’s statement during his coronation, “Oh Allah! I want to die the Emir. I want to be carried to my grave an Emir.”
“When you hear great men utter such statements, it makes you wonder whatever made them say it. I thought was this man sane? Did he know what was going to happen? So, I begin to look at the psyche of the man, the historical figure, and to find a way to configure the story around that.’’
He further conjures the character to his consciousness whilst determining what he wants to with it, before bringing the subject into reality.
Often times, the questions are never answered until the end of the story. Assuredly, he never writes a character he cannot see. Yerima recalls an occasion, when writing the story of Oba Ovamwerem he gone to bed pissed at the King for wading through kilometers of dead and stenchy bodies killed on his orders.
Men that could have fought for the Benin Kingdom against the invasion of white men. While asleep, the Oba appeared to him saying clearly, ‘‘Yerima, you are not serious. For the people of Benin, I can do anything. For the people I can sacrifice anything.’’ That exact quote he used verbatim in the play.
“I write as an actor and a playwright. So, what does not work for me as an actor when I am writing, cannot work for me as a playwright. When it doesn’t work, I work on the problem until it does. then, I begin to create the character. I create a human being that I can relate to,” averred Yerima.
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