Across ages, cultures and climes, art has been instrumental in reconstructing and reshaping human experience in society.
Its capacity to function in this regard is hinged on its very vast, expressive, reflective and even refractive possibilities to reconfigure how humans encounter, understand, assess, respond to and grapple with problems and challenges which redefine their existence.
Hence, drama as an art form (exploring the essential tools of character, dialogue and action) enacts situations and conditions of humans and their interactions with other entities in society through the power of performance. Drama provokes the audience to see in a new light the undercurrents of those issues which they may have been too familiar with around them.
It, therefore, jolts them out of their perceptions of the seeming ordinariness or insignificance of the familiar issues such that by the sheer power of imagination in the dramatic enactment, such matters, after deep interrogation, become consequential and demand attention and action.
It is this probing capacity of art that serves as the trigger for defamiliarizing the familiar in literary works generally.
Thus, “Wake up Everyone” as a dramatic piece strikes the perceptive reader as a timely and curious literary intervention to vent climate change responses based on the intricacies of cultural dictates and considerations of the target audience in their immediate environment.
Handling climate change from this relative perspective helps to address cross-cultural variations and also tackle any other primordial sentiments any community may pride on as its sustenance leverage in coping with or resisting currents of global situations which demand urgent, localized responses.
From the conception of the subject enacted in the play by the playwright beyond the familiar social problems of poverty, corruption, social conflict, leadership challenge, cultural diversities, among others, it is striking that the playwright has his artistic vision clearly focused on unveiling in an innovative manner a matter which takes the front burner in the global discourse of confronting head-on environmental challenges occasioned by climate change.
The subject of climate change may be relatively malleable when subjected to parliamentary debates, discussions at international fora, explication in newspaper columns or science magazines, or even discussion sessions on radio and television because they may
be handled by experts in the field. However, when it comes to bringing it to the stage in a bid to raise awareness about it to a local community in a typical African setting, the playwright must be resourceful enough to be able to appeal to the sensibilities of the target audience, make them come to terms with the challenges attendant to the environmental challenge, cause them to act in a premeditated manner to key into global best practices of tackling climate change and make them distil the crusade in such a manner that it becomes a way of life among them after all.
The forte of the playwright in theatrically porting climate change issues to the dramatic space lies chiefly in his dramaturgy of indigenizing the subject to suit the symbolic local environment of his audience in a typical community where the inhabitants are largely unlettered.
Choosing an agrarian setting in a distinctive Nigerian (Igbo) community to lay bare climate change challenges, mitigation and adaptation strategies is a commendable attempt by the playwright to bring the subject to the doorstep of rural community dwellers who ordinarily could have the erroneous impression that climate change is an alien thing to the African world.
Of great importance to achieving the dramatic effect is the symbolic setting of the play in an agrarian community, and the playwright’s deft characterization technique of creating two worlds. These are the world of the lettered who have the wherewithal and competence in creating awareness about climate change, and the world of the unlettered whose vocation (farming) is at great risk because of the dangers posed by climate change.
With regard to the first world, having a Professor of Agricultural Extension Services with a deep passion for theatre as the climate change crusade exponent, who strategically too uses his theatre troupe to both educate and entertain the people, makes the playwright’s task of teaching the complex subject of climate change to a rural audience very strategic and, therefore, less cumbersome. In particular, the troupe’s deployment of songs and dance makes the learning atmosphere very relaxed such that useful messages about environmental sustainability are passed seamlessly in a non-formal setting.
Equally of interest to the curious reader is the playwright’s technique of creating a group-within-a-group among the unlettered rural dwellers such that ‘iron could sharpen iron in the process of responding to climate change challenges.
Pitting a responsive and compliant group of cooperative farmers’ associations in the rural setting against a handful of conservative and recalcitrant individuals in the community and harping on their divergent testimonies at harvest time clearly demonstrate the practicalities of the benefits of responding to climate change issues, on the one hand, and the repercussions of damning climate change consequences, on the other hand.
From the foregoing, “Wake up Everyone” is a trailblazing artistic piece that expressively explores the very crucial issues which revolve around climate change challenges, mitigation and adaptation in an archetypal rural Nigerian community.
Interestingly, the playwright has pointedly and successfully too brought to the fore in this classic, which marks a watershed in configuring his radical artistic vision in contemporary drama in Nigeria, a kind of experimentation by exploring the potential of the theatre in giving expression to scientific issues one may ordinarily confine to the walls of a laboratory.
The play, “Wake up Everyone”, thus becomes a theatrical laboratory in itself where all necessary specimens and reagents have been dexterously distilled by the playwright to show that no issue is indeed too massive or complex for theatre to up/stage.
Creating an atmosphere of participatory theatre, therefore, for engaging development issues in the classic, the playwright has demonstrated that drama is a genuine tool for community mobilization, education, awareness, and sensitization on such a vital issue as climate change so as to effect behavioural change either in individuals or the community as a whole.
In view of the enormous potential of the packaging of the play for penetrating the ranks of rural dwellers, it would be quite innovative to adapt the play in as many Nigerian indigenous languages as possible. In so doing, the play could become a commissioned project sponsored for serialization on major government-owned and private radio and television stations so that the subject of climate change, its challenges, mitigation, and adaptation are relayed to the Nigerian people in their respective indigenous languages.
As such, Nigeria can proudly claim to have dynamically and proactively joined the global crusade of tackling climate change matters as they relate to the peculiarities of the people’s cultures and environments.
Without any reservations whatsoever, I proudly present and also recommend this classic not just as a literary piece to be enjoyed as a reading text or savoured while on a stage but also, and more importantly, a blueprint for charting a worthy course for Nigeria’s march towards environmental sustainability.
It is indeed a ground-breaking artistic piece that has opened up new vistas for exploring the possibilities of redirecting and redefining initiatives, policy directions, and actions on tackling climate change challenges by all stakeholders in Nigeria.
Adeyemi Adegoju, PhD. Alumnus, Alexander von Humboldt (AvH) Foundation, Germany, Department of English, Obafemi Awolowo University. 220005. Ile-Ife, Nigeria.
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