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National Arts Theatre

It’s Peju Alatishe’s Time: From Venice To Jo’burg
The Nigerian artist Peju Alatishe will be part of a panel entitled The Significance and Power of Womanhood, at the 10th Jo’burg Art Fair. The talk will take place next Saturday, September 9, 2017 at the Theatre on Nelson Mandela Square at the Sandton Convention Centre in Sandton, an upmarket suburb of Johannesburg in South Africa. Part of the Talks Programme at the Art Fair, which is one of the continent’s most sought after, Alatise, with other artists: Lady Skollie, Zohra Opoku, and Sethembile Msezane, will be in conversation with South African collector Pulane Kingston. The idea for this panel came with the realisation that six of the eight booths at the Fair are led by female artists.

The Joburg Art Fair has an elaborate selection process for determining who shows. “Other than our featured artist, we do not exhibit any unaffiliated artists – meaning, we work directly with the galleries who in turn select the artist they will exhibit at the fair”, Nicole Siegenthaler, this year’s Fair producer, told Ruth Cooper of Bizcommunity.”The galleries are selected based on set criteria by our selection committee.” Alatise, whose works vary from life sized, provocative set pieces laid out in-your-face to Warholian portraits with entertaining colours, was one of the four Nigerian artists with works on view at the 2017 edition of Venice Biennale, which is also being concluded this month. For the purpose of the Talk Programme on womanhood in Johannesburg, it’s instructive to be reminded that Alatise, an architect by training, has once published a non-fiction book titled Orita Meta, tracking the lives of three, purpose driven women, each of whom, in her own words “on a journey through life’s challenges and its consequences, happen upon a path of self-discovery”.

CORA Selects 15 Books For 19Th LABAF
The 19th edition of the Lagos Book and Art Festival will feature discussions around 15 books, it is official. There will also be 15 sub-events in the overall event, which will run for a full week, mostly at the Freedom Park, in the Onikan Cultural Precinct, Lagos, from November 6 to 12, 2017. The theme, announced at the end of the 18th edition last year, is Eruptions: Global Fractures and Our Common Humanity.

The subject is informed by the convulsions in the global political and economic space; the sort of angst that’s led to the emergence of Donald Trump in the United States, the decision by 17.4Million British voters to leave the European Union, the growing sympathy of Eastern Nigerian youth for Biafra Secession, the unrelenting scourge of Islamic fundamentalism in our country’s North east, the siege on Europe by Islamic militias and the various eruptions in the polity that unsettle us all. The Festival’s special guest is the poet Niyi Osundare, The lead conversation will be moderated by Chidi Odinkalu.

Segun Bucknor: Yaba Hero, Soul Singer Exits with Thunderous Applause
Segun Bucknor, bandleader of the Soul Assembly and shaker of the music scene in the late nineteen sixties, was laid to rest last Tuesday after a Church service attended by three generations of Nigerian artists and entertainers as well as a cross section of Lagos City’s old and new business elite. The 71 year old had finally succumbed to the lingering effect of stroke, which he had battled for seven years. Bucknor, who grew up as a precocious young lad clinching a double promotion at Yaba Methodist School, qualifying him to sit for and win admission into the prestigious Kings College, came into national consciousness with Afro-soul inflected music, first of the Soul Assembly and latterly Segun Bucknor and The Assembly and then Segun Bucknor and The Revolution.

The independence generation: Nigerians born between 1957 and 1963, grew up adlibbing to songs like Poor Man No Get Brother, Who Say I Tire, Na Rest I Dey Rest Ke. Bucknor was clearly a superstar in those days of, to quote the from the tagline Uche Nwokedi’s musical drama Kakaadu, “infinite possibilities”. He was so hot between 1968 and 1972 that everyone was willing to believe the rumour that Fela’s mother, Funmilayo Ransome Kuti, accosted him and warned him to back down and “allow my son to shine”. Bucknor himself told this writer in his Volvo Car in the week that Fela died, 20 years ago: “No such encounter ever took place”. A personable, extremely likeable human being who became any younger person’s friend at terribly short notice, Segun Bucknor is survived by his wife Sola, his singer, broadcaster daughter Tosyn and her event-planner sister Funke.

Death And The King’s..The Soyinka Month Wraps Up Tomorrow
Arambe Productions will present the sixth and seventh performances of a four-day production of Wole Soyinka’s Death and The King’s Horseman at Terra Kulture tomorrow, Monday, September 4 at 3pm and 7pm. They will effectively wrap up the official season of plays marking the Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka’s 83rd Birthday anniversary. There are two performances -3pm and 7pm-this evening at the same venue, as will be two tomorrow, the last day of the Sallah Festival. The production is part of the six events and performances in Lagos and Ogun States that mark the 2017 edition of the playwright’s annual birthday. Soyinka was born in July and July every year has become a month of drama performances since Wole Oguntokun started “The Season of Soyinka plays” nine years ago.

This year however, the season spilled over into August and September; Ozygen Concepts produced four weekends of Soyinka’s King Baabu at the Freedom Park, wrapping up on August 27, 2017. Arambe productions’ Death and The King’s Horseman was initially produced at the University of Lagos during the month of July and is now being delivered to a wider audience at the Terra Kulture arena.
• Compiled by staff of Festac News Agency