Tomoloju’s dramatic metaphor for protests

This Proverb; by Ben Tomoloju; Omnibook, NY, USA; 2020

Reviewer: Kole Odutola

IT was a text from Honorable Kayode Tomoloju that laid this big burden on my small mind. I knew there was no way to escape this task of addressing a gathering of those who know more than I do about the text, its context and subtext. I can assert without equivocation that more than half of my audience have seen the play on stage or even participated in it. I plead for your understanding to allow me stumble and fumble for the next few minutes allotted to me. If you feel like protesting about anything I express in this review, please note that I have a solid alibi that can protect me.

If you further grant me the indulgence to present a quick road map to my discussion of the organs and organisation of this work, it will go the way of first looking into literature about what scholars have expressed concerning the use of proverbs in African drama. If I had the creative license, I would have called this work ‘Death as a proverb’.

At some point in this brief review, I will do what teachers of Yoruba language are wont of doing, I will dissect a few names to illustrate how names chosen by playwrights add a second layer of meaning to the story/plot. In my conclusion, I will like to present briefly, the treatment of death in this text even if I cannot extrapolate to other African performances.

Literature review

LET us look at what scholars are saying about the use of proverbs in dramatic dialogues. Anyone who has browsed through this script will agree it is replete with sayings of our elders. The encapsulated wisdom within the story makes the dialogue smooth and rooted in the cultural mores of Yoruba people. It is no surprise that Martin Banham says “[t]he roots of African theatre are ancient and complex and lie in areas of community festival, seasonal rhythm and religious ritual, as well as in the work of popular entertainers and storytellers.” Is it not within those community festivals that flowery language comes to the fore? According to Gbemisola Adeoti (2019) “[p]roverbs  are  indexes  of  a  people’s  language,  history,  literature  and culture. They are associated with ‘elders’ who are deemed to be wise with age and not expected to speak in  ‘plain’  terms.” In his exposition of how proverbs provide listeners with the ‘unsaid’, he calls on a western scholar who has made a career of the study of proverbs across different cultures. Wolfgang  Mieder,  a  foremost paremiologist, recognises this role of proverbs when he says that proverbs are “the wisdom  of  ages  gone  by”,  although  they  are  also  meaningful  and  relevant  in  the  modern  era.  They are based on “observations and generalisations about basic human behaviour and the trials and trepidation of human life’ (2012:143).”

In Ben Tomoloju’s dramatic presentation of the intertwined lives of the Triple A – Alaye, Adewale and Adebowale – readers and theatergoers will hear an earful of proverbs deftly translated into English of the best grade. The age-old proverbs take a new linguistic coloration but retain their primordial meanings. In the third movement of Act 1, Ojomo says, “You never lick hot soup in a hurry.” Or when Dakeja (the one who fights silently) declares his stand on a matter, he serves us another of the manifold proverbs in the story, for example “[t]he dove pronounces his incantations and thinks the pigeon does not understand, the pigeon understands.” Most Yoruba listeners will surely know where that comes from even when tiri ni o n tiri may not immediately lend itself to another linguistic code. 

Still holding on to the compass by Adeoti, when he asserts, “the role of proverbs as communicative resources deployed by some African dramatists in the building of characterisation and development of conflicts in order to elicit certain emotional responses from the stage and the auditorium” (pg. 84).

In all the 82 speaking moments of Adeboye, the playwright hardly blessed his tongue with a proverb except once at his 73^rd speaking opportunity. Here he uttered the profound words like a man brought up in the city would. He said, “It is sheer forbearance that rules the mind of a cow. A knife does no good on the throat” translated into Yoruba it will be[d1]  “oju ni maalu rọ, ọbẹ ko da lọrun” (pg. 99). The lack of proverbs in the speeches of Adeboye is in line with his character, which is unlike that of Dakeja who at every speaking turn delivers a proverb or two. A closer reading of Adeboye’s lines reveals a westernisation and sophistication that befits his role in this play. Adeboye is a good study for understanding Africans who can straddle both worlds of the west and that of their forebears.  We are provided a hint about the inspiration for Adeboye.

Ben Tomoloju in response to a question about his spirituality said during an electronic interview, “until I resolved in full maturation that this Source is ‘the heart of purity’ as the line goes in one of my plays, This Proverb”. The line in question is on page 27 when Adeboye gives one of his longest monologues in the play. I draw a parallel from that speech what Pentecostal Pastors are wont to express “solitude before facing the multitude.”[d2]  This we also see in both the playwright and his creation following such an injunction.

At this point, I will direct attention to how names of the characters add to the stories by providing cultural pointers for readers and viewers who are not steeped in Yoruba cultural codes. According to Debra King (1998) “[n]ames speak of a condition of the spirit through which the name bearer gains ground for locating self and elucidating his or her reason for existing.” Starting with Alaye, roughly translated will mean ‘the one who owns the world.’ He truly behaved as if the world was his but, in the end, he expires on top of his mountain of pleasure. If the one whose name proclaims ownership of the world ended like every mortal, what of Dakẹja, the one who fights silently? His death was deep in the evil forest where silently his life was taken. The same Dakẹja is the father of Baikọ who revolted against him. Baikọ roughly translated, could mean ‘not like this’ and that was exactly what the character stood for in the play, contrarianism. Have we not learned that the “fruit is unlike the tree?

The names Adeboye and Adewale were chosen carefully in that one represents how the crown meets royalty while the other, a city dweller returns home. Adewale loosely translated means the crown comes home. He too is represented as a contrast to his father in terms of morals.

In beer parlor conversations, it is said, women are meant to be beautiful but men are expected to be powerful[d3] . Therefore, it is not a surprise that one of the names of the characters is Maadan. There is a possibility that this is an abbreviated form of Adumaadan, beautiful for her blackne[d4] ss. Her role in this play was more utilitarian than critical. In her defense, it can be argued that the playwright did not set out to do a play where the females will share equal dramatic spaces with their men. His main objective was to explore genderless intergenerational relationships. As is eventually shown in the plot, the palace of power was the first to crumble and then the community of Jokojẹ could not sit still but soon began to feel the anomie. It should be noted that Jokojẹ as a rural setting harbored no modern State presence. The only source of authority was the palace. It appears to me this must be one of the earlier pre-colonial rural setting or a commentary on the criminal neglect of rural areas.

There are very few characters in this play where titles are also used as names. One of such is Mogaji, which is a title but now adopted as a name in parts of Yoruba land.  The internet [d5] says “a Mogaji is chosen not considering seniority in age but must be elderly and custodian of the descendant historical facts, figures and the intricacies within their background yet must be reachable, accommodating, generous, firm, decisive, loving, respectful, unbiased, frank, attentive, honest, person of integrity, influential, relentless, bold, intelligent and of wisdom, Godly, patient, selfless, enterprising, initiative, prayerful, focused, having foresight, creative.”

This Proverb is not just about its richness in dialogue and cultural connectedness, it is total theater. Peggy Harper (1969) rightly observes “[i]n Nigerian traditional societies dance is the vortex of religious ritual ceremony: a priest or priestess is the leading dancer, using dance and symbolic gestures to lead initiates in dances designed to appease the supernatural powers, solicit divine protection, or give thanks to guardian spirits of the community” (pg. 280). Right at the beginning the playwright’s directorial notes informs that “their dance accentuating the act of paying homage” as homiletic songs plays.

Conclusion

The profundity of This Proverb as a literary text is in its linearity of plot. In terms of linguistic elegance and the tight economy of storytelling within three Acts (excluding the conclusion) tells me like adiro meta ti ki i da ọbẹ nu, the play is stable in its defiance of the rigid Aristotelian unity of space, time and action. In line with a strategy of succinctness, the juicy parts of this play are hidden in theatrical spaces beyond. Think for a moment what it will look like taking us right into the chambers where Adewale was consorting with the women he met in the palace. He must have covered faces and fired their bases,  if you get what I mean?

There are few instances in the text where life imitates art or is it the other way around? In one of the lines in the play, “I can’t breathe” are the words George Floyd, the African American killed by a white police officer, uttered. This is an echo of the same words used by Mogaji (pg.105).

In addition, in very recent times, the Ọpa Aṣẹ of a certain King was removed by what the Nigerian media termed ‘foodlums’ instead of hoodlums and a London-based Lagosian, plotting to relieve the Oba of his throne.

In another creative twist the so called “youth two spoke with stones and gasoline, bringing down buildings erected to solve part of our pains.” In Ben Tomoloju’s This Proverb, Baikọ, the self-appointed leader of the redemption group talked tough as they burn down their fathers’ homes because “they have sown a bad seed for the future.”

One of the questions for the audience or readers will be a critical interrogation of the best means of registering discontent. As background information, let it be on the records that in Dolapo Sikuade’s (1993) Behind the Barricades, the people spoke with stones hoping to hit those on the throne. The same textual violence can be detected in the title of Odia Ofeimun’s collection, “I will ask questions with stones if they take my voice” (2008).  Protestology may not yet be a mainstream study but people like Professor Omar Wasow think that “when protesters engage in violence, often in a very understandable response to state repression, that tends to work against their cause and interests, and mobilises or becomes fodder for the opposition to grow its coalition” (May 2020). 

On a final note, the harvest of death in this text is the proverb for me because Yoruba people in their wisdom say “iku ti o n pa ojugba ẹni, owe nla ni o fi n pa fun ni.” I see the deaths in this text as a query on what life really is. The person of power will die, the traitor will also go the way of the earth and those who aspire to positions of authority after much sacrifice and torture will die. So, is the playwright hinting at something here?  Nearly all the deaths are what Yoruba people will refer to as iku aitọjọ or iku pajawiri. The only death that appeared natural was Ifagbaye’s death. As a seer, he foresaw his own demise and therefore gave credence to the efficacy of Orunmila baba Ifa to see today and foresee the future.   

What else can I say but to end my review on this point of termination? I thank you for listening.

(As presented by Dr Ade-Odutola of University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, USA at the virtual presentation of the book by the Kakaaki USA, on December 6)